If you are new to liturgical worship, you might find yourself saying, “Why do they do this?” Even if you are accustomed to the services, you might ask from time to time, “Why do we do this? Are we simply following some dead, musty, old tradition of man?” Absolutely not.

The worship of God at St. Barnabas is Biblical and certainly not a tradition of man apart from Holy Scripture. On the face of it, our worship book, called the Book of Common Prayer (BCP), is 70% Scripture, and 20% paraphrase of Scripture. The remaining 10% is based directly on the Bible.

The services are really nothing more than organized prayer on the basis of Scripture. In fact, the very structure of the services, as we shall see, follows the pattern of worship in the Bible. Our worship seeks to conform to Biblical worship scenes: those in heaven as well as on earth. What happens on those occasions has been a model for the worship in the REC BCP and the Christian Church over the ages. Thus, the worship is Biblical, though you may be unaccustomed to seeing some of the Scriptural principles put into practice.

The pages in this section lead to the answers to some of the questions you may have about liturgical worship.