Sunday School
Beginning at 9:30 am we meet together for a more interactive time of teaching from the Bible. The adults gather in the main sanctuary, while the children ages 2-13 are taught in smaller classes held throughout the building. In the adult Sunday school classes we learn the truths of scripture and how they practically shape every area of our lives. This time is more intimate than the main service and questions are encouraged. The Sunday school hour ends at 10:30 leaving a half hour to talk and spend time with one another before the larger morning worship service begins.

Morning Worship Service
Just before 11:00am the ushers begin encouraging everyone to take their seats in the main sanctuary. At 11:00 the pastor and the worship leader enter and seat themselves on the platform to lead us in the worshipping of the Lord together. The morning service is by far our largest gathering with usually around 250-275 people in attendance. The format of the service is basically the same every week with some variations in order. After an opening greeting and a few announcements we spend about a half hour in public reading of scripture, corporate prayer, and singing songs of praise. The last hour of the service is devoted to the preaching of God’s Word. The sermons are usually 45-55 minutes long, and the morning service ends somewhere around 12:30pm.

• Singing
  We try to incorporate songs that are both old and new into our worship service. Currently we sing a mixture of older hymns from the 16th-19th century and contemporary praise songs.
• Scripture Reading
  In our 2 public Scripture readings we feed our souls with the truths of God’s word by reading first from the Psalms and then from the NT.
• Prayer
  We spend a considerable amount of time during the service praying together as the gathered people of God. Our first prayer time usually focuses on thanksgiving, adoration, and confession. Our second prayer time generally centers more upon petitioning God regarding ministry, individual needs, other churches, government, the community etc.
• Sermon
  Our pastors are committed to expository preaching. In other words, they are not going to speak about their own opinions or ideas. Instead their sermons involve taking a passage from the Bible (whether from the Old or New Testaments), explaining what it means, and helping the congregation see how the truths of God from that passage should shape and impacts their lives. All of the preaching at IBC ultimately seeks to be centered upon Christ and the gospel.

Our Sunday evening service begins at 5:00pm and normally finishes around 6:30pm. The format for the service is virtually the same as our morning service but the content is different. We sing a new set of songs, read a new set of scriptures, and hear another sermon from a different passage of the Bible. Often the pastors will be preaching messages through one book of the Bible in the morning service and a different book in the evening service. The reason we have two different services on the Lord’s Day is that we want to take full advantage of this break from our normal weekly labors to utilize God’s means for our spiritual growth as Christians.

On Wednesdays, starting at 6:30PM, we have a devotional and prayer meeting which ends at 8PM. Part of the year we have a shortened prayer meeting that starts Wednesdays at 6:30PM and nurture groups which start at 7:30pm and which end at 8:30PM. During the hour of corporate prayer we generally pray for items in four categories: (1) the up-coming Sunday worship services, (2) general matters ranging from ministries of the church to state and local government officials, (3) health related needs of people, (4) and various other personal requests from members of the church. On the first Wednesday of each month we spend the whole time praying for the Lord’s work worldwide. When we have nurture groups we break up into three different nurture groups which meet in different parts of the building. Each nurture group works through a book together. Usually the nurture groups will run for about three months and then we will take a break for a month. During the months that we do not have nurture groups the Wednesday night meeting begins at 6:30 and ends at 8:00pm. It begins with a thirty minute devotional and ends with the normal one hour of corporate prayer. Usually our Wednesday night meetings have a much smaller group than the Sunday services, typically between 40-60 people (although we are always looking to see it grow!). There is always a good opportunity for fellowship afterwards.