In-Person Worship
We’d love to see you in person at Christ the Good Shepherd Lutheran Church on Sundays at 10 a.m.!
Come as you are – everybody is welcome. Our “pray-ground” next to the sanctuary offers parents, grandparents and children the opportunity to worship together.
After our Sunday Service, we welcome you to our Coffee Hour in the Fellowship Hall!
Online Worship
The Sunday Services are livestreamed on Facebook but you don’t need a Facebook account to view the Livestream. We invite you to join us at 10 a.m. every Sunday!
What to Expect at Sunday Worship
As Lutheran-flavored Christians, our worship strives to be grounded in historical expressions of the universal, catholic Church, while, at the same time, we look outward to what is new and relevant to our context in the greater New Haven, Connecticut, area in the 21st century. We sing, we pray, we share our lives, we experience God and God’s promises proclaimed.
If you’re a little more curious about what worship is like at Christ the Good Shepherd, think of it as a flowing stream. A stream is never the same but is always changing. A stream has an unchangeable connection to its source but also has an ultimate destination. Just like that, in our worship we participate in what is quite old and traditional, and what is new and adaptive. For example, on Sundays we confess the historical creeds of the universal, catholic Church (Apostles, Nicene, Athanasian), we follow the yearly calendar of seasons and special days handed down to us from the Western tradition of the Church (things like Advent leading to Christmas, Lent leading to Holy Week and Easter). But we also are casual and impromptu. Sharing our unique and specific joys and concerns as the service begins, we might offer a farewell one Sunday, a welcome to new members on the next and, if you’re lucky, you might even catch one of our very own community members sharing a message or a sermon during the service.
We believe Sunday morning is more than a time for praise and adoration (though this is vitally important). In worship we believe that we really, actually, encounter God. In God’s Word proclaimed in preaching and scripture, and Christ’s physical presence in, with and under the bread and wine of the Eucharist meal, we experience the Holy Spirit in all the ways God in scripture has promised to be with us.
Last but not least, a large part of how we gather to worship God and celebrate our experiences of the Holy Spirit is by singing. Some of the tunes we use are brand new, played on guitars, piano and other instruments; some are ancient or from medieval Europe, played on the pipe organ (our organ is actually a very fancy synthesizer, designed to sound like a pipe organ, but you get the idea). We have a small and spirited choir who leads us in song, both old and new. Some of our music is from across the globe, some coming from the roots of the American or the Black American church, and some songs come to us from Germany or Scandinavia, the lands where the reforms proposed to the Roman church by Martin Luther and his followers first took off.
Not a Member?
Not a problem! There is no prerequisite for participating in any of our worship services or events. If you are interested in becoming a member, reach out to Pastor Joshua Sullivan at pastor@christgoodshepherdlutheran.org or in person!