Our Rhythms
What to Expect on a Sunday
Our faith community gathers together in our beautiful community space on Sundays at 10:00am for teaching, prayer and worship… to learn more about God, ourselves, and the world. Everyone is welcome. We are a diverse, hospitable, inclusive community. The traditional elements of Christian worship are incorporated, but they’re expressed in a way people can connect with – whether they share our faith or not. Wherever you are in your faith journey (or life journey), please feel free to join us some Sunday.
We try to start promptly at 10am, and that means people start showing up between 9:30am and 10am. Coffee and tea will typically be ready by 9:45am in the cafe area.
The first half of our service tends to take place in the auditorium with everyone together. In the middle of our gathering, we take time to connect with one another, to get to know people, and grab a drink. During this time, our kids also head off to Kidzone (our kids ministry program).
While our kids are in Kidzone, our service continues in the auditorium. Here our focus is on the teaching portion of our time together.
The Church Calendar
We try our best to follow the various seasons in the Church calendar. (When we write “Church” here, we don’t mean Hillside, but instead we’re referring to the global Church gathered across the world and for the past two thousand years.) In that calendar are the seasons of Advent, Christmas, Epiphany, Lent, Easter, Pentecost, and the rest of the time between Pentecost and Advent. Following this calendar of seasons helps us stay connected to the big story of God made known through the person of Jesus.
Teaching
Our Teaching Team
We take a team approach to the role of teaching at Hillside. As a community that celebrates diversity, we strive to ensure we have different voices that each point to Jesus. Our pastors provide leadership to our teaching team and we try to have at least one member of our Elder Board on our teaching team.
Links to Past Sundays
We post the teaching portion of our Sunday services on Youtube. You can find them all under the playlist Weekend Teaching. You can typically find the focus of our teaching on on social media by following us on Instagram or Facebook.
Some of Our Practices
Below are some of the formative practices we currently prioritize as a community.
Music & Worship
At Hillside we sing songs together that reflect and express the designs of a loving Creator. Worship through music is not just expressive but also formative as it brings our community into a conversational encounter with the living God. Music gives voice to our stories and the story of God at work in the world. Worship is a practice at Hillside because it weaves us into the story of God reconciling the world to himself in Christ. You can read more about this practice here.
Monthly Potlucks
Once a month (on the last Sunday of the each month), we host a community potluck at the end of our service. Potluck is a funny church word meaning a shared meal where people contribute to the meal by bringing something to share. Sometimes we provide a theme for the potluck so that everyone knows how to contribute. For the sake of caring for the world we live on, we try to remind people to bring their own dishes and cutlery so we can cut down on disposable dishes. You can read more about this practice here.
Eucharist (Communion)
The Eucharistic feast is sometimes known by other names including Communion or the Lord’s Supper. It is a meal that is celebrated by the Church across the world to remember the last supper Jesus had with his friends and followers before he died. There he took these ordinary parts of a meal – bread and wine/juice – and he gave them new meaning to connect with the new way God would relate to people through Jesus. At Hillside, we try to be as inclusive as possible so that nobody feels left out because we see in the gospels that Jesus didn’t want anyone to be excluded at the table. This means that everyone is invited to eat and drink if they feel comfortable doing so. You can read more about this practice here.
