A gospel liturgy is a simple order of service that every church can utilize to lead Christ-centered, Scripture-guided worship. Gospel liturgies provide a framework for worship services to present the gospel in all elements of the service in the same order as a gospel presentation.

I first learned of the concept of gospel liturgies while attending a Doxology & Theology conference, in a breakout session taught by Dr. Joe Crider. Planning worship around a single scripture text and using the gospel as a liturgy revolutionized my view of congregational worship and the planning process. Previously, I searched thematically for songs that made connections with the theme and the Scripture texts of the sermon. While this gave somewhat satisfactory results it still felt like something was missing. The problem wasn't necessarily in the song selections but in the perception of what a worship service should be. I had been taught as a young worship leader that the purpose of worship music was to prepare the hearts of people for the sermon (that was probably a preacher's interpretation of what was supposed to be preparing heart's to receive the the Word of God). Perhaps there's a glimmer of truth in this, provided the songs we sing have some theological depth to them, but I have never seen this in God's Word. The Scriptures are full of instances, however, where people respond in worship to the Word and the gospel. Worship is always a response to God. The role of the worship leader is not to set up God's Word with music in order to try and make it effective; God's Word is more powerful and effective than any song we can sing.  Our worship, singing, and praise must be a response to the message of the gospel. A response to who God is and what He has done, a response to who we are and our sinful condition, and a response to who Christ is and His redemptive. We can't help but worship the Lord when it is a response. How can we possibly worship God without a knowledge of who He is?

The Gospel is the story of who God is, our sinfulness, and what Christ has done to save us; and just as it requires a response from every person for salvation, it requires a response from every believer in our worship. Our initial response to the gospel is  confession of sin and belief in what God has done for us through Christ, while our subsequent responses in worship reverberate the greatness of God. Our greatest worship is not sensing God's presence near us or offering ourselves to Him, our greatest worship is praising Him for Christ who died to redeem us because of His mercy, grace, and love.

Our worship, therefore, must be grounded in the Gospel. Planning worship around a gospel-centered liturgy (or theme) focuses our worship clearly on the message of God and Christ all through the service, as we are guided by His Word. A gospel liturgy guides us to connect all of the songs and every other element of the service to the gospel by following the message of gospel-centric Scripture texts. The end result is not about following a liturgy, but about responding to God in Worship, as the Scriptures do.

Many churches have followed the popular model of consumer-worship for far too long. Worship isn't something we achieve through the stirring up of emotions through music or motivational charismatic worship leaders. The effectiveness of a worship service is not measured by raised hands or bended knees but simply by whether or not we are responding to the message of who God is. God made salvation simple, and He made worship to be just as simple. Worship that praises God for who He is and what He has done through Christ to save us is deep and meaningful. Authentic worship has less to do with our emotions and more to do with a knowledge of who God is and who His exalted Christ is.

The Bible declares the complete message of the gospel from beginning to end. Sermons and worship services that are guided by a single passage reveal the continuity of the Scriptures as they present the entire Gospel in a single text. While it is possible to present God as Creator from Genesis, the sinfulness of man from Deuteronomy, Salvation through Christ in Romans, and a response of joy from Philippians, the strongest gospel presentation is found a single source of Scripture. This emphasizes the truthfulness of the gospel message as found in God’s Word in many places. The gospel is presented from Genesis to Revelation, but it is also presented in both long and short passages throughout the Bible. The gospel is the common thread that runs through the Scriptures waiting to be discovered.

All of the liturgies on free2worship.com present Scriptures that reveal the gospel. Each scripture outlines the order of the gospel message—God, Man-Sin, Christ and Response. Sometimes a gospel element may be implied rather than directly addressed; for example in the Psalms, the wickedness of the psalmist's enemies may be a representation of all of mankind's sinfulness. Christ in the Old Testament is also often implied as God prepared His people for the coming Messiah. The Old Testament reveals Jesus in people, in symbols, in events, in references to God's steadfast (covenant) love and faithfulness, in prophecies of His coming, and more.

The first and last segments of a Gospel Liturgy, which are the God-section and the Response-section, have a wider range of themes, as compared to the two middle sections, the Man/Sin and Christ-sections which are more fixed and always address the sinfulness of mankind and the redemptive work of Jesus. For this reason, the titles that we use for our gospel liturgies convey what the text reveals about the first and last sections, God and response. Psalm 24:1-6, as an example, reveals in verse 1 that God owns the world and all who dwell in it, and in verse 6 it encourages us to seek God. Therefore the title of the liturgy for Psalm 24:1-6 is "God's Possessions, Our Pursuit of God". Titles formulated in this manner show at a glance what the four gospel aspects of the text are, with the understanding that mankind's sinfulness and the redemptive work of Christ are in every passage. This will be helpful when  searching the liturgies on free2worship.com for a complimentary text to a sermon text. A sermon from Genesis 1, for example, would certainly reference God as Creator, therefore Psalm 24:1-6, which refers to all things as belonging to God, might be a good complimentary text to guide the worship. The best gospel liturgies will always be those that you find in the Scriptures, but the liturgies presented at free2worship are here to use whenever needed, whether to speed up service planning or help aid in the process of learning to see the gospel in various Bible texts.