At Resurrection, adults and children worship all together. We believe that it is important that families worship together and that children feel accepted as full members of our church from an early age.
What will I be doing in the worship service?
Episcopal worship has a rhythm. When you arrive, you will be given a booklet which makes it easy to follow along with what’s happening in the service. We begin the service with music, end with music, and have other musical offerings throughout. We then offer opening prayers. We listen to several readings from the Bible. You will hear a message that connects the scriptures to our life. We stand together and recite our statement of Christian faith expressed in the Nicene Creed. We offer prayers of healing and thanksgiving and we corporately confess our sins. We exchange a greeting of peace with others present and give an offering of money to sustain the work of God’s kingdom through the church. In preparation to receive the bread and wine of Communion, our priest and pastor leads us in the Eucharistic prayers (a word meaning “thanksgiving”) and then we receive Holy Communion. The service concludes with a final prayer, blessing, and a dismissal from our Deacon with the reminder to “Go into the world and serve in the name of the Lord!”
I’m not an Episcopalian. Can I receive Holy Communion?
It is the custom in our church that wherever you are on your faith journey, you are welcome to receive the bread and wine of Holy Communion. It does not matter how old or young, what church you came from, what your denominational status is – if you wish to receive our Lord Jesus Christ, he invites you!
What other worship services do we offer?
We hold many special services throughout the year, some at the Community Center and others in the public spaces of Gilbert. On Ash Wednesday, we station ourselves downtown and offer the imposition of ashes and prayer to passersby during lunch time. During Fridays in the Season of Lent, we offer a service of the Way of the Cross, (also known as Stations of the Cross) at virtual stations up and down the sidewalks lining Gilbert Road in the downtown Heritage District in the early evening. During Holy Week we hold a Maundy Thursday service at the Community Center. Our outdoor Easter on the Green service and Easter egg hunt takes place on the corner green space adjacent to our land at Higley and Elliot Roads. In December we have an evening Christmas service on the eve of Christmas Eve at the Community Center. We plan to offer regular morning prayer services in the public spaces downtown and Taizé services beginning in 2018. The public is invited to these events.