Our Convictions about Worship at Living Hope
- God centeredness. We attempt to put the highest priority on the vertical focus in our worship services. We aim to glory in God by making Him the focus of our words, readings, prayers and songs.
- Expectancy. We come to our corporate worship time with a thirst for God’s presence, satisfied only as we come to feast on Jesus Christ. It is something we eagerly anticipate and expect every time we come together for worship on Sunday mornings and evenings.
- Bible based and Bible saturated. Because we believe that a primary way the Spirit works is through the Word, the content of our singing, praying, and preaching should conform to the truth of Scripture, as well as being the ground and source from which we derive the content of our services.
- Multicultural: The congregation of Living Hope is culturally diverse with many varied worship traditions represented. Some will be quiet and pious. Others will be boisterous with raised hands, shouting to the Lord. Whichever your culture, you will feel at home at Living Hope.
- Head and heart. Our worship should be characterized by deep, strong, authentic emotions toward God which are not artificially manipulated but are raised by an authentic understanding and experience of God and His Word through the eyes of faith.
- Earnestness and intensity. We will avoid being trite, flippant, superficial, or frivolous, and instead try to accompany the weightiness of our act of corporate worship with equally weighty affections of reverence, passion, wonder, and broken-hearted joy, along with overflowing joyful celebration.
- Authentic communication. We utterly renounce all sham, deceit, hypocrisy, pretense, affectation, and posturing. We do not pursue attention getting performance, but an atmosphere of humble service facilitating a personal and corporate encounter with God and His truth.
- Undistracting excellence. We try to sing and play and pray and read and preach in such a way that people’s attention will not be diverted from the substance by shoddy ministry nor by excessive finesse, elegance or embellishment. Natural, undistracting excellence will allow the truth and beauty of God to shine through.
- The mingling of historic and contemporary music. No church or service can be all things to all people. We believe there are affections owing to God that different tunes and different texts and different genres may awaken better than others. We will strive to defer to one another without exalting our own tastes as the standard of appropriateness.
Opportunities to Serve Christ in Worship
- Worship Leader: Do you have a gift in leading worship? There is a rotation of worship leaders each Sunday morning and evening. We would love for you to get involved.
- Choir/ensembles: Groups will often present music at Living Hope. We have had men’s quartets, ladies’ ensembles, children’s choir and adult choir. There is also Spanish choir at our Esperanza Spanish Church.
- Solo, duet, and trio special music: If you have a gift of presenting music as a soloist or in a group, please contact Emily Toelcke (soon to be Tiberi) and let her know.
- Worship Team/Orchestra: If you would like to assist in leading congregational worship, or you play an instrument, let us know!