Anglican Worship

Many folks at St. Peter’s are new to Anglican worship.  These short articles will help you navigate the service, discuss the Service of the Word, and the Service of Holy Communion. It will also focus on some of the general questions of gestures, movement, and all the nuts and bolts of worship at St. Peter’s.

A Note on Ordered Worship

We believe that ordered worship sets us free.  C.S. Lewis compared this to learning to dance.  At first, we are thinking about the steps, conscious of each movement.  At this state we are not yet really dancing, and can’t dance well with others.  But as we learn the steps, we begin to be free to dance, because we know the steps by heart and can enjoy the movement and the moment.  The pattern we have learned for dancing helps us to coordinate with others dancing with us, and move in one motion.  Ordered worship is not created to stifle the Holy Spirit or to limit us, instead it frees us to join together as one voice in praise to God.  It gives us that pattern by which we can together “dance” in God’s presence.

Sunday Services

We follow the Book of Common Prayer, our heritage of worship in a simple, catholic and reformational worship tradition.  By ‘catholic’, we mean the faith and order of the early Church and the Faithful throughout Church history, and by ‘reformational’, we mean the foundation of Scripture and lively faith renewed at the Reformation, during the evangelical revivals, and the renewal movements.  The pattern of Word and Sacrament has been present in Christian worship from the earliest days of the Church. Although there are many distinctively Anglican customs, the shape of the liturgy is a historic, Christian pattern.