Our inclusive language liturgies generally set the structure and theme of Sunday morning worship. Since announcements are an integral part of our life together, we offer some guidelines for those who make announcements towards the end of worship.
2017 Lent – Is God With Us? Is God Among Us?
GATHERING.
ENTRANCE
REFLECTION
The most amazing fact about Jesus . . . is that he found God in disorder and imperfection—and told us that we must do the same or we would never be content on this earth.
Richard Rohr,
The Naked Now: Learning to See as the Mystics See, pg 1.
.
2017 Epiphany – Loving Our Enemies
GATHERING.
ENTRANCE
REFLECTION
Wage peace with your breath.
Breathe in firemen and rubble,
breathe out whole buildings
and flocks of redwing blackbirds.
Breathe in terrorists and breathe out sleeping children
and freshly mown fields.
Breathe in confusion and breathe out maple trees.
from the poem, “Wage Peace,” by Judyth Hill
http://www.judythhill.com/home.html
2016 Advent – What’s Coming?
GATHERING
ENTRANCE
REFLECTION
Where refugees seek deliverance that never comes,
And the heart consumes itself, as if it would live,
Where little children age before their time,
And life wears down the edges of the mind,
Where the old man sits with mind grown cold,
While bones and sinew, blood and cell, go slowly down to death,
Where fear companions each day’s life,
And Perfect Love seems long delayed,
CHRISTMAS IS WAITING TO BE BORN:
In you, in me, in all mankind.
Howard Thurman, “Christmas Is Waiting to be Born”
in The Mood of Christmas & Other Celebrations (1973, re-issued 1985), p 23
2016 Jubilee – Still a Vision
GATHERING
ENTRANCE
REFLECTION
One of the most poisonous of all Satan’s whispers is simply, “Things will never change.” That lie kills expectation, trapping our heart forever in the present. To keep desire alive and flourishing, we must renew our vision for what lies ahead. Things will not always be like this. Jesus has promised to “make all things new.” Eye has not seen, ear has not heard all that God has in store…you cannot outdream God.
John Eldredge, The Sacred Romance: Drawing Closer to the Heart of God
CANDLE LIGHTING
2016 Recommitment – Lament and Promise
GATHERING
ENTRANCE
REFLECTION
We are experiencing all kinds of trouble, but we aren’t crushed. We are confused, but we aren’t depressed. We are harassed, but we aren’t abandoned. We are knocked down, but we aren’t knocked out.
2 Corinthians 4:8-9
Common English Bible (CEB)