Encounter Worship Schedule at Fairfax Presbyterian Church

2008 Encounter Worship Schedule Continues...

Encounter services are held in the sanctuary on Fourth Sundays at 8:45 a.m., while a traditional service will continue to be offered at 11:15 a.m. This is an intergenerational, nontraditional worship which lay leaders design and conduct.

The Encounter! service seeks to provide an alternative worship experience to creatively engage the essential elements of Christian worship. This year the Encounter! services will focus on the second part of FPC's mission statement: to experience Christ.

Why does Fairfax Presbyterian Church have an alternative style of worship on the fourth Sunday of the month?

An Encounter Taskforce met this fall to answer that very question. The Taskforce decided that we offer Encounter worship to provide an alternative worship experience to attract new people to FPC and to expand the worship horizons of FPC members.

The Encounter Team that plans worship each month takes the experience of worship at FPC very seriously. We want to provide a worship service that contains all the “normal” components of worship (prayer, scripture, sacraments, self-offering) in a manner that connects and inspires the congregation to a deeper experience of God. To that end, we strive to make Encounter worship hospitable to every person who walks in the door.

We also work hard to ensure that worship is creative, energetic, joyful and challenging to the worshippers.

This year of Encounter we have been exploring the theme of Experiencing Christ. (Last year the team looked at Encountering God and next year we’ll move on to Expressing the Power of the Spirit.) In January we explored Jesus calling the first disciples and asked the congregation to think about ways Jesus might be calling each of us and what prevents us from answering that call. In February we met the Samaritan woman that Jesus met at the well. She helped us to understand that an encounter with Jesus is life-giving and affirming, making it impossible to contain the joy and good news of the encounter. We asked the congregation to think about how we share the good news of Jesus Christ in today’s world and challenged every one to do one act of evangelism in the coming week. Our next Encounter service will be in April, when we explore the theme common to Jesus’ ministry: the first will be last and the last will be first.

Encounter is an exciting way to worship because it conscientiously asks us to experience the scripture and apply it to our lives. It explicitly challenges us to engage our faith and invites us to continue to be formed in faith. It embraces diversity in leadership, in age of participants, in music styles, in ways of understanding. Come and see!

All are invited to participate in music, liturgical drama and art, and crafting of the message of each service. Please contact Jessica Tate (jessica@fairfaxpresby.com or 703-273-5300) to join our creative worship team! You are welcome to join us for a particular service or as an ongoing part of our worship planning team.

"Come, bless the Lord, all you servants of the Lord,
who stand by night in the house of the Lord!
Lift up your hands to the holy place, and bless the Lord."
Psalm 134:1

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