Principles for worship at HBC #13

12. We will ever depend on, expect, and respond to the Holy Spirit’s working in our midst.

Our services should manifest planning and spontaneity, form and freedom. By this we shall continue to reform, continue to grow and continue to seek after God for fresh mercies every time we gather. (Ps. 40:3; 98:1; 149:1)
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Principles for worship at HBC#12

11. We fuse historic and contemporary hymnody.

No church or service can be all things to all people – but we do not value stylistic narrowness. We believe there are affections owing to God that different tunes and different texts and different genres may awaken better than others. We will strive to be who we are without exalting our own tastes as the standard of excellence or power. We will see God's guidance in each worship setting to be both indigenous and stretching.
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Principles for worship at HBC #11

10. The congregation’s voice drives our music.

While we seek greater and more varied instrumental accompaniment, it should always take the servant’s place to help our singing.
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Principles for worship at HBC #10

9. We strive for undistracting excellence.

We will try to sing and play and pray and preach in such a way that people's attention will not be diverted from the substance by shoddy ministry nor by excessive finesse, elegance, or refinement. Natural, orderly and undistracting excellence will let the truth and beauty of God shine through.
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Principles for Worship at HBC #9

8. We desire each other’s good.

We expect and hope and pray (according to 1 Cor. 12:7) that our dependence and response to God’s Spirit is good for each other – to build up (edify) the saints and seek the conversion of the lost. A spirit of love for each other is not incompatible with, but necessary to, authentic worship.
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Principles for worship at HBC #8

7. We insist on sincere authenticity.

We utterly renounce all sham, deceit, hypocrisy, pretense, affectation, and posturing. We do not pursue the atmosphere of artistic or oratorical performance, but the atmosphere of a radically personal encounter with God and truth. Read More......

Principles for worship at HBC #7

6. Earnestness and intensity will mark our meetings.


We will try to avoid being trite, flippant, superficial, or frivolous, but instead will aim to set an example of reverence and passion and wonder and broken-hearted joy.
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Principles for worship at HBC #6

5. We seek a whole person (head and heart) response to God’s Word and work.

All response in worship is based on God’s self-revelation in the Lord Jesus Christ. As God reveals His power, we respond in wonder. As God reveals His holiness, we respond in confession and contrition. As God reveals His grace, we respond in humility. As God reveals His purpose, we respond in surrender and commitment. As God reveals His plans for our lives, we respond in prayer. As God reveals His goodness, we respond in joy, thankfulness, praise and celebration (Is. 6:1-12; Ps. 100:4-5).
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Principles for worship at HBC #5

4. We boast in nothing but the cross of Christ.

We seek to be redemptive in our approach, longing for sightings of the cross throughout our singing and preaching, eager to have the gospel of Christ and the doctrines of grace -- atonement, redemption, and forgiveness -- effectually and graciously applied to the lives of sinners and saints.
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Principles for worship at HBC #4

3. God’s Word informs, directs and permeates all we do.

We will be careful to engage God (worship him) only in ways he has prescribed in his Word and only by means he has provided. This means that the content of God's Word should be woven through all we do in worship and will be the ground of all our appeal to authority. Hence the content of our singing, praying, preaching and all else we do should always conform to the truth of Scripture. We therefore shun ambiguity in our songs and speech. Our words must be clear and doctrinally sound.
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Principles for worship at HBC #3

2. We expect the awesome and gracious presence of God.

We do not just direct ourselves toward him. We earnestly seek his drawing near according to the promise of James 4:8. We believe that in worship God draws near to us in power, and makes himself known and felt for our good and for the salvation of unbelievers in the midst.
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Principles for worship at HBC #2

1. We focus on the triune God.

We put a high priority on God-centeredness in all our meetings. We aim ultimately to enter the Father=s presence, through Christ, by faith, in conscious dependence on the Holy Spirit in such a way that the Lord is glorified in our affections.
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Principles for worship at HBC #1

I'll blog over many days on this one. It comes from a document I drew up in August 2006 with the elders of our church, trying to enunciate those Biblical principles that direct the music ministry of our church. Let's begin.

What is worship?


This list of marks that describe public worship at Heritage Baptist Church reflect the work of other churches and our own in seeking to live out together the fundamental principle of John 4:23-24, The hour is coming, and is now here, when the true worshipers will worship the Father in spirit and truth, for the Father is seeking such people to worship him. God is spirit, and those who worship him must worship in spirit and truth. These convictions, deeper than issues of style and form, inform every part of our corporate worship. As one of our pastors, Ted Christman, writes

Worship is both a purposeful and reflexive response of the soul and body of a person who has savingly experienced the grace of God, and is increasingly seeing the glory of God. The worshiper is spontaneously compelled from his very heart to render back to God love, praise, adoration, honor, glory, gratitude, submission, obedience and service. Included in this soul and body reflex is an insatiable longing to know him better and better, to become more and more like him, and never to be satisfied until we are with him in his immediate, glorious presence.

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