I am a teacher. I love to teach. I love to explain things in ways others can readily understand, and I don’t mean they simply grasp facts and figures. I love seeing the light bulb come on for people when they begin to make the connections. It is a profound privilege to be a part of that process. This is why little tykes with their endless “why” questions are so fun. Yes, they can be tedious, but I love the endless curiosity the never-ending stream of questions indicates.
Whether you’ve been at New City from the beginning or you’ve been here a few months, you may have wondered why we do certain things in certain ways. There is an order to our gathered assembly. This order is called a liturgy. Every church has a liturgy, from the very low church “two songs, announcements, a sermon, and another song” to the very high liturgy of an Eastern Orthodox church. The order of events in a service are that church’s liturgy, and when they are intentionally mapped out they serve a valuable function. My aim in this article is to help you understand what makes New City Church what it is. We’re not simply trying to follow a general template or Order of Service. There’s a journey we undertake each Sunday. Each individual element in our service has a reason why, and the reason why is how we evaluate every song we sing and every prayer we pray.
Each week we gather together in the Lord’s name with a profound promise: when two or more gather in his name, there he is. That is, in the gathered assembly the Lord Jesus’ presence is manifested most profoundly. As Ignatius indicated in the early second century, this is what makes us, New City Church, and is what makes every other local church the catholic church:
Wherever the bishop appears, there let the congregation be; just as wherever Jesus Christ is, there is the catholic church.
Ignatius, Letter to the Smyrneans 8:2
Here “bishop” refers to the lead elder, the one set apart for preaching and teaching, or as Paul expressed it, those overseers who “labor at preaching and teaching” (1 Timothy 5:17). At this point in history overseers (“bishops”) were not diocesan bishops. That is, they were not in charge of multiple local churches in a city or region. That developed after this. Rather, they were a member of a local church’s council of elders and were set apart for a specific role in the church. Many today would use the title “senior pastor”, or my title of “lead elder”. Ignatius indicates the church should assemble with its lead elder, and wherever Jesus is found, there is the catholic church—there is the church “according to its whole”.
Each Sunday we gather together as a church and the Lord Jesus enters into our midst. We are then surrounded by that great cloud of witnesses mentioned in Hebrews 12, for the Lord will never leave nor forsake his people. Therefore all who have died in Christ are present with the Lord and when the Lord is in our midst, there is that great cloud as well. This is what it means to the church “according to its whole”.
Our services usually open with a couple songs of praise and worship. We cannot understate the importance of singing good, quality worship songs, for what a church sings, a church believes! How many of us have the words “Woke up this mornin’ with my mind stayed on Jesus” running through our, well, minds after learning it recently? This song helps reorient us in a profound way.
We gather together as the people of God to worship him together. Our voices unite in praise to God. These opening songs aren’t “throw-away”, sort of a call to worship to allow people to finally arrive and/or be seated. We should strive to be there on time ready to worship together. These songs ultimately point us to the Lord Jesus, which is to say, they point us to the very reason we gather each week.
This unified praise moves into our prayer time. We share our struggles, our sorrows, our joys, and we pray for one another. This is an important time for us to serve one another through prayer, but it is also a time of worship. Whether someone is struggling or celebrating, we pray to the Lord for he is our rescue. Every good thing comes from his hand, and there is nowhere else we can turn for rescue from our troubles. In this our prayer time points us to the Lord, which is to say it points us to the very reason we gather each week.
This opening act culminates with an offering to the Lord to support his work on earth through his church. This is an act of worship by which we declare together the Lord is our greatest need and he is our treasure. We gladly designate a portion of what he has given us in the first place to be used by his church. This, too, points us to the very reason we gather each week.
Then we begin the second major act of our worship service. There are three parts: the reading of Scripture, the childrens’ story, and the sermon. Luke tells us in his Gospel that “beginning with Moses and all the Prophets, [Jesus] interpreted to them in all the Scriptures the things concerning himself” (Luke 24:27). All of Scripture ultimately points us to Jesus, so our weekly lectionary reading ultimately points us to Jesus. Our childrens’ story is the story of Jesus. Each week I read a chapter of the “Childrens’ Storybook Bible” and the book’s subtitle is revealing: “Every Story Whispers His Name”. I love how this book continually points our children—and every adult—to the Lord Jesus as God’s Rescuer who rescues according to God’s never-stopping, never giving up, unbreaking, always and forever love. Then comes the sermon. As Paul indicated to the Corinthians, he “decided to know nothing among you except Jesus Christ and him crucified” (1 Corinthians 2:2). This doesn’t mean Paul only preached about the crucifixion. It means his message centered on the Lord Jesus, even though this message was a stumbling block to Jews and folly to Gentiles (1 Corinthians 1:23).
After responding to the sermon with a carefully selected song, we come to the third major act of our worship service. Praying and singing points us to Christ. Reading Scripture and hearing it proclaimed points us to Christ. In this third major act of our worship service, we schedule baptism. When we have baptisms, baptism points us to Christ. Baptisms are always placed in this third major act of our worship service. This is because baptism is a sacrament. “Sacrament” is simply the Latin word for the Greek word for “mystery”. A mystery is a thing that must be revealed in order to be understood. The prophets predicted the coming of Christ and his death and resurrection, yet it was a mystery hidden in plain sight. Paul writes of “the mystery of Christ” in Ephesians 3. It was only when God revealed what was happening that his disciples finally understood. Augustine defined a sacrament or mystery as “an outward and visible sign of inward and spiritual grace”. A sacrament is how we see what is God is doing behind the scenes.
Through baptism God is doing something in the life of the church. He saves a person and that person publicly confesses Jesus through baptism and enters into the church. In Galatians Paul says we’re “baptized into Christ”. It isn’t that baptism is a magical thing that saves; it’s that baptism shows us what God is doing behind the scenes: he’s uniting that person with Christ in his death and burial and resurrection. We celebrate that sacrament as the Lord saves people and brings them into the church.
Finally, we come to communion, often called the Lord’s Supper. For all those who have entered the church through baptism, they are welcome to participate in the church’s second sacrament. It is much like the act of marriage being reserved for those who have gone through the covenant ceremony of a wedding. That act is rightly experienced only by those who have joined together as husband and wife. So it is with communion; it is only rightly participated in by those who have been united with Christ in baptism.
Since the first century Christians have called communion the Eucharist—the Thanksgiving. It is the celebration of the Lord Jesus—for who he is and for what he has done. It is truly the high point of our worship service. Everything in the worship service has been guiding and directing and pointing us to this singular act. Communion is a sacrament for it reveals what the Lord is doing. Through his Spirit and his church he is continually nourishing us and transforming us and causing us to be faithful to him. As we saw at the beginning of Peter’s first letter, God is the one who has caused us to be born again, and God is the one who is guarding us through faith. There is nothing magical about the bread and cup. There is no hocus-pocus going on. Paul says through communion we are participating in the body and blood of Christ.
In Luke 22 Jesus gives to his disciples this meal to be eaten in remembrance of him. It consists of the bread and the cup. In his first letter to the Corinthians Paul is addressing the issue of meat sold in meat markets and idolatry, for meat markets were usually connected to pagan temples. As part of his argument Paul refers to the meal Christians share regularly, known as the Lord’s Supper.
The cup of blessing that we bless, is it not a participation in the blood of Christ? The bread that we break, is it not a participation in the body of Christ?
1 Corinthians 10:16 ESV
The word translated “participation” is the word κοινωνία (koinonia)—fellowship. In the ancient world it was often used of the intimacy of marriage, of a life shared so closely between two people that a real union is evident. This is what Paul is hinting at. When we eat the bread and drink the cup there is a real union with Christ, a fellowship with him in his body and blood given for us. This fellowship with the Lord suggests an exclusivity. Our allegiance is to him and him alone. It also creates obligations for our continued fidelity to him, just as marriage creates ongoing obligations for a husband and wife.
When we gather together to worship every Sunday we do so with the expectation the Lord Jesus will be really and truly present. When we gather to worship, we are illustrating something profound: we long for this communal meal. There are no TV dinners on the new earth, for no one will eat alone! This is why we gather together. That full meal, the one when every single person the Father has given the Son (John 6:37) will be present, will not be served until the Lord returns. Until then, we long for it. Our hearts continually cry out, “Come, Lord Jesus!” We have a taste of it each week, however.
This is why communion is more than a mere symbol. It is more than simply “remembering” something. Yes, we do it it in remembrance of Christ as the Lord himself instructed, but it is more than merely remembering. It is participating in a covenant renewal ceremony, so to speak. This meal strengthens and nourishes our faith. There’s nothing magical about the bread or the cup, yet the Lord is present in our gathered assembly and is working in us through the Eucharist to continue transforming us into the image of Christ.
I’ve often said communion is the high point of our worship service. It is why we gather every single week. Every element in our service is intended to point us to this participation. Over the years our church’s liturgy has grown such that it has a discernible three-part structure. We begin with the Liturgy of the People, then move to the Liturgy of the Word, and the service culminates in the Liturgy of Sacrament.
In the Liturgy of the People we praise God together in song and in prayer for one another and we worship together through giving. In the Liturgy of the Word we hear from Scripture through the weekly reading, the childrens’ story, and the sermon. Then in the Liturgy of Sacrament we experience in a profound way the presence of Christ in our midst and we get a tangible glimpse of the work he is doing in our lives.
This mysterious participation is a glimpse at another meal—well, the same meal, but with Jesus physically present. In Luke 22 where Jesus gives this meal to his disciples, we read this:
And he said to them, “I have earnestly desired to eat this Passover with you before I suffer. For I tell you I will not eat it until it is fulfilled in the kingdom of God.” And he took a cup, and when he had given thanks he said, “Take this, and divide it among yourselves. For I tell you that from now on I will not drink of the fruit of the vine until the kingdom of God comes.” And he took bread, and when he had given thanks, he broke it and gave it to them, saying, “This is my body, which is given for you. Do this in remembrance of me.” And likewise the cup after they had eaten, saying, “This cup that is poured out for you is the new covenant in my blood.”
Luke 22:15-20 ESV
Jesus declares he will not eat this meal again until the kingdom of God comes in its fullness. That is, the Lord Jesus, still fully human while remaining fully God, will not eat this meal until he returns to this world and recreates it and establishes his eternal kingdom on earth forever. He has given us this sacrament as a means of his grace in our lives. Together as his people we celebrate the Lord Jesus. As Paul explains in 1 Corinthians 11, from where we get the Words of Institution we speak every Sunday, Paul says, “For as often as you eat this bread and drink the cup, you proclaim the Lord’s death until he comes”. To say this another way, by sharing the Eucharist together, we proclaim the gospel of the Lord Jesus in a visible way, with our actions, and we will continue to do so until he comes again.
He will come again for he conquered death. When he comes, he will finally share this meal with us in person, and we will dwell with our God on the new earth forever. Every element of our worship service, whether in the Liturgy of the People or in the Liturgy of the Word or in the Liturgy of Sacrament, every element is intended to point us to the Lord Jesus and his gospel. Our worship service points us very deliberately to Jesus. If you ever wonder why we do something a certain, Jesus is the answer. Jesus is the Why in our service. We assemble together in his name, to worship God, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. He is the answer to every question. As Paul put it, in Jesus all the promises of God find their Yes. That’s why.