A Simple Way to Order Your Worship Service

There are many different ways to order a worship service. In case it's helpful to you, here is how Colin Dobrin (Worship Director at Garden City) and I order our Sunday gathering:

Part 1: Preparing to Hear the Word of GodPart 2: Hearing the Word of GodPart 3: Responding to the Word of God

This simple format centers on the Word of God (listening to our God who has something to say to us) and allows for great variety and creativity.Part 1 typically involves a call to worship, singing to God (beginning with songs of adoration), and a brief greeting time to foster community/new connections and prepare the community to transition into hearing from God's Word.Part 2 is preaching. Our church has a prophetic culture to our preaching, a sense that the preacher has spent the week listening to God and listening to our context, arriving with a message from the Bible that has a sense of urgency to it, a sense of "God said this to me."Part 3 involves a variety of different means of responding to God's Word. Each week can look different, but the elements often involve: offering (giving back to God to fund the mission of our church), communion, singing, prayer stations where people can receive prayer, corporate sharing of how God is at work in our church and city, baptisms, and a final charge that sends us out for a week of mission in our city.