New Advent Sermon Series

With Christmas now upon us, our new Advent sermon series started Sunday with Pastor Rich bringing the message.   I’d say there is no better time than the present to spotlight our weekly effort at corporate worship here at Hillview Baptist Church.

To be clear: He came, we worship. 

Church is more than simply a statement, but we would not be the Church if He did not come.  Additionally, we would not be able to worship as we do if He did not come as He did that first Christmas. It took God, coming down to us, for the light to shine in the darkness, for the Son to become a baby, for Jesus to be swaddled so the gospel could unfold. So with that understanding, we say again, because He came, we can worship.

“She will bear a son, and you shall call his name Jesus, for he will save his people from their sins.” (Matthew 1:21)

At HBC, we celebrate the coming, the life, the death, and the resurrection of Jesus as the only Way to the Father.  He is our only hope in life and in death. As Paul stated so clearly in Philippians 3:8, “Indeed, I count everything as loss because of the surpassing worth of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord.”   When you visit HBC, you will see that we are banking everything on this surpassing knowledge of Christ as our Lord.

Christ Centered Worship

We begin every service with a word of prayer, asking God to bless us with a sense of being in His presence, and for Him to be blessed by what we are going to do as we exalt His name and His Word. After prayer, the worship through song is led by our Worship Leader, Patrick, who typically guides us in this expression of praise. We often seek the Lord again in prayer, give a few updates and announcements, say hello, and continue to worship our Lord through more singing.  After a moment of special music, dedicated to praising our King, we then open the Word of God and read it aloud.  With a service saturated in prayer and our sermon preached from the Bible, we attempt to make much of Jesus and to declare the good news, the Gospel for all who will hear. HBC sermons are meant to point to Christ, show us our need for Him, help in our maturity as disciples, and to bring others into the saving knowledge Paul declares in Philippians 3 above.

And I, when I came to you, brothers, did not come proclaiming to you the testimony of God with lofty speech or wisdom.  For I decided to know nothing among you except Jesus Christ and him crucified. (1 Corinthians 2:1-2)

Often times worship and church services can feel and look like a show of sort.  Sometimes the message is about “positive living” and “life choices” that will help us get through the week, but at HBC we want to simply preach Christ and Him crucified with a clear message of what following Christ looks like, and should mean to our lives in this fallen world.

Always Room for More

This Christmas, we want you to know that you are invited to join us for our Advent series of Christ coming into the world. We also want you to feel invited to join us any week to worship on the Hill.  We meet each week, rain, snow, or shine at 10:30am for Worship and Preaching as a Church body. Some weeks you may catch us having a holiday special, but make no mistake the Word will be read and taught. And often, we may have a Lord’s Supper or a guest speaker, but again, preaching will take place. No matter the week, it is our hope and our intentional plan to declare Jesus Christ as our King, to sing His wonderful work on Calvary, and to make known to anyone and everyone that all can be saved by giving themselves over to the Lordship of Jesus! Please consider our invitation to Come and Grow In Christ With Us!