At each of our three Eucharist services on Sunday, we repeat the essential message of our worship, welcoming all to partake of God’s gifts. We use both Rite I and Rite II Eucharist settings but see ourselves as a broad-based, Rite II church, with a membership that comes from many different denominations. We welcome hearing a variety of voices from the pulpit, including visiting clergy and our own parishioners.

Bishop Shannon at Holy Cross
Bishop Shannon Johnston prepares to baptize members of the congregation.
  • Our 8:00 service is traditional, quiet, and contemplative, with no music.
  • Our 9:00 service, which generally draws the largest attendance, is oriented toward families with children. About twice a month, the service includes our Guitar Group, which offers a ministry of contemporary, folk, and traditional songs of worship and praise with guitar, piano, violin, and voices. This service regularly features the two Children’s Choirs, ages 3-5 and 6-10 (around 18 children total) who sing five or six times a year.
  • Our 11:00 service features the adult choir, with a full complement of hymns and service music, including a sung psalm, and generally an offertory anthem. We include some chanting in our services throughout the church year and would love to have a rector comfortable in singing solo! If not, there are choir members who can serve as cantor for service music like the Great Litany and Exsultet.

We would be interested in reviving our past practice of a brief Eucharist at noon each Wednesday.

The flexibility of our sanctuary, with interlocking chairs that can be arranged in several configurations, lets us change things up for certain seasons. During the summer months, we have only two Sunday services and have sometimes set up the chairs in a different way (church in the round, for example). We have an outdoor chapel on a shaded lawn that we use for occasional summer services (often in conjunction with a parish picnic) and for the Blessing of the Animals. The covered porch outside the narthex gives us an alternative for bad weather as well as a sheltered place to start Palm Sunday and Easter Vigil processions.

Our music program has featured Lessons and Carols, a Children's Christmas musical, a jazz mass, and special music for Pentecost and the Palm Sunday Passion reading.

Our volunteer adult choir, small but strong, is the heart of our music program. In addition to organ and piano, our choirs sometimes are accompanied by instrumentalists (recorder, flute, violin) from the congregation or by the Guitar Group. For some special services, we hire brass or string players or a harpist along with professional singers to augment our core group. Our music program has featured—in addition to solid weekly support of worship—Advent and Christmas Lessons and Carols, a Children's Christmas musical, a jazz mass, special music for Pentecost and the Palm Sunday Passion reading, and an occasional Sunday Choral Evensong.