Not sure how "churchy" you are; my apologies if I over-explain.

Note: Small Episcopalian congregation. This means one of a set of 15- to 250-year-old offshoots of a 500-year-old offshoot of one of the main branches of the Church.

There is specific clothing kept at the church for worship leaders to wear. It resembles the Sunday best worn by people about 1,500 years ago. The costume accessories come in different symbolic colors, each of which is connected with a theme to be discussed that Sunday. So do the decorations for the altar and the rest of the worship space. There is a schedule of themes and special days, called the liturgical calendar, which is directly descended from earlier versions going back circa 1,300 years.

The worshipers sit in rows of lightly upholstered wooden chairs with an aisle between them that leads to the altar. As the service begins, the worship leaders walk in a procession up the aisle. Some people who lead the service are ordained--they went to school in order to learn how to do pastoral work--but others, including some children, are from the congregation. They bring in a tall golden staff with a cross on the end to put into a stand by the altar, a beautifully bound large-type edition of the Four Gospels (the four accounts of Jesus' life and ministry), and a brass lighter on a long stick. The lighter is for smokeless lamps that look like candles.

While the worship leaders file in, the congregation is singing a hymn. We have an elaborate electric organ, but we can't find a professional organist to play it since our organist moved away. Sometimes we have a pianist for the small piano up front, but usually we use a special music player that is loaded with all of the 700 or so hymns in our big blue songbook. We sing five hymns each service to the accompaniment of a piano or pipe organ track; people who can read music are invited to sing harmony, while everyone else follows the main tune. The hymns range in age from mid-20th century to early 400s. They are chosen to fit the day's theme.

After the processional, we get out our edition of The Book of Common Prayer. This is a book of rituals, Bible passages, and other information that was first composed in England in 1549. It includes the things we should say in order to remind ourselves and each other of who we are and what we believe, and the prayers we should pray even when we don't feel like it or can't come up with the words. The first bit we read out together is corporate confession. This is when we take a minute to think silently about the wrongs we have done in the past week before asking God to help us make a new start. Owning your shit and then starting over with a fresh page is called repentance, and it's very important in most branches of Christianity. Note that the kids leave before we start corporate confession; kids aren't expected to do the heavy stuff.

After the confessional, we have the preaching and teaching part of the service, the adults in the front of the church and the kids in a room in the back, so that everyone gets to hear words they can understand. We adults listen and read along as worship leaders read three passages from the Bible every week. One is from the Hebrew Bible ("Old Testament"), one is from a Gospel, and one is from some other part of the New Testament. In addition, we also recite together three passages that were originally written to be chanted or sung. These include Psalms and other poetic passages from all over the Hebrew Bible. All of these selections are part of the liturgical calendar. We use a two-year liturgical calendar just for the readings so we can read more of the Bible than would be possible in one year of Sundays. As it is, the printed passages cover both sides of a standard sheet of paper.

After that we sing another hymn and hear a brief lecture, called a sermon, which discusses the three prose passages, how they relate, and what they have to tell us today. If an ordained person didn't write the sermon, they read the words of one who did. When the sermon is over, we recite a basic outline of Christian belief, called a creed, to remind ourselves always to compare what the sermon says with what 2,000+ years of Christians have already figured out.

Then it's time to pray. We pray for everyone, even the people we don't like. We give thanks for the good things in our lives, recognize birthdays and other special days, and so on. After that we mark the end of the preaching and teaching part of the service by taking a minute to circulate around and say hi to everybody, using the formula "Peace be with you." Announcements of upcoming church events follow.

The rest of the worship service is called Communion or Holy Eucharist. It's a meditative ritual rather than a teaching moment. We see it as anamnesis, which is to say, a way of remembering a moment in time by re-creating it. We begin with another hymn, during which congregation members walk around the seats with baskets. In the old days people would put envelopes with checks or cash in the baskets. These days it's a symbolic act because people mostly pay online. The money goes to pay our full-time ordained people, keep the church building in repair, and run our programs (a subsidized apartment for a disabled single parent, two scholarships for students in countries where you have to pay to go to elementary school, and warm clothes and meals for clients at the homeless shelter and domestic violence shelter). There aren't many of us, so if our ordained people weren't retired from earlier careers that provide good retirement incomes, we couldn't hire even one of them, much less three who can fill in for one another.

Anyway, the service continues with a recitation of the events surrounding the last time Jesus had supper with his students, at which time he told them to have bread and wine with one another regularly in order to remember him and his work. The worship leaders and the congregation take turns reading out the words. The children come in to join in the sharing of bread and wine, after which we sing another themed hymn. At the end are more prayers that are designed to gently lay down the energies we raised up during the ritual so we're not drifting around in a haze. A final hymn is sung as the worship team goes back down the aisle. The leader says a blessing at the door to the back of the church.

Then we all head to the back to have hot coffee, AKA The Other Episcopalian Sacrament, along with tasty snacks prepared by a volunteer from the congregation. Sometimes there's a birthday cake to share, or a congratulation or condolence card to sign for a congregation member. We talk about our lives and about the sermon, help clean up, and head out into the world.