The ways we worship

During these last six months, we have been exploring a “blended” style of worship, with the entire SHUMC community of faith coming together in one time of worship at 10:30 on Sunday mornings. Our primary intention was to allow our whole congregation to join with each other in the acts of worshiping God in our ample sanctuary. Ancillary to that was to encourage the strengthening of our Sunday School programs and classes by setting aside the conflicting times of our first worship service with our SS hour.

After a tremendous amount of prayer, discussion, discerning God’s wisdom, and exploring various suggested options, our church leadership reached a consensus about the ways we worship here at SHUMC. Our decision was to retain one worship service, continue the blending of music (contemporary songs and classical hymns using both our Chancel Choir with piano and organ and our Praise Worship band with drums and guitars) and to continue this worship service with a beginning time at 10:30 am. Sunday School for all ages would continue at 9:00 am, with a coffee “fellowship time” at 10:00 am.

There will however, be a major “tweaking” of this blended worship style—adding in, on a quite frequent basis, the historical elements of Methodist worship passed on from our ancestors in the Faith—more extensive scripture readings, responsive readings from the Psalms (the Psalter in the hymnal), various Affirmations of Faith (Apostles’ Creed, Nicene Creed, etc), traditional sung responses like the Doxology and the Gloria, serving Holy Communion in the pews and at the Altar rail, and a varied music selection covering both traditional and contemporary genres. There is also some interest in weaving in some additional worship arts within our time of worship together—drama, visual displays, artwork, handbells, and other creative expressions of worship.

So, how do we do all that? That certainly generated much discussion when our church leaders met in mid-September. After several suggestions, we agreed that doing all of that in 60 minutes might be impossible, so maybe, it would be ok to stretch our time of worshiping God to 70-80 minutes.