Worship
We invite you to join us for in person worship at 10 AM on Sunday mornings.
We look forward to welcoming you!
About Worship in the Episcopal Church
Worship is at the very center of our lives here at the Church of the Nativity. The great Catholic, and therefore Anglican, axiom is Lex Orandi, Lex Credendi, Lex Vivendi: As we worship, so we believe, and so we live. Our worship, steeped in ancient and modern expressions of Word and Sacrament, are a cruciform orientation that shapes and governs our faith and our lives.
There is the vertical engagement between the congregation and God. It exists in the hearing of God’s Word, in its preaching and interpretations in our sermons and teaching. It is in our responding to that word in faith by the saying of creed, prayer, and confession. It also exists in that ultimate expression of our worship, the Mass, also known as the Holy Eucharist and Holy Communion. In the breaking of bread and in the sharing of the Real Presence of Jesus Christ in the Eucharistic feast, we unite ourselves with God through the Lord Jesus Christ.
There is also a horizontal engagement between each other. In verse and response, in the passing of the peace, in the sharing of the bread and cup, and in the love we share and celebrate together we complete this cross-shaped form of worship and life. We are reaching together for both Heaven and each other.
We believe that this worship, forming and informing our faith and belief, then shapes and governs our lives together and with our families and communities.
To describe our style is to describe who we are as a congregation. We are Catholics and Protestants, high and low church, traditionalists and progressives. No one feels left out or uncomfortable. Though we have some praise music as well as beloved and ancient hymns, everyone finds their hearts reached and their voices raised. Though we observe the lives of saints and the Church’s calendars of feasts and fasts around the great cycles of the nativity and passion of Christ, there is no stuffiness or dry repetition. We keep the full range of the seven sacraments of the Church, the axiom of Anglicanism guides our participation: All may, none must, some should.
If this seems to imply that we are all things to all people, this would be a mistake. We are authentic Christians seeking to worship and serve God through our Lord Jesus. We are also seeking authentic Christian community centered on His Gospel of new and eternal life. We also seek to know and serve Him in all whom we encounter. It is this authenticity that creates in us a true Anglican via media or middle way: not a little bit of this and a little bit of that, or merely compromise; but a peaceful, loving, and dynamic equilibrium that is the Body of Christ here at Nativity.
