Emergent Worship
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U2 Eucharist
Taizé Sung Prayer
Goosebumps/All Saints Organ Concert & Electronic Light Show
1850s Style Carol Sing
Blessing of the Animals


What is essential is invisible to the eye.
It is only with the heart that one can see rightly.
— The Little Prince, Antoine de Saint-Exupéry

In the midst of each ubiquitous, cyclical, cultural wallop we ask, What beliefs can we hang onto? Where can we find answers to the emerging faith questions that loom over our changing world?

God is both a pursuing God and a mysterious God: how does one relate to God, who is pursuing and mysterious at the same time? It is for this reason we can never say about worship, This is exactly how it is done. Worship is not analyzable, dissectable. It is not reproducible. Worship is not a product to be consumed. One must give one's whole self to the worship of God. If you leave a service asking yourself, "Did I like it?" then your worship has become thing-ized, treated as a product to be consumed, not something that must, by definition, consume you.

At First Presbyterian Church we are listening for ways in which we can be attentive to the Holy Spirit in this decade of twitter worship, machines that determine our humanity, and the worry that our Christian beliefs will exclude someone. The resulting emergent worship opportunities are not a revolution against the liturgy and prayer and theology that have been a part of the Christian faith for twenty centuries, they are instead a response to the call of God, still asking through the ages, Who do you say I am? You will continue to experience liturgy, prayer, and the Word in the emergent worship services.

For further thought, please read the following quote, which is from Dr. Jaroslav Pelikan, Christianity scholar and author of many books. You can read and hear additional information on the Speaking of Faith website.

And so wherever the message is preached and brought in whatever language it comes from, the language it comes to and the culture into which it penetrates must, at some stage of its maturation, learn to answer yet again the question: "Who do you say that I am?" Because the "you say" in that question is the culture in which we live. He's not asking, "Who does the fourth century say that I am?" when it was writing in Greek. That's important, because without that we wouldn't be where we are. But, at some point, you have to be who and what you are in the only culture in which you're ever going to live, the only century in which you're going to live and die, and, in that century, you have to answer with whatever linguistic and philosophical equipment you have, you have to answer the question: "Who do you say that I am?"

Emergent can be defined as arising as an effect of complex causes and not analyzable simply as the sum of their effects. (Philosophy of a property)

— the New Oxford American Dictionary