Simple Church

We know that worship becomes cluttered and noisy, missing the very thing that we showed up for in the first place: the real presence of Jesus.

In this quiet, simple worship service, we use the words of the Book of Common Prayer, a text that has nourished the church’s worship for nearly 500 years. We use a form of the Eucharistic service called The Renewed Ancient Text to pray, to praise, to confess, to sing and glory in God’s goodness. There are no musical instruments except human voices. There is a brief sermon, and then we receive our Lord in Eucharist.

This is, in some ways, a very traditional service. But it may seem to be outside of our tradition. The Book of Common Prayer is Anglican. We are Nazarene, so what are we doing here?

Well honestly, we are here out of desperation. We know that typical Nazarene worship, which features a longer sermon and a more intricate music set, is wonderful and we hope that our Sunday Morning service continues to meet an important need. But we are here worshiping in this way because we have also seen what that can fail to do. In all the noise, it can easily become about us. How we are experiencing things. How the music or service is going. Whether we are innovative enough, smart enough, skilled enough.

Simple Church seeks to strip that all away.

We want to ask the question, “What would happen if we just simply showed up with ourselves and waited, along with the ancient witness of the church, for Jesus?”

So why this service?

Well, as Nazarenes, our roots are with the Anglican Church. The Church of the Nazarene is a part of the Wesleyan Holiness tradition and while we mourn that such conversations are necessary because they speak to the division of the church, we want to emphasize that we receive our heritage from John and Charles Wesley, priests in the Church of England to their dying day. So while we are not Anglican, our heritage is and we long for the unity of the church to be restored. Maybe this little bit of weekly prayer and worship will be a part of what God uses to restore us to one another.

Host or Publisher Cordova Church of the Nazarene