Sundays

About Worship at First Baptist Greenville

Worship is the heart of what we gather to do as a community of faith. We seek to worship the Triune God, not ourselves, not our culture, not even our own giftedness. We gather in worship to give thanks to God, to offer adoration to God, to pray for God’s mercy and guidance, to hear from God’s word and to be challenged to live for God’s kingdom.

Worship at First Baptist Greenville seeks to remain faithful to the stream of Christian and Baptist heritage that has shaped us.

We do not start with the felt needs of the culture and then craft a religious experience to address those needs. Instead, we begin with the traditions of the church—the creeds, the hymns, the liturgies, the preaching—and invite people to join the ongoing stream of faith.

Worship leadership includes an intentional mix of clergy and laity, male and female, young and old. This intentional mixture demonstrates weekly the common ground on which we approach the task of worship. We gather in community, and we worship in community.

Following the tradition of the larger Christian church through the centuries, we include an Old Testament or New Testament reading in worship.

The text will relate to the topic of the morning sermon. Sometimes, we will have a Gospel reading, drawing from the Gospels of Matthew, Mark, Luke and John. The Bible is not a flat text to be read with equal emphasis on every part. We read the Bible through the lens of the Gospels, particularly the words of Jesus.