New to Christ Church?
Morning Worship with a Eucharist Service is held every Sunday morning at 10:00 AM with sermon and hymns. Children are welcome to in the service, but there are also quiet spaces available for those who may need extra attention.
A form of Evensong is held at 5:30 PM on Sunday evenings at the Boonzaaijer home. The service itself begins at 6:00 PM following the 5:30 PM fellowship meal. We close the evening with a time of discussion and study. All interested are welcome. This is a great opportunity to get to know Anglicanism and ask questions for those not ready to join with us in a worship service, or just join us for the fellowship.
Holy Communion
Holy Communion, sometimes called the Eucharist or the Mass, has been the Church's principal service for nearly 2,000 years. It is the source and summit of Christian worship. The first part of the liturgy is based upon the synagogue service which the earliest Christians continued to attend after Christ's resurrection. It consists of prayers, scripture readings, and sermon. The second part involves an act of self-sacrifice. Bread and wine, representing the lives of the people, are placed upon the altar. There they are joined to Christ's absolute act of self-sacrifice and offered up to God. Our lives are then returned to us, imbued with Christ's own life force. His very Body and blood. In so doing the congregation literally fulfills the word of Romans 12:1:
Romans 12:1
“I appeal to you, therefore, brethren, by the mercies of God, to present your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and acceptable to God, which is your spiritual worship.”
What To Expect
Our worship is:
Scriptural
The foundational authority and formulary for doctrine and practice in our church is the infallible Word of God as preserved and communicated to us in the Holy Bible. Each Sunday in our service we read a Psalm, Old Testament, New Testament Epistle and Gospel lesson, which provide the framework for the instruction in the service. Additionally, the vast majority of the language in the Prayer Book, which provides for us the liturgy which we follow, is taken directly from Scripture, which means our prayers are, more than anything else, the words of the Bible.
Historic
We are the inheritors of a great wealth of teaching and practice, handed down from Christ through the Apostles and delivered to us through the life of the Church. This gift also carries with it a serious responsibility. We do not believe that we have the right or authority to set aside the fundamental commitments of the church to historic Faith and Order, the doctrine, discipline, and worship of Christ as set forth in the Word of God written, defined in the Reformed-Catholic tradition, and received in the historic Prayer Book. And therefore, so far as in us lies, we are determined to uphold and propagate the same, and to transmit this legacy unimpaired to our posterity.
Liturgical
Our worship together follows the liturgy set forth in the Book of Common Prayer as produced by the Reformed Episcopal Church in 2003. This prayer book sets forth for our use the worship of the 1662 and 1928 Books of Common Prayer taking the best from both of these pillars of the Anglican tradition. While extemporaneous prayer has an important and valuable place in the Christian life, we understand that in our corporate worship, our prayers cannot do better than conform themselves to the words of the prayer book. As Percy Dearmer has articulated, “We have in them the accumulated wisdom and beauty of the Christian Church, the garnered excellence of the saints. We are by them released from the accidents of time and place. Above all we are preserved against the worst dangers of selfishness: in the common prayer we join together in a great fellowship that is as wide as the world; and we are guided, not by the limited notions of our own priest, nor by the narrow impulses of our own desires, but by the mighty voice that rises from the general heart of Christendom.”
Come and Worship With Us
Morning Worship with a Eucharist Service is held every Sunday morning at 10:00 AM with sermon and hymns. Children are welcome in the service. A Potluck and Evensong is held at 5:30 PM on Sunday evenings. All interested are welcome.
