Worship
The churches hold worship services twice each Sunday and generally on Christmas Day, Good Friday, Ascension Day and New Year's Eve. Preaching from the Bible is the central element of worship. Preaching is by ordained ministers, or alternatively sermons written by an ordained minister may be read by a lay male Session appointee when a minister is not available. Sung praise and corporate prayer are the next most significant elements of worship. The Christian Reformed Church in North America's Psalter Hymnal is the main source of hymnody, however the compilation and evaluation of a denominational psalter/hymnal is currently in progress. The singing of the Psalms features strongly in the hymnody. Corporate confession of sin and the assurance of God's pardon are an integral part of Sunday morning worship, while in the second service one of the creeds is usually recited in unison.
The sacrament of the Lord's Supper (or Holy Communion) is celebrated at least three-monthly. The sacrament of baptism is administered to new converts and to the infant children of confessing church members.
Read more about this topic: Reformed Churches Of New Zealand
Famous quotes containing the word worship:
“Men do not accept their prophets and slay them, but they love their martyrs and worship those whom they have tortured to death.”
—Feodor Dostoyevsky (1821–1881)
“With respect to a true culture and manhood, we are essentially provincial still, not metropolitan,—mere Jonathans. We are provincial, because we do not find at home our standards; because we do not worship truth, but the reflection of truth; because we are warped and narrowed by an exclusive devotion to trade and commerce and manufacturers and agriculture and the like, which are but means, and not the end.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“It is the weak and confused who worship the pseudosimplicities of brutal directness.”
—Marshall McLuhan (1911–1980)