Mercy Hill

Mercy Hill believes that the form of worship (ie the style) follows its function. The function is to honor and glorify God, to center upon the Gospel of Jesus Christ, and to assist us in experiencing the power of that Gospel emotionally, and renewing our understanding of that Gospel intellectually.

Thus, when we gather, our desire is to glorify God with our bodies and our souls, with our hearts and our minds.

Thus, in light of this, our form of worship is something we call "ancient and modern."

By ancient, we mean several things. We follow a liturgical pattern in our gatherings: we read Scripture outloud, we read prayers together, we stand during portions of the service, we raise our hands during prayers, we recite old creeds and confessions, and we sing many traditional hymns and poems.

By modern, we mean that we do these things in a contemporary idiom or expression. There are questions and answers, and dialogue, during portions of our service. We typically sing contemporary versions of traditional hymns, as well as the best of modern worship poetry and music.

(For those who like to hear examples of what we mean by this, for samples of our traditional hymnody, check out the Reformed University Fellowship hymnal at this website. For samples of our modern worship poetry and music, check out Sovereign Grace music at this website.)

Our desire is that our gathering will help people along all points of the spectrum of spiritual development access God in a meaningful way, while emphasizing throughout that our "audience" and "focus" is Jesus and not ourselves or our performance or "style."

Last updated on January 11, 2011 by Phil Henry