While we do not always follow the lectionary readings at Eastside Church, we do intentionally spend seasons of our worshipping life in sync with them so that we can be in communion with the Universal Church and celebrate the Holy Seasons.If you're looking for a church home to help you grow in your understanding of the Bible, better equip you to serve God, and provide you with opportunities for genuine Christian fellowship, then you'll like our church. Similar to the liturgical year, the purpose of the Lectionary is to help the Church frame Her life and self-understanding within the context of Holy Scripture. The Lectionary is a three-year cycle of carefully chosen Scripture readings for use by the Church in Her weekly worship. Some of these seasons are Advent, Christmas, Lent, Easter, and Pentecost. These seasons help the Church to remember Her story and to orient Herself within God’s larger narrative of redemption. There are certain historic events the worldwide Church celebrates together in liturgical seasons. At Eastside Church we seek to place our worshipping life within the larger context of the universal (catholic) Church. It is a time where we gather to bless God, and where we are blessed by God. Worship has historically been understood as a kind of “work” of the people that brings glory and honor to God. Liturgical comes from the word “liturgy” and means “the work of the people”. Just as the Holy Spirit engages us through all the liturgical elements, this live art work allows yet another way for congregants to engage, enabling them to reflect on the words being both said and sung. These pieces of art take another creative perspective on the themes, ideas, images, or commentaries informed by the sermon preached that Sunday. In a given worship service there is an artist/artists who paint and draw in a variety of mediums such as acrylics, watercolor, charcoal, ink, etc. Most of all we hope that our music is an authentic and indigenous expression of worship that leads others into praise of God in this time and place.Īrt is a big part of our worship service. Our band seeks to create beauty with substance that creates space for our community to experience the divine in community. Our hope is for all of these expressions to exist comfortably together. Sometimes with drums, sometimes with folk instruments and most always sung corporately. On any given Sunday we will sing original songs that have come to life in our community, new sacred music being sung around the world, and hymns of old that were written long before our time. The music offered at Eastside is as diverse as our community is. Music can reach the deepest parts of our souls that words alone can’t breach. Each week we have scripture readings, corporate singing, a time to greet and fellowship with one another, a message/sermon, prayer, the celebration of Holy Communion, and sometimes a baptism or two.Īt Eastside we believe music is a powerful tool to help us bridge the gap between us and each other and ourselves and God. In regards to our liturgy (flow/structure of our service), we are historic in our approach but creative in our implementation. When imagining worship at Eastside Church think sacred, sacramental, passionate and meaningful. Our desire is to be a community whose ethos is defined by our embrace of beauty, creativity, creation and sacredness in our expression of Christianity. We author much of our own sacred music, bring the arts into worship, and seek to find creative new ways to help folks grow in their faith. Therefore, in all we do as we worship, grow and serve together, we seek to incorporate these values into how we practice resurrection. We believe this is in continuity with the practice of Jesus’ own worship that we find in the Gospel accounts.Įastside Church takes seriously aesthetics, art, music, culture and creativity. Those elements which we find to be either toxic, or simply unhelpful to our community are set aside. Therefore we observe and celebrate those ancient customs of our faith as long as we experience them to be authentic, soul-resurrecting avenues of worship. While Jesus worked toward the reformation of many of the toxic elements that had crept into his strand of Judaism, he maintained a deep respect for, and submission to, the tradition of Judaism from which he emerged.Īt Eastside Church we also seek to respect the depth of the Christian tradition, especially our United Methodist tribe from which we emerge. Jesus was a faithful, Torah abiding Jew who regularly prayed, fasted, observed Sabbath and celebrated the feasts and customs of the Judaism of his day.