Sunday - order of service
Present Order of Services in The Mother Church and Branch Churches
SUNDAY SERVICES
1. Prelude
2. 1st Hymn.
3. Reading a Scriptural Selection.
4. Silent Prayer, followed by the audible repetition of the Lord’s Prayer with its spiritual interpretation.
5. 2nd Hymn.
6. Announcing necessary notices.
7. Solo.
8. Reading the Explanatory Note*.
9. Announcing the subject of the Lesson-Sermon, and reading the Golden Text.
10. Reading the Scriptural Selection, entitled “Responsive Reading,” alternately by the First Reader and the congregation.
11. Reading the Lesson-Sermon. (After the Second Reader reads the Bible references of the first Section of the Lesson, the First Reader makes the following announcement: “As announced in the explanatory note, I shall now read correlative passages from the Christian Science textbook, Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures by Mary Baker Eddy.”)
12. Offertory/Collection.
13. 3rd Hymn.
14. Reading the Scientific Statement of Being, and the correlative Scripture according to I John 3:1–3.
15. Pronouncing Benediction. Amen.
16. Postlude
On the first Sunday of each month Article VIII, Sect. 1, A Rule for Motives and Acts, is to be read.
Manual of the Mother Church, p. 120:1-18 (np)
This week's Bible Lesson
* Explanatory Note
Friends:
The Bible and the Christian Science textbook are our only preachers. We shall now read Scriptural texts, and their correlative passages from our denominational textbook; these comprise our sermon.
The canonical writings, together with the word of our textbook, corroborating and explaining the Bible texts in their spiritual import and application to all ages, past, present, and future, constitute a sermon undivorced from truth, uncontaminated and unfettered by human hypotheses, and divinely authorized.