Our worship is unusual for a Baptist church — and if you’ve worshipped in other Baptist congregations, you may have noticed that immediately. We use a set liturgy, we celebrate the Eucharist every week, we pray with icons and candles, we sit in silence. This might seem like an unlikely combination with the Baptist tradition, but the connection is less strange than it appears: until recent decades, set orders of worship were far from uncommon in Baptist churches, and Baptist freedom has always meant the freedom of each congregation to choose its own worship life — not freedom from liturgy, but freedom from having liturgy imposed from outside. We might be unusual, but we are genuinely Baptist.

More importantly, this is a worship identity that emerged from our own community’s experience rather than being imported from somewhere else. It began in the mid-1990s as a midweek alternative service, and developed a small but committed following. Then in 1999 we faced a serious breach of trust by a leader, which caused deep distress and cost us a large part of our congregation. In the aftermath, we noticed something: we hadn’t lost any of those who were regularly involved in the midweek service. As we reflected on what that meant, stories emerged of how sustaining and transforming this style of worship had become for those people. In August 1999 we took the decision to close our Sunday morning service and make the midweek liturgy our main Sunday gathering. It has been our soul food ever since.

What we discovered, and keep discovering, is that this kind of worship forms us over time in ways that more spontaneous approaches don’t always reach. The repeated prayers sink roots. The silence makes space. The rhythm of Word and Table week after week gradually reshapes how we see and move through the world.

The shape of the liturgy

Our Sunday gathering moves through several distinct movements, each with its own character and purpose, and together they tell a story of our life with God.

The Gathering brings us together as a people with one purpose — acknowledging God, orienting ourselves toward the coming kingdom, and uniting our worship with that of the whole church across time and place.

The Liturgy of Approach is where we acknowledge that we come to God only by grace. We confess what needs confessing, and receive the assurance of forgiveness that opens the way into God’s presence.

The Liturgy of the Word is where we listen. Scripture readings from the Hebrew Bible, the Psalms, the New Testament, and the Gospels are interspersed with silence — including a longer silence after the Gospel reading that we call the Sermon of Silence, in which we allow God to speak to each of us before the preacher speaks to all of us.

The Prayers of the People turn us outward — toward the world, its brokenness, and its need for God’s healing.

The Liturgy of the Lord’s Table is the heart of the gathering. We bring ourselves to the table, give thanks, break bread, and share the cup — enacting and receiving again the self-giving of Christ, and tasting the promise of what God is making of the world

The Sending Forth returns us to our lives — fed, blessed, and sent to be what we have received.

After the formal liturgy, we move into small group conversation. Some people share a meal during this time, continuing the spirit of the Eucharist in the most ordinary way possible.

A word about “liturgy”

The word liturgy comes from a New Testament Greek word meaning simply “the work of the people.” It doesn’t refer to a particular style of worship — it refers to whatever a congregation says and does when it gathers. Every church has a liturgy. Ours is written down and repeated, which means it can be learned, inhabited, and allowed to do its slow formative work in us.

If you’d like to go deeper, you may find the following resources helpful (links coming soon):

• Free-church Bapto-catholic is a published essay describing our worship as it was in our physically gathered days.
• The Liturgical Participation of Children in Small Churches is another published essay from our physically gathered days.
• A Permanent Online-only Worshiping Congregation is a published essay describing the adaptation of our worship to its present online reality.
• Baptist Worship in Ecumenical Perspective is a chapter written by our pastor and published in a World Council of Churches book.