Living the Christian Life
Forms of Christian Worship
Worship is how Christians express love and devotion to God. Liturgical worship follows the same set order every time. Anglican churches use the historic Book of Common Prayer (1662) or its modern version, Common Worship; Catholic churches follow the Mass; Orthodox churches use ancient liturgies. Liturgical worship is used for Sunday services, baptisms, weddings and funerals because its familiar structure gives worshippers confidence and links them to centuries of Christian tradition.
Non-liturgical worship has no set text. It is common in Methodist, Baptist and United Reformed churches, where hymns, readings and a sermon can change from week to week to suit the congregation’s needs. Christians also worship informally and individually — through personal prayer, private Bible study or quiet reflection at home — without any minister or set structure at all. This form of worship might happen daily, alongside attendance at a congregational service.
The Book of Common Prayer (1662) is the historic service book of the Church of England, giving set liturgies for Holy Communion, Morning and Evening Prayer, baptism and marriage. It shaped Anglican worship for centuries and is still used in many parish churches today, alongside the modern Common Worship book.
Some denominations reject fixed structure altogether. Pentecostal churches worship spontaneously: services include modern music, clapping, speaking in tongues and prayers offered aloud without warning. There is no prayer book and no fixed order of service. Christians disagree about which approach is best. Supporters of liturgical worship value its consistency and connection to tradition; supporters of Pentecostal and other less-structured worship believe spontaneity allows the Holy Spirit to guide the service more directly and feels more relevant to worshippers’ everyday lives.
The Sacraments
A sacrament (sometimes called an ordinance) is central to Christian life as a whole, marking key moments of faith with a visible, outward sign of God’s grace. Christians disagree about how many sacraments there are. The Thirty-Nine Articles (Article XXV), part of the Church of England’s statement of doctrine, teach that only two sacraments were ‘ordained of Christ our Lord in the Gospel’ — baptism and the Lord’s Supper — and that the other five sacraments recognised by the Catholic Church are ‘not to be counted for Sacraments of the Gospel’. Most Protestant churches follow this view and recognise only two sacraments. Catholic and Orthodox Christians recognise seven: baptism, confirmation, the Eucharist, penance, anointing of the sick, holy orders and matrimony.
Baptism is the sacrament of initiation into the Christian community, practised in some form across almost every denomination. Catholics, Anglicans and Orthodox Christians usually baptise infants, believing it washes away original sin and welcomes the child into the Church. Baptists and many evangelical Christians baptise only believers who personally profess their faith, usually by full immersion as adults, seeing baptism as a public declaration rather than a means of removing sin.
The Eucharist is the one sacrament shared by virtually all Christians, but its meaning is disputed. Catholics teach that the bread and wine truly become the body and blood of Christ. Most Protestants instead see the bread and wine as symbols that recall Christ’s sacrifice, or believe Christ is spiritually present as the community shares the meal in faith. This disagreement about the number and meaning of the sacraments is one of the clearest divisions between Orthodox, Catholic and Protestant Christianity today.
Prayer
Prayer is central to Christian life. In Matthew 6:5–14, Jesus criticises those who pray loudly in public to be seen by others, and instead teaches his disciples to pray privately and gives them a model prayer. Set prayers use fixed words known by the whole community; they are used in liturgical worship and give a sense of unity and tradition. Informal prayer uses the believer’s own words and is often used in private devotion or spontaneous worship, allowing personal thoughts and concerns to be expressed freely. Christians disagree about which type matters more: some value the shared, memorised words of set prayer, while others feel informal prayer better expresses a personal relationship with God.
The Lord’s Prayer (Matthew 6:9–13) is the model prayer Jesus gave his disciples, and the one prayer said by nearly every Christian denomination worldwide at services, baptisms, weddings and funerals. It combines praise of God, submission to his will, a request for daily needs, and a request for forgiveness and protection from evil.
Pilgrimage
Pilgrimage has been part of Christian practice since the early Church. Luke 2:41–43 records Jesus’s own family travelling to Jerusalem every year for the Passover festival, showing that pilgrimage was already part of Jewish and early Christian life. Catholic and Orthodox Christians tend to see pilgrimage as spiritually valuable, believing that visiting a sacred place deepens faith and connects the pilgrim to the history of salvation. Many Protestant Christians disagree, arguing that God is equally present everywhere, so no journey is spiritually necessary.
Four pilgrimage sites matter to Christians. Jerusalem: pilgrims walk the Via Dolorosa, the route to Jesus’s crucifixion, and visit the Church of the Holy Sepulchre. Iona (Scotland): home to a Celtic Christian community founded by St Columba, where pilgrims join in daily prayer and community work. Taizé (France): an ecumenical community drawing young Christians worldwide for simple chants, silence and shared prayer. Walsingham (England): a shrine to Mary, where pilgrims walk the ‘Holy Mile’ to the Slipper Chapel.
Supporters of pilgrimage point to the way a sacred place can bring faith to life: walking the route Jesus walked, or praying in a place where saints once lived, can deepen understanding of the Gospel in a way study alone cannot. Critics, especially in Protestant traditions shaped by the Reformation, are wary of the idea that any physical place is more holy than another, and note that pilgrimage can be costly when that money could instead support the poor. Because of this, pilgrimage remains far more central to Catholic and Orthodox spirituality than to most Protestant churches.
Christian Festivals: Christmas and Easter
The Christian calendar is shaped by two great festivals. Christmas celebrates the incarnation — God becoming human in Jesus. It is preceded by Advent, a time of preparation marked by Advent candles, calendars and special services. Christmas itself is celebrated by every denomination, though the emphasis and style of celebration can vary.
Easter is the most important festival of the Christian year, celebrating Jesus’s resurrection. Holy Week runs from Palm Sunday through the Last Supper on Maundy Thursday and the crucifixion on Good Friday, to Easter Sunday. In 1 Corinthians 15:12–34, Paul insists the resurrection is not optional for Christian belief: if Christ has not been raised, he writes, then Christian preaching and faith are useless. This passage explains why Easter, not Christmas, is treated as Christianity’s central festival.
The Future of the Church: Mission and Evangelism
Mission is the Church’s task of taking the Christian message into the world. Evangelism is one part of mission — directly proclaiming the Gospel. Mark 16:9–20 records Jesus’s command to his followers to ‘go into all the world and preach the gospel to all creation’, and John 20:21–22 records Jesus sending the disciples out as the Father sent him, breathing on them and telling them to receive the Holy Spirit. Christians put this into practice differently: locally through food banks and street outreach, nationally through courses that introduce people to the faith, and globally through mission organisations and the rapid growth of the Church in Africa, Latin America and Asia. Evangelism matters to Christians because they believe the Gospel is good news meant to be shared, not kept private.
The Local Church in the Community
The local parish is the centre of Christian identity and worship for most believers, and its activities show worship being lived out day to day. 1 Peter 5:1–4 instructs church leaders to care for their congregation willingly, as an example to others, rather than for money or through domineering control. Parishes support their local area through outreach work such as food banks, toddler groups and visiting the sick, and through ecumenism — cooperation between denominations through groups such as ‘Churches Together’. Through this combination of leadership, worship and service, the local church helps individual believers grow in faith while also strengthening the wider community around it.
The Church in the Worldwide Community
Beyond the parish, the worldwide Church works for reconciliation between divided or conflicting communities and supports Christians who face persecution for their faith in many parts of the world. Its charitable work is grounded in scripture: 1 Corinthians 13 describes love as patient, kind and never self-seeking, and Matthew 25:31–46 teaches that serving those in need is the same as serving Christ himself. Christian Aid, funded by UK and Irish churches, applies these teachings by working in some of the world’s poorest communities to end poverty and injustice.
Many Christians worldwide face imprisonment, violence or discrimination because of their faith, and the worldwide Church works to support them through prayer, advocacy and practical aid. Reconciliation — bringing together people or groups who are in conflict — is central to this work: the Taizé community in France, for example, was founded with the explicit aim of bringing Catholic, Protestant and Orthodox Christians together in prayer. Christians remain divided over how much weight to give charitable and reconciliation work compared with direct evangelism, but most denominations see the two as connected: serving others is itself a form of proclaiming the Gospel.