A gospel-centered church in Austin, Tx

The last post in this series. Thanks Grayson for your work in summarizing these sermons! For the last five weeks we’ve gathered on Sundays to look at specifically at the nature of our corporate worship. We’ve preached on each “element” of our gathering individually in an effort to answer two questions: What is the worship [...]

Sunday’s gathering marked the third in our series of five on the specific nature of our corporate worship at Providence. So far, we’ve introduced a brief definition for the worship of the church, unpacked the church’s “call to worship,” and examined God’s process of separation and restoration as expressed in our time of corporate “confession and cleansing.”

A time of “consecration” follows a time of “confession and cleansing” in our liturgy. Again, this is not an accident. In the “call to worship” God moves towards us and begins his process of renewal. When we “confess,” God continues this process by tearing us from our old ways and preparing us for new life in Christ. New life comes primarily through God’s word. For this reason, we continue to gather to hear God speak, allowing him to “consecrate” us through the reading and preaching of his word.

Last Sunday’s gathering kicked off a new preaching/teaching series on the specific nature of our corporate worship at Providence. First, we introduced a succinct definition for the worship of the church, calling it a “covenant renewal event.” Following that, we introduced five “aspects” of God’s covenant with man that ought to be reflected in corporate worship.

More specifically, we looked at God’s movement towards us as expressed in the church’s “call to worship.” Now we’ll look at what Jeffrey Meyers has described as God’s “separation of some portion of the old ‘material’ so that it can be formed into something new.” This process is expressed in our corporate time of “confession and cleansing.”