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The following statement is used by Pastor Scot’s sending church,
Grace Baptist Church of New Tampa, Florida. GBC borrowed it (with
permission and slight revision) from Christ Fellowship Baptist
Church in Mobile, AL. It describes the worship at Emmanuel Baptist
Church:
Worship is of the utmost importance at Emmanuel Baptist Church, and
not just any worship. Majestic, historic, Word-centered,
God-centered, Christ-centered worship - is our central passion. It
has been rightly stated, ‘Great theology produces great hymnology,
which in turn produces great doxology.’ This is the heartbeat of
EBC, to present a transcendent, God-honoring worship. It requires a
sacrificial offering of praise to God producing both a reverence
and awe. Moreover, there is an inseparable bond between the
centrality of the Word of God and the worship of God. To this end,
the prolific pastor and noted author, James Montgomery Boice writes,
"To worship God we must know who God is, but we cannot know who God
is unless God first chooses to reveal Himself to us. God has done
this in the Bible, which is why the Bible and the teaching of the
Bible need to be central in our worship." God’s Word is wholly
sufficient in that it provides Scriptural elements, which are
essential to the corporate worship of EBC - namely Scripture
reading, preaching/ teaching, prayer, singing, baptism, and
communion.
As determined by God Himself, the purpose of worship is the
exaltation of God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy
Spirit by His redeemed. Worship is thus a celebration of God,
His work and His character. As such, our services provide a
worship perspective that is primarily transcendent in nature,
rather than superficial and man-centered. With this in mind, the
Cambridge Declaration makes this statement regarding the status
of worship in today’s church: "The loss of God’s centrality in
the life of today’s church is common and lamentable. It is the
loss that allows us to transform worship into entertainment,
gospel preaching into marketing, being good into feeling good
about ourselves, and faithfulness into being successful... We
must focus on God in our worship, rather than the satisfaction
of our personal needs. God is sovereign in worship; we are not.
Our concern must be for God’s kingdom, not our own empires,
popularity or success."
Therefore, it is the desire of Emmanuel Baptist Church that
there be a reformation in the worship of the Church -- returning
to the foundational themes of the Protestant Reformation:
Scripture alone (sola Scriptura), grace alone (sola gratia),
Christ alone (solus Christus), faith alone (sola fide), and
glory to God alone (soli Deo Gloria).
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