Mission and Commitments

The Primacy of Worship as the Church’s First Commitment

Here at First Baptist Church Traveler's Dress, we like to say that we exist to worship God and win glory for King Jesus. But what does that mean? What does that mean we are committed to? Well, in the first instance, it means that we are committed to the primacy of worship.

And so, we're committed to the primacy of worship because God deserves it. God is the greatest being of all, and he deserves it. As Psalm 96 says, he deserves the glory due his name, and so we're committed to the primacy.

Of worship.

We're also committed to the primacy of worship because that is who we are made to be. We're made to be worshipers. It's the fundamental calling of humanity. You see, worship is inescapable. It is not whether you will worship or not, but whom or what will you worship.

So here at First Baptist Church, we worship the triune God, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. We're committed to the primacy of worship as well because worship shapes us. Worship, it conforms us into the image of Jesus.

It shapes our loves and our desires. And so, what you worship, you will become like, or we might say it like this, what you behold you will become. And so, we worship the triune God so that we might be shaped and become more like him.

We're also committed to the primacy of worship because worship has effect out into the world. And so, one pattern that we see in the Bible is that what happens in the sanctuary spreads out into the world.

And so, on the Lord's Day, we gather as God's people before God. We are like Ephesians 2 says, seated with Christ in the heavenly places. And we come before him asking him that he might make things on earth as it is in heaven.

And so, worship has effect out into the world. And so, we're committed to the primacy of worship. And because we're committed to the primacy of worship, that means we're committed to right worship. And so, we want to worship God as he tells us and instructs us to do.

Ordered, Bible-Saturated, and Participatory Worship

And so, that means that we are committed to ordered worship. We're committed to Bible-saturated worship. When you come to First Baptist, we want you to hear the Bible read. We want you to hear the Bible sung, the Bible prayed, the Bible preached.

We want the Bible to shape everything that we do in the worship service. We want our worship to be participatory. You're not coming to get a show from the platform or from the stage, but you're coming to participate in the worship of God.

And so, we want you to give your amen at the end of a song, to actively hear the Word of God read and the Word of God preached, and to pray, and to join in the prayers of the.

Church.

And so, to participate, because a passive worshiper will make a passive Christian. But an active worshiper will make an active Christian, because remember, what happens in the sanctuary, what happens in worship, flows out into the world.

And lastly, I would say it like this, we want our worship to be weighty. When you come to worship God, we want to feel the weight of God's glory. You see, when we come to worship God, it's not a trivial thing, because we're worshiping the living God, the Lord of heaven's armies.

And so, we want to have our worship have the appropriate weight to it, but we also know that worship is joyful, because the Lord, the living God, has welcomed us into His kingdom. He's welcomed us into His family by His Son, Jesus Christ.

And so, our worship is one of both weight and joy. So, some have said it like this, serious joy. We want our worship to be an exercise in serious joy. And so, we want to worship God, but we also want to go out into the world and win glory for King Jesus.

Preaching All the Bible for All of Life

There are things out in the world we want to accomplish. And so, because of that, we are committed to certain things. We're committed to preaching and teaching God's Word. We want to teach and preach all the Bible for all of life, and we want to do so understandably.

We want to preach the Bible, all of it, so we believe that the entire Bible from Genesis to Revelation is the authoritative, inerrant, infallible Word of God. We believe it is sufficient for everything that we might face, because in principle at least, the Scriptures address everything.

And so, we want to preach all the Bible, we want to push it out into the corners and apply it to all of life, so this isn't just our spiritual life or our church life, but we want to apply the Bible to our home life, to our work life, to our school life, to our public life.

The Bible has something to say about our whole being and our whole lives, and so we want to apply it in that way, and we want to do so understandably. That means we want the average person in a travel dress to be able to come in, to hear our teaching, and to say, okay, yeah, that makes sense.

At least understand. So, we want to preach all the Bible for all of life, understandably. We're also committed to table fellowship and joyful Christian hospitality. You see, Jesus opens His table to us, and then we want to open our tables to one another.

We want to share in life together, as we share in Christ together, and so we want to weep with those who weep, and rejoice with those who rejoice. We want to gather together, often sharing meals as a way of sharing life, and so don't be surprised if you come to First Baptist if you don't get an invitation to stay and eat lunch with us afterwards.

Don't be surprised if after we eat, we sing because we're full of joy, and so we want to be committed to table fellowship, to joyful Christian hospitality. We're also committed to equipping our people to be salt and light out in the world.

So, you see, we live in a time and a place and a society that desperately needs the gospel of Jesus Christ and the teaching of God's Word. We live in a time that needs hope, that needs peace, but also needs instruction, and so we want to equip our people to go out into the world and preserve and also promote what is good, and right, and true, and beautiful, and glorious, and we want our people to be salt in that way, but we also want them to be light, shining the light of the scriptures into every part of life, and shining the hope that comes through Jesus Christ into every.

Part of life.

So we're committed to equipping our people to go out into the world loving what God loves, hating what God hates, having the courage to stand where God stands, and to have the mercy to extend to all people around us.

So we're committed to being salt and light. And then lastly, I would say we're committed to prayer. We want to saturate everything that we're doing in prayer. This is because we know that ultimately everything comes down from God.

We work, we plan, we serve, we do things, we plant, and we water, but it is God who gives the growth. Every good and perfect gift comes down to us from the Father of lights, James tells.

Us.

And so recognizing God as the source of everything that is good, recognizing that we can do nothing that we want to accomplish in our own strength, we want to commit ourselves to prayer. So we go to God, the God who loves to give good gifts to His children, who delights to do so, and we ask Him.

We ask Him for help, we ask Him for healing, we ask Him for strength, and so we go to God. So in these ways, we are committed to worship God and to win glory for King Jesus.