Saint Athanasius Church
Scripture | Spirit | Sacrament
Liturgical
Our worship service follows a biblical pattern of God's calling, cleansing, consecrating, communing with, and commissioning us. We believe Christians have been given much freedom in how to worship on the Lord's Day, and we have chosen, in that freedom, to worship in the aforementioned pattern, while using elements of the Book of Common Prayer, and reserving full liberty to alter, abridge, enlarge, and amend the same, as may seem most conducive to the edification of the people, while keeping the substance of the faith entirely.
We celebrate The Lord's Supper weekly and affirm the real presence of Christ in the mystery of the Eucharist.
We also follow the historic church calendar. We do this as an expression of our freedom in Christ and our dominion over all things, including time. In Christ we have been elevated to the right hand of the Father and given all authority in heaven and on earth. We are no longer under days, festivals, and ceremonies, rather, they are now under us. These things were a shadow of Christ to come. Now that Christ has come and we are in Christ, we are given authority to practice and observe as Wisdom guides and in accordance with the patterns and practices of Scripture. The only ritual observance we are commanded to follow in the New Covenant dispensation is baptism and the Lord's supper. No man's conscience may be bound or judged with respect to any other.
Our first priority is to be biblical in our worship, which means using all of Scripture to inform our worship. We also desire to be historically connected to our Christian past and so we appreciate and incorporate ancient practices in our service, but we are not slavishly bound to history, nor do we believe that it is necessary to have formal liturgical unity among the churches of God, past or present. God is chiefly concerned with our heart, and finds wicked hearts paired with reverent ceremony reprehensible (Isaiah 1). Therefore, we seek to worship God with reverence and with joyful sincerity in our hearts (Hebrews 12:28).