The worship of the church shapes the lives of those worshiping.
At Southside, we seek to worship the Triune God, revealed in Christ Jesus, in Spirit and Truth.
All that we do in service is to the Glory of God!
What You Can Expect
We sing, pray, read, preach, and see the Word lived out in the ordinances of baptism and communion.
What It Looks Like
We sing between 4 and 6 songs each week spanning hymns, psalms, and other spiritual songs.
We pray together.
We hear a few Scripture readings.
We hear the Word of God preached from the Bible.
We participate in communion and baptism.
Our Worship Values
Truth: We worship in all aspects by the Word of God
Beauty: Showcasing Christ’s person & work with simple excellence
Goodness: Displaying the grace of the gospel to make disciples of all people
Want to know more? Click on our Philosophy of Worship to get a better idea of how we worship every Sunday.
+ Our Philosophy of Worship
Worship is all of life.
We give ourselves to what we see as most worthy, and the church’s mission is to show the glory of God and the beauty of Christ by the power of the Spirit through God’s word in the Bible.
The worship of the church is a proper response to the revelation of God.
The way the church worships should be derived and upheld by God’s word.
Therefore, the church’s worship centers on eight marks:
Theocentric/Christocentric – God centered in the person and work of Christ and empowered by the Holy Spirit.
Biblically Formed – Based on and saturated by the Bible.
Theological Doxology – Doctrinally sound elements leading to praise of the one Triune God.
Gospel-Wrought – The service should follow the pattern of the gospel as it is revealed in Scripture, which is God, Man, Christ, Response.
God – We sing to the Triune God of creation, who alone is worthy of our worship and our lives.
Man – We sing of our sinful nature, our separation from God’s blessing without him, and our need for forgiveness to remind ourselves of who we were without the fellowship of God and to spur us to look for a Savior.
Christ – We sing of Christ’s person (he is fully God and fully man), and his saving work of his sinless life, death on the cross in our place, his resurrection from the dead, and his intercessory work before God the Father on behalf of his people.
Response – We sing in response to his holiness with our repentance and faith in praise, thankfulness, joy, lament of the brokenness in the world, and with expectant hearts for the Lord to sanctify us through his word and by his Spirit.
Simple & Excellent – Musicians and leaders must keep the worship of the church accessible without sacrificing transparent excellence. Further, the musical accompaniment must be a servant of the singing of the church, not the leader alone.
Historic & Modern – Each service element should in some way reach back into Christian history to connect the church of today to the church of yesterday. This is accomplished through creeds, confessional statements, psalms, hymns, and spiritual songs from every era.
Congregational – The church’s worship is not one man’s or one woman’s sacrifice of praise, but the work of the entire body. Therefore, the gathered people of God all participate in the service through song, Scripture reading, prayer, and the ordinances (baptism and communion). Also, the preached Word is the central element of the service as we hear from God through the preacher to our hearts by the Spirit’s power.
Missional – Everything we do in the service must display the glory of God not only in salvation but in all of life. The unbeliever should see a glimpse of the transcendent reality of God and the beauty of Christ through the other-worldliness of the worship of the church. They should also see the offense of the gospel in comparison with their own lives to drive them to repentance and faith. Furthermore, worship equips the church to glorify God in everyday life.