Worship

To nourish God’s family with Divine Worship: God’s Word, Sacraments, beautiful music and faithful Law and Gospel preaching.

At Grace we are nourished through the Divine Service. That means we sing the historic liturgy as found in Lutheran Service Book, a hymnal of the Lutheran Church Missouri Synod. Grace is blessed with a wonderful Director of Parish Music, Mr. Jonathan Birner. He has been with us for 20+ years. Within the structure of the Divine Service we use, organ, piano, brass, timpani, bells, chimes, choirs, chant, and congregational singing. The music is wonderful.

You may wonder, what do you mean by Divine Worship? Here is an explanation. In the introduction to Lutheran Worship we have these beautiful words concerning Divine Worship: Our Lord speaks and we listen. His Word bestows what it says. Faith that is born from what is heard acknowledges the gifts received with eager thankfulness and praise. Music is drawn into this thankfulness and praise, enlarging and elevating the adoration of our gracious giver God. Saying back to him what he has said to us, we repeat what is most true and sure. Most true and sure is his name, which he put upon us with the water of our Baptism. We are his.

This we acknowledge at the beginning of the Divine Service. Where his name is, there is he. Before him we acknowledge that we are sinners, and plead for forgiveness. His forgiveness is given us, and we, freed and forgiven, acclaim him ad out great and gracious God as we apply to ourselves the words he has used to make himself known to us. The rhythm of our worship is from him to us, and then from us back to him. He gives his gifts, and together we receive and extol them. We build one another up as we speak to one another in psalms, hymns, and spiritual songs. Our Lord gives us his body to eat and his blood to drink. Finally his blessing moves us out into our calling, where his gifts have their fruition (Lutheran Worship, Page 6 CPH. 1982).

Life is hard. We live in a sinful world and it is dying. People are dying all around us. We are dying. We need to be rescued. We need forgiveness. We need life! The Divine Service brings us what we need! In this service God is present through his Son, our Lord and Savior Jesus, bringing rescue, healing, forgiveness, and his all-encompassing eternal life! Through water, bread and wine, music, the Word, Jesus is present for you! Even when at times we sing off key or the hymn is unfamiliar and not our favorite or the sermon just didn’t hit home or our minds our racing with the 100 things we have to accomplish this week or the liturgy is just falling off our lips without our full attention or or or…the list goes on, one thing remains true, Jesus is here in the Divine Worship serving you! It is our promise to nourish God’s family through Divine Worship.

Thankful when we don’t keep this promise as we ought, God is still working through His Word to keep it for us!