The Worship of the Church – The Order of Service

There is actually no order of service given, recommended, or commanded for the Church when it meets. The Church thus has absolute freedom for how it conducts its meetings. However, there does seem to be some evidence that the Church, which was initially all Jewish, replicated to some degree the order of worship used in the synagogue.

A University of Chicago faculty member has provided a summary of synagogue worship during the time of Jesus:

The principal parts of the service were taken not by permanent officers of the synagogue, but by members chosen from the congregation after it had assembled…The service was under the direction of the Rosh-kaKeneseth or chief ruler (Luke 13:14), though his share in the service was for the most part a silent one. When the congregation had assembled, it was his duty to select the various persons who should for that time take the leading part in the service.

For the Sabbath morning service some ten or eleven persons were required. First, there was the Skeliack Tsibbur or “messenger of the congregation,” who read the prayers; second were the readers of the law, seven in number; third was the reader of the prophets (cf. Luke 4:17); fourth, when the biblical Hebrew was not understood by the congregation, a Methurgeman or “interpreter ” was required, whose duty it was after each verse of the law, and after each three verses of the prophets, to “targum” the Hebrew into the language which the congregation understood; fifth was the preacher.

The two elements of the ancient service were, speaking broadly, worship and instruction, the latter originally predominating. The former was represented by the prayers which were read by the Sheliach Tsibbur with responses by the congregation.

The service of song, in the form of hymns or anthems seems to have had no place in the ancient synagogue. The prayers, however, have been from very ancient times chanted or intoned.

Though the congregation at Corinth cannot be made a template for how church meetings would or should be conducted, it has several elements in common with the synagogue worship as well as several differences.

The coming together of the divine assembly, the Church, was done around a meal that represented the Lord Jesus’ last supper with his disciples, the Lord’s Supper, with identification of the elements of bread and wine as symbols of Christ’s sacrificial death that saved us (1 Corinthians 11:17-34). During this time a number of actions were done:

When you come together, each of you has a hymn, or a word of instruction, a revelation, a tongue or an interpretation. Everything must be done so that the church may be built up. ²⁷ If anyone speaks in a tongue, two—or at the most three—should speak, one at a time, and someone must interpret. ²⁸ If there is no interpreter, the speaker should keep quiet in the church and speak to himself and to God. ²⁹ Two or three prophets should speak, and the others should weigh carefully what is said. ³⁰ And if a revelation comes to someone who is sitting down, the first speaker should stop. ³¹ For you can all prophesy in turn so that everyone may be instructed and encouraged. (1 Corinthians 14:26-31)

The two main components of this time were worship (hymns) and instruction (teaching, prophesying, tongues speaking [which could essentially be worship or instruction]).

We know from Paul’s comments to the readers of his epistles that letters from him, or presumably other apostles, were to be read to the congregation when it met (Colossians 4:16). Later Church practice was to read a designated portion of the Old and New Testament from the Lectionary (a compendium of Old and New Testament portions in calendared form).

We do not know if the early church did baptisms during their meetings or not. It might be unusual for there to be the means for baptisms in the homes churches met in, if immersion was the form followed. Paul’s practice seemed to be to immediately baptize someone who came to faith, as with the Philippian jailer (Acts 16:30-33), rather than wait for a meeting of the church.

There is nothing in Scripture, of course, which limits or proscribes exactly how we conduct our meetings, but worship and instruction seem to be two key elements of early church meetings.