Our church has identified and defined itself as a Reformed Baptist Church and has declared that the distinctives of our church include following a model for worship regulated by the Holy Scriptures. Following the example given to us in Acts 2:42 we teach the “apostles doctrine” by way of expository preaching and the public reading of the Word of God, we “fellowship” and prove our love for one another in the body as often as we have opportunity, we partake of the ordinances, the Lord’s Table by the “breaking of bread” observing the Lord’s Supper weekly and the Baptism of believers as necessary, and we are a church of “prayer.” We find further direction for corporate worship in Ephesians 5:18-21 in the singing of “psalms, hymns, and spiritual songs.” Other elements of our worship include occasions of individual and corporate fasting (Matthew 6:16-18) and the giving of thanks including freely and cheerfully giving our tithes and offerings to the Lord (1 Thess. 5:16-21; 2 Cor. 9:6-8).

In our worship and our lives we strive to be God focused, Christ exalting, Spirit filled, and Bible centered. Our aim is to glorify God in everything we do – making it a priority to live “by the Book.”

This model of regulating worship by the Scriptures is common to many reformed churches. However, even as we have identified our singing in worship as consisting of the congregation singing “psalms, hymns, and spiritual songs” it seems to be the case that we sing a lot of hymns, some spiritual songs, and only a few Psalms. We have attempted to learn and include new spiritual songs that present sound Biblical theology but to date have not included more Psalms.

I am happy to announce that beginning this month we will be adding Psalms to our services weekly! We will be using The Book of Psalms for Worship, a Crown and Covenant Publication produced by the Reformed Presbyterian Church of North America. We will begin including Psalms that are sung to tunes with which we are already familiar and then as we get used to including Psalms in our weekly meetings, we will begin to learn new tunes as well.

Our desire is not to be merely reformed, but to be always reforming as we seek to bring our lives and worship more and more in line with the teaching of Scripture. May God bless us in this endeavor as we seek to “give unto the Lord the glory due His name” (Psalm 29:2).