Saturday Services

The Saturday Evening service (Called SEEDS) at Kalamazoo First Presbyterian Church begins at 5:00 p.m. and focuses on growing the community in a new time and in new ways.  All who come to worship (including children) are welcome to take notes, color outside the lines, or tweet their thoughts as we celebrate God’s love together.

What is Alternative Worship, Anyway?

I know many of you have questions about what goes on at this Saturday worship service.
The best answer I can give you is to come check it out for yourself (and bring a friend!).
We meet in the Gathering Place at 5:00 p.m. every Saturday.

We call our Saturday evening worship service SEEDS (Seeing God’s Emerging and Evolving Direction and Sustaining Love) because we see it as a place to plant seeds of faith and to nurture one another. We meet in the Gathering Place, rather than the Sanctuary, so that we may be more flexible in our seating arrangements. We are casual and comfortable. We use a mixture of traditional and contemporary music, including – but not limited to – gospel, jazz, classical, and Taize. Many weeks, we have a semi-traditional order of worship, with a call to worship, confession and assurance of pardon, scripture, response to scripture, prayer, communion (often, but not every week), and benediction. The order is traditional, but the elements within the order are often not. Instead of a sermon, we have a conversation, and verbal responses are encouraged throughout the service. Some weeks, we do something completely outside the traditional worship box. A couple of weeks ago, we did interactive prayer stations. The idea is to make worship accessible and interactive. We are a fidget-friendly zone. We provide coloring pages and colored pencils and encourage note-taking, doodling, or whatever is most comfortable, as long as it is to the glory of God and not totally disruptive to others. Each month we choose a theme word and see where the theme takes us. October is Fear, November is Gratitude, and December is Preparation. I hope you will join us some time and let others know about this new opportunity for worship!

— Rev. Chrissy Westbury