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.
2016 – Summer “What in the World….”
GATHERING
ENTRANCE
REFLECTION
Ours is not the task of fixing the entire world all at once, but of stretching out to mend the part of the world that is within our reach. Any small, calm thing that one soul can do to help another soul, to assist some portion of this poor suffering world, will help immensely. It is not given to us to know which acts or by whom, will cause the critical mass to tip toward an enduring good.
Clarissa Pinkola Estés, “Letter to a Young Activist in Troubled Times”
2016 After Pentecost – Thank God We’re All in This Together
GATHERING
ENTRANCE
REFLECTION
Whenever Jesus says come and follow him, he is saying: I’d like to invite you to join my community. I’d like you to pick up your life, to pack up your bags and come share your life with us. Come join us, come experience the new kind of security that we have found by trusting God together.
Jim Wallis, The Call to Conversion, p.65
2016 Easter – Transforming Faith
GATHERING
ENTRANCE
REFLECTION
Shake out your qualms.
Shake up your dreams.
Deepen your roots.
Extend your branches.
Trust deep water
and head for the open,
even if your vision
shipwrecks you.…
Nothing perishes;
nothing survives;
everything transforms!
James Broughton, excerpt from “Easter Exultet” in Little Sermons of the Big Joy.
2016 Lent – We Become Re-Formed
GATHERING
ENTRANCE
REFLECTION
There is a hard truth to be told: before spring becomes beautiful, it is plug ugly, nothing but mud and muck. I have walked in the early spring through fields that will suck your boots off, a world so wet and woeful it makes you yearn for the return of ice. But in that muddy mess, the conditions for rebirth are being created.
Parker Palmer, Let Your Life Speak, p 103
2016 Epiphany – Transforming Tradition
GATHERING
ENTRANCE
REFLECTION
Tradition, which is always old, is at the same time ever new because it is always reviving—born again in each new generation, to be lived and applied in a new and particular way.
Thomas Merton, No Man Is An Island, p 151