How We Worship

At Colleyville, one of the things that is immediately noticeable about our worship service is that we follow a carefully structured order of worship full of hymns, responsive Scripture readings, written prayers and historic creeds. We believe that every church, whether it acknowledges it or not, has a pattern for its worship, and we desire our worship to be intentional, joyful, full of scriptural content, and consistent with the common Christian practices of worship that go back to the earliest days of the church.

Our Worship begins at 10:30 am every Sunday morning with a word of greeting and announcements from our pastor. After this we are invited to enter into a brief period of silent preparation for worship, after which our pastor calls us into worship with an appropriate text of Scripture. Then we are called into worship we stand and sing the opening hymn, which often emphasizes God’s glory, holiness and love. Following the opening hymn, our pastor welcomes us into God’s holy presence and invites us to confess our sins to God, using a corporate prayer of confession and also pausing for silent reflection. After confessing our sins, our pastor, by Christ’s own authority, reminds us of the forgiveness of our sins in the death and resurrection of Jesus, and we sing the doxology to thank God again for the gift of our peace with him.

“Let us then approach the throne of grace with confidence, so that we may receive mercy and find grace to help us in our time of need” 

— Hebrews 4:16 —

Next in our service, now that God has again brought us near and assured us of his love, one of our elders leads us in a time of prayer for whatever is going on in our body — from week to week we might pray for a member who is suffering physically, for one of our missionaries, for one of our covenant children, for the church and world at large. This is also the time during the service when we receive new members and perform baptisms.

Following the time of prayer we hear God’s word read publicly – usually a reading from an Old Testament book, an Epistle, and a Gospel text. After hearing God’s word read we sing a hymn and then stand together and affirm our common Christian faith, usually by reciting the Nicene or Apostle’s Creed. Next comes the time in our service where our pastor preaches from God’s word, seeking to make God’s love in Jesus Christ known to us in a new way again. The sermons usually last about 25-30 minutes and our pastor is almost always preaching consecutively through a particular book of the Bible, in keeping with our commitment to Christ-centered, expository preaching.

“They devoted themselves to the apostles’ teaching and to fellowship, to the breaking of bread and to prayer.”

— Acts 2:42 —

After the sermon we sing another hymn based on the theme of the sermon and then celebrate the Lord’s Supper together. We celebrate the Lord’s Supper each week, and we do so because we believe it is a true means of grace and one of the primary ways the Holy Spirit has promised to deepen our union with Jesus and our love for one another.

After the Lord’s Supper, we joyfully give our tithes and offerings, thankful giving to God in response for all he has given us. Finally, we close the service by praying a prayer of dedication and the Lord’s Prayer and then singing a closing hymn. Each week, the last thing in our service is the moment when our pastor raises his hands and sends us back into the world with the blessing of God himself, speaking this benediction over us: “The Lord bless you and keep you; the Lord make his face shine upon you; The Lord turn his face to you and give you peace.”

After the benediction, we spending time greeting one another with the peace of Christ and sharing fellowship with one another. While our worship may seem unfamiliar or strange in our modern culture, it is the common way Christians have always worshipped throughout the ages, and we believe that our practice of worship on Sunday mornings is the primary way in which we learn that God loves us, and the normal means by which he shapes us into the image of his Son, preparing us to join with Jesus in giving our lives for the life of the world.

View a typical weekly service order of worship here.

We’d love to have you join us this Sunday!