Traditional Worship Service (Rite I – King James language) with no music

Contemporary Worship Service (Rite II – modern language) with Praise Band. All the children who were in Sunday School enter this service before communion.

Rite II – Traditional worship with modern language, choir, and organ

Communion Service with Healing Prayer in-person in church and streamed live on Facebook

The Thursday in Holy Week. It is part of the Triduum, or three holy days before Easter. It comes from the Latin mandatum novum, “new commandment,” from Jn 13:34. The ceremony of washing feet was also called “the Maundy.” Maundy Thursday celebrations also commemorate the institution of the Eucharist by Jesus “on the night he was betrayed.” Egeria, a fourth-century pilgrim to Jerusalem, describes elaborate celebrations and observances in that city on Maundy Thursday. The Prayer Book liturgy for Maundy Thursday provides for the celebration of the Eucharist and a ceremony of the washing of feet, which follows the gospel and homily. There is also provision for the consecration of the bread and wine for administering Holy Communion from the reserved sacrament on Good Friday. Following this, the altar is stripped, and all decorative furnishings are removed from the church.

Good Friday is the Friday before Easter Day, when the church commemorates the crucifixion of Jesus. It is a day of fasting and acts of discipline and self-denial. In the early church, candidates for baptism, joined by others, fasted for a day or two before the Paschal feast. In the West, the first of those days eventually acquired the character of a historical reenactment of the passion and death of Christ. The liturgy (worship service) of the day includes John’s account of the Passion gospel, a solemn form of intercession known as the solemn collects (dating from ancient Rome), and optional devotions before the cross (commonly known as the veneration of the cross). The eucharist is not celebrated in the Episcopal Church on Good Friday, but Holy Communion may be administered from the reserved sacrament at the Good Friday service.

Way of the Cross (Stations of the Cross)

A devotion to the Passion of Christ, which recalls a series of events at the end of Jesus’ life from his condemnation to his burial. The Way of the Cross imitates the practice of Christian pilgrims visiting the sites of Jesus’ Passion in the Holy Land. The first stations outside Palestine were built in Bologna in the fifth century. This devotion was encouraged by the Franciscans, and it became common in the fifteenth century. The number of stations for prayer and meditation in the Way of the Cross has varied, but it typically includes fourteen stations. Each station has a cross and an artistic representation of the scene. The stations may be erected inside a church or outdoors.

Blended Worship Service (Rite II – modern language) with Praise Band and Organ (in-person and live on Facebook)