"Speak to one another with psalms, hymns and spiritual songs. Sing and make music in your heart to the Lord, always giving thanks to God the Father for everything, in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ."
Ephesians 5:19-20 (NIV)

"Praise God in the great congregation!"
Psalm 68:26a (NIV)














At West Bend, we follow The Basic Pattern of Worship practiced by Christians throughout the centuries.  As described in The Book of Worship, this pattern is rooted in Scripture and in our United Methodist heritage of experience.  It expresses the biblical, historical, and theological integrity of Christian worship and is the basis of all the [other] services of the Church...our worship in both its diversity and its unity is an encounter with the living God through the risen Christ in the power of the Holy Spirit. (BOW, p. 13)

Click here to see a recent bulletin from our regular Sunday worship.

Most services will follow a similar pattern, what we call A Service of the Word.  In these services we gather, hear the announcements, and greet one another; we are called to worship by music, prayers, or Scripture; we sing praises; give God our tithes and offerings; we share our joys and needs and we pray together; we read scripture and hear the Word proclaimed; we will respond with an affirmation of fath like the Apostle's Creed; and be sent into the world with a blessing ("benediction") to serve God and neighbor.
 
The first Sunday of each month we celebrate A Service of Word and Table in which we celebrate Holy Communion (or "The Lord's Supper" or "Eucharist").  At the heart of all of our worship is the Triune God - Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.  He makes our worship possible and gathers us at the Body of Christ to praise Him.  Our one rule for worship is that God is at the center!  We do not call our worship contemporary, or traditional, or any other label.  We sing hymns from many different eras, and we use technology in various ways; our conviction, though, is that worship is not a style but a gift.  Worship "in Spirit and in truth" (John 4:24) is worship that holds God in Christ through the Holy Spirit at the center.
 
Diana Butler Bass has reminded us of the important question, "Who is Worship For?" 
 
"It is absolutely essential that the Church keep God as the subject of worship since to be Christian means to believe that the God revealed in Jesus Christ is everything to us...friendship, instruction, and other aspects of the gathered community are important, but we lose our reason for being if we do not constantly remember that God has called us to be His people and that our ability to respond to that call in worship and life is totally the gift of God's grace." (From Reaching Out without Dumbing Down, [Grand Rapids: Eerdman's 1995] p. 76)