Gathered Worship and Music

We hold to the regulative principle of worship, which states that what we do in gathered worship must be clearly commanded or exemplified in scripture, specifically New Testament scripture. In other words, God has ordained, for his glory and our good, what we do and how we do it in gathered worship. The biblical elements of worship include praying, singing, giving, confessing the faith, reading and preaching the Word, and observing the ordinances of baptism and the Lord’s Supper. We select and arrange these elements in such a way that “all things [are] done for building up” as well as “decently and in order” (1 Corinthians 14:26, 40).

Our music in gathered worship is congregational, simple, and content-driven (rather than aesthetically or emotionally driven), and we use various instruments to accompany and support the congregational voice (see Colossians 3:16; Ephesians 5:18-19). We sing a variety of hymns and psalms, old and new, using Hymns of Grace and Psalms to the Living God.

For more on the relationship of the regulative principle of worship to our Reformed Baptist history, see Tom Hicks’s article, “What Is a Reformed Baptist”. For more on how a right understanding of redemptive history shapes our gathered worship, see Bobby Jamieson’s article, “Biblical Theology and Corporate Worship”.