Worship at ABC

"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  

People who attend any church, and especially the churches in our area, often ask similar questions about worship. Here are some of our responses to these common questions:

Is your worship "traditional" or "contemporary"?

Neither. Our goal is not simply to preserve any musical traditions through the singing of hymns, nor is our goal to keep up with every popular “church music” trend in order to market ourselves as "contemporary." Our goal, rather, is to worship God.  When we lift up our voices we sing not unto ourselves, but unto the Lord.  We sing to please Him, not ourselves.  It takes work to focus our minds and hearts on God each Sunday, but that is what worship is. When we sit and watch others perform week after week, and do not do the work of turning our affections to God, entertainment, not worship, is the result. 

All true worship is participatory, so we seek to involve all people in the worship service through prayer, the reading of Scripture, the preaching of the Word, the observance of the ordinances, and, of course, corporate (everyone) singing.  Our goal in the worship services is to select music that combines biblical doctrine with powerful, affecting, poetic wording - such songs have been called "theology on fire."  Baptists have historically learned much of their doctrine through the songs sung in the church.  Some of the songs we use were written three years ago, some were written more than three hundred years ago.  However, our prayer is that everyone who attends Adaton can learn from, sing, and enjoy the songs chosen. 

What is the preaching like?

We typically preach straight through books of the Bible. We think this is the best way to learn “the whole counsel of God” (Acts 20:27). It also keeps us from skipping difficult and uncomfortable subjects. The Bible is the primary way God has chosen to reveal himself to mankind. We desperately need to know God personally and trust his grace. Therefore, our preaching centers on God, who he is, what he is doing in the world, and how we as part of his creation can know him. Nevertheless, our prayer is that our preaching is highly relevant to your life. We believe the gospel of Jesus Christ is the most relevant thing in the world, and applicable to all areas of life (money, sex, relationships, work, children, etc). Yet when we refuse to preach God’s word, and instead feel it necessary to give merely “good advice” about how to get through life, we fall into the error of weak, uninspired teaching.