Worship with Saint Thomas Church

“What is the Church? The Church is the whole community of faithful Christians in heaven and on earth, called and formed by God into one people. The Church on earth gathers to worship God in Word and Sacrament, to serve God and neighbor, and to proclaim the Gospel to the ends of the earth.” - To Be a Christian: An Anglican Catechism

SERVICE TIME: We have one service at 4pm with approximately 75 people

ENTRANCE: The Sanctuary entrance (blue) and the entrance to check-in and drop off your child (green)

KIDS: All children are welcome in the service and we provide activity boxes for any child who may enjoy them. Nursery is offered for ages 0-3, you can drop them off after you check-in and before the service. We ask that you collect them during the announcements, before communion. Children’s ministry is offered for children 4-years-old through 5th grade. Please check-in before the service and these children will go to the children’s ministry before our Scripture reading and will be returned during announcements, before communion.

Check-in can take a few minutes but you can pre-register your kids if you’d like to save time when you arrive.

Our Worship Service

In the Anglican Tradition, our worship is a living liturgy in which we participate together through a worship journey. We are grateful for this order of worship we have inherited as it is a pattern drawn from the earliest centuries of Christian worship filled with prayers, Scripture, and singing. Our service is approximately an hour and 20 minutes.

Entering God’s Presence

  • We acclaim the Lord together with an opening hymn, procession of the cross, and blessing - reminding us that Jesus is right here with us as he promised.

  • We are reminded of Jesus' weighty summary of the Law (Matthew 22:37-40), commands to love the Lord and our neighbor. We ask for God’s loving mercy, then glorify him with an ancient song, the Gloria.

  • With the Church around the world, we pray an appointed daily prayer called the Collect.

Hearing God’s Word

  • We read from the Old Testament, a Psalm, a NT Epistle and the Gospel every Sunday, all of which come from a 3-year cycle of readings called a lectionary.

  • A sermon is preached on one or more of the readings, usually about 20 minutes.

Responding to God’s Word

  • After the sermon, we proclaim our common faith with the words of the Nicene Creed (325 AD).

  • We pray responsively together, called the Prayers of the People.

  • We confess our sins and hear God's forgiveness proclaimed over us, along with 4 short verses of Scripture called "the Comfortable Words."

  • We "Pass the Peace." This is a time of greeting, but also an opportunity to be reconciled if there are conflicts, which is necessary for coming to Communion.

  • Children come in from their classes during this time and return for Communion.

Celebrating the Lord’s Supper

  • We present the Bread & Wine, along with our monetary gifts, as the fruit of our labor - and we sing the Doxology in praise.

  • Holy Eucharist - We retell the Gospel story through the blessing of the Bread & Wine, which is all about thanksgiving for our salvation. The Greek for thanksgiving is eucharisteo. This includes two or three liturgical songs and lots of encouraging responses.

  • As Jesus instructed, we bless, break, take, eat and drink, knowing that Jesus himself gave us this sacrament, a holy act as a physical sign of a spiritual reality, by which we tangibly receive of him personally and remember our union with him as members of his Body, the Church.

Going Out in Peace

  • We thank the Lord for feeding us with spiritual food, nourishing us with both Word and Sacrament.

  • We receive a blessing and are then commissioned yet again to “go into our world in peace to love and serve” in the power of the Holy Spirit.