The Small Habits That Shape Reverent Worship
Pastoral Reflections on BCO 49
On Polity Matters we are currently working our way through the final section of the Book of Church Order, so all of our newest episodes are about worship. I thought it would be worthwhile to reflect on these matters here, as they pertain to the aim of this blog as a whole. What follows is a reflection on BCO 49.
If BCO 47 helps us think about who rules worship, and BCO 48 helps us think about when God calls His people to gather, then BCO 49 helps us think about how we come. Not mainly the order of service in a bulletin, but the manner in which we enter and participate. This chapter is trying to cultivate a certain kind of worshiper and, by extension, a certain kind of culture.
BCO 49 is strikingly ordinary. It deals with arriving on time. Staying through the benediction. How we enter the room. What we do in the moments before worship begins. How families sit together. In other words, it deals with the kinds of things many Christians assume are “small,” and therefore not especially spiritual. But isn’t true that faithfulness in worship is usually cultivated through small, repeated, embodied acts? Regularity doesn’t materialize out of thin air. Reverence doesn’t just happen because you want it to. Corporate attentiveness doesn’t magically descend when the opening hymn starts. These things are catechized into us, week after week, through the patterns outlined in this chapter.
The world catechizes us into individualism: “my preferences, my schedule, my spirituality, my convenience.” BCO 49 pushes against that current. It calls us back to corporate, covenant worship.
And underneath all of it is the same profound assumption that the last few chapters share: when the church gathers, God is meeting with His people. If that’s true, then it’s not silly to talk about preparation, punctuality, reverence, and attentiveness.
49-1: Attendance and Prepared Hearts
“When the congregation is to meet for public worship, the people (having before prepared their hearts thereunto) ought all to come and join therein; not absenting themselves from the public ordinances through negligence, or upon pretence of private meetings.”
This first paragraph begins exactly where we need to begin: before Sunday morning.
The people of God are not simply supposed to attend worship, but to prepare for worship. If we’re going to meet with the living God, we should not treat it casually. The people ought all to come and join therein. Public worship is not an optional add-on for those who happen to feel like it. For those who are able, the stated assembly is a duty tied to the visible life of the church.
Morton Smith reads this as a guard against a perennial temptation: substituting private spirituality for corporate obedience, especially under the guise of sincerity or personal preference. That’s why this line is here: “not absenting themselves… upon pretence of private meetings.” This is not an attack on family worship, private prayer, or small-group meetings. It’s simply saying: none of those replace the stated gathering of the church.
The flesh beckons us to say, “I can miss worship because I’m still spiritual,” or “I’ll catch up later,” or “My Christianity is really about my personal relationship with Jesus; church is a helpful extra.” But the BCO is trying to re-form that natural instinct. The gathered worship of God’s people is not a consumer product you sample when convenient. It is the covenant assembly of the church.
That’s why Hebrews 10:25 is so often paired with this principle (even when it’s not explicitly quoted): “not neglecting to meet together… but encouraging one another.” Public worship is one of God’s ordinary means for keeping His people encouraged, steady, repentant, and hopeful.
Preparation is not optional
I was once advised that on the Lord’s Day I could skip personal devotions because I’ve got public worship. But BCO 49-1 presses us the other direction. Private preparation supports public worship. You don’t “replace” one with the other; you let private devotion and Saturday-night wisdom prepare you to gather well with God’s people.
Sometimes that preparation is spiritual in the more obvious ways: prayer, Scripture, quiet reflection, repentance, expectation. Sometimes it’s simple and mundane. It’s planning. It’s foresight. It’s deciding ahead of time that worship is not a question mark on your calendar. You don’t want to wake up Sunday morning and decide whether you’re going to church. You go to bed knowing you’re going.
A pastoral question: how do we address irregular attendance?
Some people need tender encouragement because providence has genuinely battered them. Some need instruction because they’ve been discipled by individualism and don’t realize what they’re losing. And some need exhortation, because negligence can become a settled habit that slowly hollows out the Christian life.
If you’re not regularly worshiping with the congregation when worship is offered and called by the session, I would genuinely urge you to try an experiment. Attend every stated service you can for a month or two and see what happens to your soul. It’s unlikely you won’t be strengthened.
49-2: Punctuality and the Benediction
“Let the people assemble at the appointed time, that all being present at the beginning they may unite with one heart in all the parts of public worship. Let none unnecessarily depart until after the blessing be pronounced.”
Why does the BCO care about the beginning and the ending of worship?
Because it’s trying to protect the unity and wholeness of the congregation’s worship, the emphasis here is not efficiency. It’s not a corporate obsession with productivity. It’s the conviction that public worship is not a series of isolated moments that individuals dip into when convenient. It is a shared act: “that all being present at the beginning they may unite with one heart in all the parts of public worship.”
Late arrival and early departure do something subtle but real. They train us to treat worship as something like a playlist: catch the parts you like, miss the parts you don’t, and still assume you’ve essentially “done it.” But the BCO is saying: don’t do that. Be present together. Worship together. Receive the whole service as one unified offering of praise, prayer, hearing, and blessing.
Cultivating punctuality without resentment
This is not always easy. People have children. People have health issues. Some need to leave a few minutes early because navigating a crowd is physically difficult. There are reasonable exceptions, and pastors should speak about this with compassion.
At the same time, the chapter is here for a reason. A “culture of being late” doesn’t just happen. It is trained by repeated patterns. One of the simplest pastoral strategies is also the most obvious: if you say the service starts at a time, start at that time. Congregations are conditioned by what is actually practiced.
And pastors should also be careful to steward people’s time well. A service that consistently and unnecessarily runs far beyond what the congregation can reasonably plan for can create its own temptations and resentments. That doesn’t mean worship is governed by the stopwatch. It means leaders should be thoughtful, consistent, and predictable, so the congregation can structure life around worship rather than constantly bracing for chaos.
49-3: Entering Worship with Reverence and Prayer
“Let the people upon entering the church take their seats in a decent and reverent manner, and engage in a silent prayer for a blessing upon themselves, the minister, and all present, as well as upon those who are unable to attend worship.”
This might be the most practically rich paragraph in the chapter, because it gives us a window into what the BCO expects of the worshiper’s spiritual posture right before worship begins.
The instruction is simple:
Enter and take your seat decently and reverently.
Engage in silent prayer—for yourself, for the minister, for the congregation, and for those unable to attend.
Worshipers come praying, not consuming
This practice fosters expectancy. It trains a congregation away from consumer instincts. Worship is not something that “happens to you” while you sit back and evaluate it. It is something you enter prayerfully, asking God to bless, asking God to help, asking God to meet with His people.
And notice the scope of the prayer. It pushes you out of yourself:
Pray for yourself (because you need the Lord).
Pray for the minister (because preaching is a spiritual work and the preacher is a man).
Pray for all present (because worship is corporate).
Pray for those unable to attend (because the body remembers its members).
What are we actually doing before worship starts?
In many churches, the answer is: a little of everything, and not much of it is oriented toward God. That’s not always sinful, it’s just the reality of distracted lives. But BCO 49-3 offers a gentle corrective: even a short space of quiet prayer can reorient the heart.
I return again and again to the same short portion of a Psalm in that brief window—30 to 60 seconds of reorientation—and then praying. The point isn’t that everyone must do that. The point is that regular patterns help. Repetition can be a friend here. It builds muscle memory for reverence.
And that’s the beauty of this chapter: it gives principles that can be applied with flexibility. Churches structure this differently (announcements, preludes, pastoral exhortations, quiet moments) but the aim is the same: come into worship as worshipers.
49-4: Reverence, Godly Fear, and Families Worshiping Together
“All who attend public worship are expected to be present in a spirit of reverence and godly fear, forbearing to engage in any conduct unbecoming to the place and occasion. Since the family, as ordained by God, is the basic institution in society, and God in the Covenant graciously deals with us, not just as individuals but also as families, it is important and desirable that families worship together.”
This paragraph ties together demeanor and theology.
Reverence flows from knowing Whom we are meeting
“Godly fear” is not dread. It is humble awareness of God’s holiness and authority. It is the recognition that worship is not casual. It is not entertainment. It is not a hangout with religious content. It is covenantal meeting: God calls; God speaks; God blesses; God receives praise.
That’s why “conduct unbecoming” matters. The BCO doesn’t reduce worship to external behavior, but it does insist that our behavior should match the reality of the moment. There are things that distract, trivialize, or undermine the gathered act of worship.
The point is not to create a culture of constant suspicion and scolding. The point is to cultivate an environment where people are helped—not hindered—in reverent attentiveness.
This takes pastoral wisdom. It involves teaching, modeling, gentle correction, and patience. It also involves recognizing that different cultures and contexts express “reverence” in different external ways. But the internal aim should remain: a spirit of reverence and godly fear.
Covenant theology and families in worship
The second half of the paragraph is one of the clearest statements in the BCO connecting worship practice to covenant theology: God deals with us “not just as individuals but also as families,” therefore “it is important and desirable that families worship together.”
This is not nostalgia. It’s not a preference for a certain “traditional vibe.” It’s the outworking of how God ordinarily works: through covenant promises, household discipleship, generational faithfulness, and the gathered church’s shared life.
The word “desirable” is important. It leaves room for pastoral wisdom in difficult circumstances. But it establishes a strong norm: families together in worship are not an inconvenience to be managed; they are part of the church’s ordinary life.
And yes, that raises practical challenges. Parents wrestle with squirmy children. People worry about being a distraction. Churches differ on how they handle nurseries, crying rooms, and the like. But the instinct of BCO 49-4 is not “get children out of the way.”
In my own pastoral experience, one of the most important cultural signals a church can send is this: the presence of children is not a threat to worship; it’s a sign of life. That doesn’t mean anything goes. Children should be guided and trained, because love for the congregation includes not making worship chaotic. But it does mean we should not treat children as intruders. They are members of households God has placed within the covenant community, and they belong among God’s people.
What BCO 49 Is and Isn’t Trying to Do
BCO 49 is not trying to micromanage worship.
It’s not giving us a script, a checklist, or a personality test for “good Presbyterians.”
It is however trying to shape habits; to form a culture of reverent worship among God’s people. And at every point it assumes something simple and profound: when the church gathers, God is meeting with His people.
If worship is really a covenantal meeting between the living God and His redeemed people, then the “ordinary” things BCO 49 addresses are not small at all:
preparation matters
punctuality matters
prayerful entry matters
reverent attentiveness matters
This chapter is, in a quiet way, a call to take worship seriously, because it is precisely in these ordinary, repeated, embodied acts that God forms a people who know how to meet with Him.