Our Worship

"Still Life With Bible," Vincent Van Gogh
Every call to worship is a call into the Real World....  I encounter such constant and widespread lying about reality each day and meet with such skilled and systematic distortion of the truth that I'm always in danger of losing my grip on reality.  The reality, of course, is that God is sovereign and Christ is savior.  The reality is that prayer is my mother tongue and the eucharist my basic food.  The reality is that baptism, not Myers-Briggs, defines who I am.
~ Eugene H. Peterson, Take & Read

If you visit Downtown Presbyterian sometime, or are thinking about doing so, you may have some of these questions:

IS YOUR WORSHIP "TRADITIONAL" OR "CONTEMPORARY"?
Neither.  Our belief is that worship should take its cues from what God is like.  Since we want to celebrate both the "transcendence" of God (his otherness, bigness, majesty, justice) and the "immanence" of God (his nearness, generosity, mercy, relational nature), we want our worship to reflect both realities about God.  So, we strive to use texts, music, and language that reflect both.

WHY DO YOU USE HYMNS?
We certainly don't want to use hymns just because they are older.  Some older hymns aren't good!  But we believe that there are some wonderful hymns that the Church would be wise to keep and enjoy.  Good hymns bring together profound doctrine and rich wording -- one person called such hymns "theology on fire."  Sometimes we change the musical setting (often drawing on the work of Indelible Grace), and other time use older, more familiar tunes.  Either way, the goal is to retain life-changing content in a format that we can actually sing and enjoy.

For further reflection about why we should use hymns, see the article "What's in a Song?"  Good stuff!

WHY DO YOU HAVE THE LORD'S SUPPER EVERY WEEK?  WON'T THAT MAKE IT SEEM LESS SPECIAL?
We believe that we need every help that the Bible allows to remember and celebrate the gospel (or, "the good news").  The Lord's Supper is a sacrament -- a tangible, physical way that God has provided for us to depict and celebrate what he has done through the life, death, and resurrection of his Son, Jesus Christ.  Weekly celebration doesn't diminish how special the Lord's Supper is; it emphasizes it.