Worship has been described as "the primary work of the congregation." It is certainly critical in the life and ministry of the church. Worship is the one activity that involves the entire congregation. It is our primary contact with our community. When people are looking for a church they start by attending worship. And often it is worship that becomes the deciding factor in determining whether or not a person will continue a relationship with a church. Most people consider worship to be the primary motivation and encouragement for the life of faith.
At First Presbyterian worship is a vibrant blend of worship styles, music, the dramatic and visual arts, and participatory engagement of the congregation. Our aim is to capture the energy and spiritual quality of contemporary worship while embracing the richness of traditional worship.
Worship design and content are highly regarded at First Presbyterian. Staff resources are devoted to the careful planning of each service. We began 2025 with the annual worship theme: “Rooted in Faith, Growing in Grace”. A monthly theme is selected to support that theme. Recent themes include:
A Message From Pastor RJ Leek
04/24/26
ARCHAEOLOGY & FAITH The Megiddo Prayer Hall The Oldest Christian Worship Space Ever Discovered
Beneath the floor of an Israeli prison in the Jezreel Valley — the same plain the Book of Revelation calls Armageddon — archaeologists have uncovered the earliest Christian prayer hall ever found, and with it the earliest physical inscription declaring Jesus to be God. The find has been called “the greatest discovery since the Dead Sea Scrolls.”
THE DISCOVERY
In 2005, inmates from Megiddo Prison in northern Israel — working under the supervision of Israeli archaeologist Yotam Tepper — uncovered the remains of a small third-century Christian worship hall in the ancient Roman town of Legio (Kefar ‘Othnay). At its center lay a remarkably well-preserved Greek mosaic floor, roughly 16 by 32 feet. Pottery, coins, and the style of the lettering date the room to about A.D. 230. Around A.D. 305 — likely during the persecution under Diocletian — believers carefully covered the mosaic with plaster and tiles to protect it. It lay hidden for 1,700 years.
WHAT THE MOSAIC SAYS
Three Greek inscriptions name seven people — five of them women — who sustained this early congregation. Gaianus, a Roman centurion of the Sixth Ironclad Legion, paid for the floor “at his own expense.” The craftsman Brutius laid the tiles. A woman named Akeptous donated the communion table, and her dedication reads: “The God-loving Akeptous has offered the table to God Jesus Christ as a memorial.” A fourth panel asks the community to remember four more women — Primilla, Cyriaca, Dorothea, and Chreste — a striking glimpse into the leadership and generosity of women in the earliest Church.
The Akeptous Inscription “The God-loving Akeptous has offered the table to God Jesus Christ as a memorial.” The Fish Medallion Two fish at the mosaic’s center — Ichthys, an acrostic for “Jesus Christ, Son of God, Savior.”
WHY THIS MATTERS: NICAEA DID NOT INVENT JESUS’ DIVINITY
A popular modern theory — made famous by novels like The Da Vinci Code and repeated in countless
documentaries — claims that Jesus’ divinity was invented at the Council of Nicaea in A.D. 325, when
Emperor Constantine allegedly pressured bishops into voting Jesus a god. The Megiddo mosaic demolishes
that theory with a single piece of stone. Dated to roughly A.D. 230 — nearly a century before Nicaea,
and a lifetime before Christianity was even legal — it shows ordinary believers (a Roman centurion, a
tradesman, a group of named women) pooling their resources to lay the words “God Jesus Christ” into
the floor of their worship space. Nicaea did not manufacture this belief. It confirmed what the Church had
already been confessing for generations.
For the Church today, the Megiddo Prayer Hall is more than an artifact. It is a witness. Beneath the soil of Armageddon, in the quiet of a hidden room where persecuted Christians once broke bread at a shared table, a woman named Akeptous declared in stone what Scripture had always proclaimed: Jesus is God. That confession has never been a late invention. It is the foundation.