Christian Worship
Edited from the soc.religion.christian newsgroup
Co-ordinator:
Courtney Goto
Christian
experience is that our relationships with other people must
be put into the context of a relationship with God, or those
relationships will start to become unbalanced. For many Christians,
worship is at the heart of our relationship with God, both
as individuals and a community. In worship we focus on God:
on hearing a message based on the Bible, on prayer, and on
the sacraments. Of course individual Christians can do many
of these things in private. However, in worship we ground
our life as a community in a corporate experience of God.
It is not possible to give a complete description of Christian
worship as congregations worship in quite different ways.
Worship does, however, tend to include readings from the Bible,
and a sermon (or a homily in the Catholic tradition), which
will help the congregation understand the reading and apply
it to their lives. Services of all groups include prayers
and singing. One analysis of the prayers classifies them according
to the acronym ACTS: Adoration, Confession, Thanksgiving,
and Supplication. Services often begin with a combination
of prayer, responsive readings and music which simply celebrate
being in God's presence. This is adoration.
Fairly early in the service there is normally a prayer of
confession. In confession we express both our individual faults
and those of the community. We ask God to help us to amend
them, and receive assurance (in words taken from the Bible)
of God's willingness to do so. Thanksgiving acknowledges God's
goodness to us. Thanksgiving is important in the Christian
life. As we thank God for things, we put those things into
the context of our relationship with God. In Supplication
we ask God for what we need. In worship, this supplication
normally includes the needs of the congregation, nation, and
world.
The one aspect of worship which is most specific to Christianity
is the sacraments. While hard to describe, a good general
definition is that a sacrament is "an outward and visible
sign of an inward and spiritual grace" (from the Anglican
Book of Common Prayer). The sacraments each involve a specific
symbolic action (the "sign") that make visible God's
action for us. It's probably best to think of a range of actions
that can be described as sacraments. At the centre we have
Baptism and Communion, which are practised by all Christian
groups (although some call them "ordinances" rather
than "sacraments"). These are actions that were
specifically commanded by Jesus.
There
is also a group of additional ceremonies that are regarded
as sacraments by the Catholic and Orthodox traditions. This
list includes Baptism, Communion, Confirmation, Penance, Anointing
of the Sick, Holy Orders, and Marriage. While Protestants
generally consider only Baptism and Communion to be formal
sacraments, there is some flexibility. Many other activities
also have at least some sacramental character, i.e. for Christians,
the whole world, and our own activities, should all serve
to make visible God's activity with us.
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