The ten commandments and turned-over tables. What a great week to be a preacher! Here is the prayer of confession and offertory prayer we are using this week. Prayer of Confession O God, Have mercy on us. You draw us to holy places, and we fail to look for you. You speak to us holy…
Call to Worship (from Romans 4:13-25) The promise to Abraham and Sarah and to their descendants came through faith. The inheritance is based on God’s grace and is for all of us who are connected through the centuries, connected to Abraham and Sarah and all their descendants through faith– Faith in the God who opened…
I’ve been neglecting the blog lately in my efforts toward the Creative Arts Lenten Retreat. We have 28 people doing the retreat this year! I’m really enjoying leading the retreat experience–and now that it’s up and running I have a little more time for the blog. Here is the prayer of confession and assurance of…
This prayer of confession is based on Daniel 3. (I cannot wait to preach this text on Sunday!) Holy One, Sometimes we are like Nebuchadnezzar, wanting to be in charge, desperately and destructively trying to control everyone around us. God of freedom, forgive and transform us. Sometimes we are like the Chaldeans, jealous of those…
Here is the call to worship we will use this week. Our text is Jeremiah 18:1-11. We come to worship God, Creator of mountain, sea, sky, and land. We come to praise God, Fashioner of all creatures–even you, even me. We offer ourselves to God, Who forms and transforms in power with grace. Amen.
For this week’s call to worship, I decided to add to a piece I had written for an earlier Sunday when we were doing the Narrative Lectionary. I edited it a bit and added in the kings and prophets to reflect that we are a bit further along in our journey through scripture. This week…
At Peace Mennonite, we’re back into the Narrative Lectionary. We’ve made it to the prophets. (Whether we survive them or not remains to be seen.) Here’s our call to worship, based on the Message version of Isaiah 1:10-20: God says, “Quit your worship charades. I can’t stand your trivial religious games. When you put on…
This coming Sunday we will have a guest speaker, Stefan Warner, talking about his experiences with Christian Peacemaker Teams in Iraq. Here’s our call to worship: As we gather this morning, let us proclaim: We are people of God’s peace, Seeking the path of Christ. We are people of God’s peace, Longing to live in…
As we prepare to celebrate New Year’s Day this coming Sunday, I am re-posting a New Year’s prayer that I wrote last year. I have formatted the prayer to be read responsively-leader speaks the plain text, congregation the bold, and everyone speaks the bold italics. As always, you are welcome to use this prayer in…
I’m hoping to take the week off between Christmas and New Year’s day, which means I’m doing a lot of worship planning this week. Our opening scripture for New Year’s day will be Ecclesiastes 3: 1, 11-14a. And here is the call to worship: Praise be to God, Creator of time and space! Who has…
Spacious Faith 