This is the fourth in this series. Here are the first.
In this post I'll be dealing with these elements of our service:
Psalter Reading
Hymn from the Psalms
Scripture Reading
Hymn
Gospel Reading
We have three Scripture readings each week. While it is true that you can overdo anything, it's hard to have too much Bible in a worship service. This, obviously, is one of the prime ways in which God speaks to His people, so it makes sense to take advantage of it. The first of our readings is a Psalm. We work our way through the Psalms reading one each week unless it is too long, in which case we might take two or more weeks. This reading is done responsively with the leader and the congregation alternating a verse at a time. There is something special about the Psalms. Here is one place in the Bible where you can get a really good look into the soul of a saint as he deals with life (the good, the bad, the ugly) as a believer. For the second reading we work our way through a book of the Bible, reading a bit each week. As I write this we've just begun 1 Samuel. The last reading is from a Gospel. How can you go wrong reading about what Jesus did and said while He walked the earth? Interspersed between the readings - remember this is a conversation - we sing hymns. The first of these two hymns will be a rendition of a Psalm put to music while the second of these will be any other hymn.
Bible literacy these days is not very good. Reading lots of Bible can help to change that. But even when a group of people know their Bibles well reading lots of it in worship works because one thing that such people enjoy is the Bible. And it helps that there's a verse: 'Until I come, devote yourself to the public reading of Scripture, to exhortation, to teaching.' (1 Timothy 4:13 )