By first understanding how scripture shapes the structure of our worship and then considering our church tradition and our context, we are enabled to worship the unchanging God according to his unchanging word in ever-changing cultural settings. This thoughtful theological consideration equips us to smoothly lead the congregation through the service as we worship God together, as service leaders who glorify God and serve the congregation.

When ships arrive at the Panama Canal, their helmsman steps away from the wheel, and an expert pilot takes control of the ship. It doesn’t matter if a ship has been through a thousand times: canals are challenging to navigate. They are much narrower than the open ocean, and it requires familiarity and expertise to pass through safely. Those expert pilots know their canal inside and out, and are therefore able to skilfully guide the ship through. 
Leading the service or worship in Sunday services is much the same. Whether it’s our first time attending or we’re deeply familiar, we need a skilled hand that can help us to navigate what’s happening. This is the role of the service leader. Whether you’ve never led a service or if you’re a regular, this series of articles aims to prepare you to do so in a way that glorifies God and serves your congregation.
Biblical Worship Is Well Structured
The first step to competently leading worship in a service is to know its structure. How can a ship’s pilot guide a ship if they don’t know the destination or if they’re unaware of the twists and turns of the canal? The aim of our worship is straightforward: it is to glorify our great God. As long as we faithfully gather around God’s word as believers, we gather to bring God glory through our praise and worship, and to be equipped to glorify him in our everyday lives. But the structure of our specific services will be different, and as a service leader, your first port of call is to learn the waters of your own canal. 
The foundation of any structure must be scripture. God’s word teaches us how to worship him, and so the scriptures must be considered as completely fundamental to the structure of our service (also called a liturgy); they’re the rules for piloting a ship, if you will.
All services should include four elements:

Praise
Confession of sins
Word and sacrament
Benediction or blessing

A brief word on each.
1. Praise
In Isaiah 6:1-8, the prophet witnesses a vision of God’s glory, where angels continually praise God. This is the foundation of our worship: praising our great God for his identity and his actions. Elements of the service that fit this aspect might be calls to worship, songs of praise, and prayers of adoration or thanksgiving.
2. Confession
When we see God’s glory, like Isaiah, we realise our own fallenness in comparison. We see how rich God’s grace is, and how desperately we need to receive it through his Son. This might look like a corporate prayer of confession or a private time of reflection and should be followed by words of gospel comfort: we have received God’s grace in Christ (Daniel 9:9-10; also 1 John 1:9-10).
3. Word and Sacraments
These words of comfort should lead us to remind ourselves of the gospel. In the Sunday service, we remind ourselves what God has done and worship him on that basis. As we do so, we declare what God has done and invite others to join our worship. This reminder should be chiefly through the preaching of God’s word and the celebration of the sacraments.
Read More
Related Posts:

God graciously chose to covenant with us, and second, he undertook the conditions of the covenants on our behalf when we failed to do so. When we understand this covenant love, we are motivated to respond with lives of grateful obedience. We are inspired to obey his law, not as a means to earn salvation under the Covenant of Works, but as a joyful response to his covenant faithfulness to us.

The Bible is a book about the greatest story, and it touches on hundreds of themes. When we read it, we tend to focus on one of these things; the overall narrative or the themes. Typically we use biblical theology to follow scripture’s story; and systematic theology to trace scripture’s themes. Covenant theology combines these approaches. It helps us step back and see that the Bible tells the story of redemptive history (biblical theology) by using a specific theme or structure: God’s covenants (systematic theology).
Now, this doesn’t mean that covenant theology replaces the other approaches. Covenant theology is really a hermeneutic, a way of reading the scriptures, building on the strengths of both biblical and systematic theology to understand the Bible as a cohesive whole.
In this article, I’ll briefly define a covenant, introduce the Covenants of Works as well as the Covenant of Grace, and in so doing demonstrate how covenant theology helps us understand what Christ has done for us. Some will be familiar with the concepts, while others may have only recently discovered covenant theology. This article is primarily written for the second group, though I hope those of us familiar with these concepts will find our memories refreshed and our hearts encouraged.
What Is a Covenant?
A covenant is a mutual agreement between two parties, where both parties are bound to each other to perform the conditions contracted. At a basic level, it’s a contract. There are blessings for keeping the terms of the covenant, and curses for breaking them. But biblical covenants are deeper than just an agreement to perform a certain action. They connect people to each other and establish a relationship between them; in the scriptures, especially, they connect man and God.
Covenants are typically agreements between equals. So we must for a moment acknowledge the obvious imbalance between God and man. First, we are not equals. Humans depend on God for existence. He is the Creator. We are the creature. Secondly, as part of God’s creation, he has authority over us. He doesn’t need our consent. But God doesn’t force us to simply do as he commands. Instead, he graciously condescends to us, coming to our level and binding himself in covenant to us. By covenanting with us, God chooses to enter into relationship with us. And this means that every covenant is based on God’s grace, even the Covenant of Works.
The Covenant of Works
The Covenant of Works was made with Adam in the Garden of Eden, before the fall. But this covenant doesn’t just involve Adam: God appointed Adam as a representative of all humanity. Adam had a natural right to represent us as the first man, and perhaps more importantly, a legal right which he received from God. This means that Adam’s actions affect us, just as a king who signs a peace treaty signs not just for himself, but for every citizen.
One might summarise the Covenant of Works in this way: “Do this and live.” Note: God does two things here. Firstly, he sets a law (do this) and gives a promise (you will live). If God had only commanded us to do this, there wouldn’t have been any grace. He would simply demand obedience. If God only told us to live, then we’d have a promise but wouldn’t be drawn closer to God. It’s only as a covenant, a mixture of promise and law, that we get the full picture. For it’s by obedience to God that we can draw closer to him and enjoy life. This is the blessing offered under the Covenant of Works.
Let’s expand on that summary. God required Adam to perfectly and personally obey his Law. Adam knew the Law through reason, nature, and of course, God’s plain command. The Ten Commandments would later summarise what Adam was required to obey (Exodus 20:1-26). “Perfectly” and “personally.” These words are important. Perfectly is simple enough to understand.
Read More
Related Posts: