Prelude: This is a time when we start to focus on the service and to concentrate on taking this time to allow us to join with God among friends. Music will usually be playing and we are encouraged to take our seats and prepare for the service.

Welcome and Announcements: The pastor shares news of upcoming events, meetings, celebrations and other news and needs. If you have any news you’d like to have shared with the congregation, pass it on to the pastor  to be announced as well.

Call To Worship: This reading printed in the bulletin helps us to focus our hearts and minds on worshiping God. It usually reflects the message of the day and may come from different sources. The leader will begin reading the call to worship and the congregation responds as shown.

Songs of Praise: One or two songs will be sung to help bring us together as one Body of Christ. Rise as you are able and join in!

Passing The Peace: This is a brief time of greeting your neighbor with the Peace of Christ in your heart.

Invocation: This is a brief message printed in the bulletin that we read out loud together. This is to further draw us together as one voice, one body and to invoke (invite) the Holy Spirit to join us.

Reflecting Upon The Word of God: This is a time for listening to Biblical scriptures and other contemporary readings to help guide us through our life.

Lessons For Life: The Pastor uses this time to teach on and about the Scriptures and its meaning and application in our lives today. The Pastor, through the power of the Holy Spirit, challenges the congregation to listen, study, pray and apply God’s word in our daily lives.

Song of Response: Immediately following the sermon, this is a time of singing and meditating on the message of God’s word.

Responding to God with Offering & Prayer:  The offering is a time for giving back to God a portion of what God has given to us. It is putting our faith into action! Imago Dei MCC believes in the Biblical principle of tithing and recognizes that your giving is a personal matter between you and God. A prayer is offered and the ushers take the collection plate. An offertory song is played as the plate is passed. After the collection plates are gathered, they are taken to the altar and we offer these gifts up to God while singing the Doxology.

Prayers and Praises: Prayer is the lifeblood of Imago Dei MCC. We believe in the power of prayer and we practice an active prayer life. In this part of the service, the prayer leader offers prayers of thanksgiving, concerns and petitions from our world, our country, our community, and our congregation. All are encouraged to offer up their own concerns and prayers so that we may join in praying with you as a congregation.  We normally sing a Prayer Hymn after they are expressed.

Holy Communion: When Jesus took the bread and the cup during the Last Supper, He made a new covenant with all people. We celebrate that covenant  with the sharing of the Communion elements of bread (wafer) and cup (non-alcoholic grape juice). At Imago Dei MCC, as at all MCCs, we believe that this table belongs to God and all are invited to share in these gifts. You do not need to be a member of this church or any other church to receive God’s gifts of love.  Communion has several different parts. Preparation is a time of meditation to prepare our hearts to receive the gifts. We respond in song to show our gratitude. The Invitation is printed in the bulletin. This is a responsive reading led by the celebrants. The Words of Institution is where the celebrant reenacts the word recorded in scripture of what probably occurred during the Last Supper with Jesus. The Affirmation of Faith is when the congregation recites with the celebrant the Mysteries of Our Faith which is printed in the bulletin. The Consecration is when the celebrant asks the Holy Spirit to bless the elements and bless those who receive them.

Perhaps you are more interested in faith as a way of life rather than as a system of beliefs?  Brian Mclaren writes, you can’t take an epidural shot to ease the pain of giving birth to character. 

One can not go to the McJesus restaurant menu found on some corner of a highway of life looking for fast spiritual food that is both healthy and feeds the whole being of a person.  For faith as a way of life, one must cultivate spiritual practices that are as ancient as the days in which Jesus walked among his disciples along the Sea of Galilee.

There are ancient ways that can teach us to practice peace, joy, self-mastery, and justice.  There are old disciplines, such as contemplative prayer, meditation, and spiritual reading that will do for our souls what exercise does for our bodies and study does for our mind.

Imago Dei MCC holds evening worship services known as vespers (Evening Prayers) on the first and third Wednesday of every month followed by lectio divina.

What is vespers?

Vespers simply means “evening prayers.”  This is an evening prayer service which involves music, spiritual readings, contemplative prayer and meditation.  Saint Benedict of the Sixth Century is credited with originating vespers that is followed in Catholic, Orthodox, and some Protestant denominations.

Vespers—Evening Prayer at Imago Dei MCC involves much of what we are accustomed to on any given Sunday with music, liturgy, scripture, and prayers.  There is no sermon. 

In order for the faithful to be sustained by participation in Holy Communion, the Liturgy of the Presanctified Gifts is served. The service is an ancient one in the Orthodox Church. We officially hear about it in the canons of the seventh century, which indicates its development at a much earlier date.

The Liturgy of the Presanctified Gifts is included in the evening service. It is the solemn Vespers with the administration of Holy Communion added to it. There is no consecration of the eucharistic gifts at the presanctified liturgy. Holy Communion is given from the eucharistic gifts sanctified on the previous Sunday.

The service will last approximately fifty (50) minutes; and will be followed by lectio divina.

What is lectio divina?

Lectio divina simply means divine reading, spiritual reading, or "holy reading," and represents a ancient Christian practice of prayer and scriptural reading intended to engender communion with the Triune God, while also increasing one’s knowledge of God's Word.

It is a way of praying with Scripture that calls one to study, ponder, listen and, in the case of Imago Dei MCC, discuss together before closing out our evening in prayer.

Brother Michael Casey writes, the Bible is an instrument of salvation only because it challenges our habitual beliefs, attitudes, and behavior.  As soon as it begins only to confirm and reinforce our own views it is reduced to the status of a hand puppet.

There are many ways to read parts of Bible…

[1] Medicine Chest – find a text to fit your “ailment”

[2] Cutting the Bible – open to a random page and read

[3] Grazing – skip through to your favorite parts

[4] Liturgical – read only what is read in church

All of these ways of opening the Bible may be valid, but are they invaluable to your faith development becoming formed into a way of life?

…there is also one way to read a whole book of the Bible

Lectio divina involves allowing ourselves to be led to God by an experienced guide.  Our attitude toward the author of the text we shall study will act as our mentor in which we may develop openness, trust, and confidence; and a friendship will develop between us and our author.  Making friends with the author of our text demands that we really try to hear what is being said as distinct from what we would expect to be said.

Imago Dei MCC will study the Gospel of John and we will go as fast or as slow as the Spirit leads us meeting the first and third Wednesday of every month beginning at 8 PM (following Vespers) lasting for fifty (50) minutes.