I appeal to you therefore, brothers, by the mercies of God, to present your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and acceptable to God, which is your spiritual worship.
- Romans 12:1 -
The Bible calls us to see that, in Christ, the whole life of a Christian should rightly be considered worship. But the New Testament also recognises that the church gathers in different places and in different ways to offer praise and worship to God together. That’s why, at Redeemer, we love our Sunday gatherings. They are a chance for us, together, to continue our worship of God as a community, to hear from God through his word, to encourage and build one another up in the gospel and to be a witness of the good news to our local community.
At Redeemer we want the contours of the gospel shape everything we do, including our Sunday gatherings. So every Sunday we structure the whole gathering to re-present the gospel. This means we don’t only hear the gospel as the sermon is preached, but we celebrate the story of the gospel in the structure of the gathering itself. That is why our liturgy--the way we form our gatherings--follows the story of the gospel from the call to worship right through to the benediction.
We believe God wants to meet with us, not only as we gather on a Sunday, but each week as we live out lives of worship to him. So, to help Sundays saturate the rest of our week, we'll be posting weekly blogs to both reflect on the previous Sunday gathering and prepare for the upcoming one. In the "Prepare" blog post you will find a snippet of the liturgy we’ll be using the following Sunday as well as songs we’ll be singing and the Bible passage we’ll be studying together. The "Reflect" post will be a full rundown of the previous Sunday’s gathering including all liturgy, songs and a link to the sermon audio.
Our great prayer is that these posts would be used by God to prepare your hearts for what he has to say to you through his word and to continue to reflect on what he has been teaching you through our Sunday gatherings.
God bless,
Gary Aston