Markham Street Baptist Church
Friday, October 04, 2024
Helping People To Experience And Express God's Love
What Biblical Worship Is
Worship of God is the most fundamental value we can pursue in our lives. At Markham Street, we believe that worship is all of life and must be saturated in biblical truth and must proceed from a passionate heart. Worship must permeate all that the church is and does. In the end, Markham Street has learned that we cannot live only for ourselves nor can it be only concerned about ourself; we affirm that we strive to be highly focused on exalting Christ through a life of authentic, true and heartfelt worship.
We believe corporate worship has to be founded on Scripture. We choose songs that are biblically accurate and doctrinally sound regardless of the popularity or age of the song. We also focus on being vertical in our corporate worship times, meaning that, we structure our services as times to prioritize and exalt Christ above everything else. While we value horizontal relationships with each other and with the lost world, we feel that our corporate worship time should be focused on and intentionally exalt high the name of Jesus Christ.
We also strive to play the music in a way that is supportive of the lyrics. We want the music to be a supplement to the truth, instead of a distraction from it. Our style is a mixing blend of traditional and contemporary elements. We are primarily a band-driven ministry, meaning, that we strive to incorporate any musical instrument our people can play as part of our music ministry.  Our song mixture varies from week to week but usually has both modern and traditional elements included. However, any song we use will be fit to the strengths of our musicians and into a sound that fits our band and our church. Markham Street is a unique place in that we ultimately realize that style is not important to God. We affirm that theologically deep and Christ-centered lyrics are what is important and is what drives our worship time.
Songs we Sing
We have included for you a week to week listing of the songs that we sing at Markham Street. We encourage you to acquire, download and listen to these songs as a part of your everyday life. Any song that we sing during our Sunday service is not meant to be sung only during that service, but is meant to serve as a launching point for the songs to become a continuous, renewable melody deep within your soul.
You will notice, in reviewing these songs from week to week, that we are not primarily concerned with when a song was written or when it was incorporated into the hymnody of the church. We believe that all songs are potentially usable provided that they are Christ-exalting, man humbling songs.
 
The Bible speaks of bowing, shouting, lifting hands, and clapping, as well as being still and silent. All are appropriate forms of worship. From week to week, our responses in worship will vary according to the tone of the service.
 
We usually stand during the music portion of our worship service unless otherwise directed.