Special Services & Observances

On certain Sundays, during our worship time, we incorporate special observances.  Two of these involve the ordinances of baptism and the Lord’s Supper.

Within the Baptist tradition, these two ordinances are understood as powerful symbols.  Baptism is a membership rite, commanded by the Lord, which follows a profession of faith in Christ.  It is an act through which the believer identifies with the death, burial and resurrection of our Lord and testifies to her faith.  More concretely, the meaning of the symbol is the believer dying to a former way of life and being born anew to the ways of Christ.Baptism is observed just prior to Sunday morning worship services, as often as there are candidates to be baptized.

The Lord’s Supper (known as Communion or the Eucharist in other traditions) is a memorial rite, also commanded by the Lord, in which his great sacrifice for our sins is remembered and celebrated through the taking of the bread and cup.  It is observed as a part of our Sunday morning worship services roughly six times a year (about once every two months) and, additionally, at our Maundy Thursday and Christmas Eve services.

Other special observances that occur in our Sunday morning worship services are: Youth Sunday (May); Graduate Recognition Sunday (May/June); and, the Hanging of the Green service (First Sunday of Advent).  The church also gathers for corporate worship services on Maundy Thursday and Christmas Eve, and for a Service of Thanksgiving on a Sunday evening prior to Thanksgiving.