God gives us various means to grow: prayer and Scripture, silence and solitude, suffering and service.  But the huge foundational means is public worship.  Spiritual growth cannot take place in isolation.  It is not a private thing between the Christian and God.  In worship, we come before God who loves us in the presence of the others whom he also loves.  In worship, more than at any other time, we set ourselves in deliberate openness to the action of God and the need of the neighbor, both of which require us to grow up to the fullness of the stature of Christ, who is both God and man for us.  Regular, faithful worship is as essential to the growing Christian as food and shelter to the growing child.  Worship is the light and air in which spiritual growth takes place.

Eugene H. Peterson, Living the Message

Order of Worship, February 7 2007

Redeemer Presbyterian Church of New Orleans