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.
2023 Recommitment Liturgy: Seeing God in All This
GATHERING
ENTRANCE
REFLECTION
Our starting point is that we’re already there. We cannot attain the presence of God because we’re already totally in the presence of God. What’s absent is awareness. Little do we realize that God is maintaining us in existence with every breath we take. As we take another it means that God is choosing us now and now and now. We have nothing to attain or even learn. We do, however, need to unlearn some things.”
Richard Rohr, Everything Belongs: The Gift of Contemplative Prayer, p 27-28
2023 Summer Liturgy: Wrestling with Faith
GATHERING
ENTRANCE
REFLECTION
The apostles said to the Lord, “Increase our faith!” Jesus responded, “If you have the faith of a mustard seed (and you do) – implying … that what they need isn’t more faith. What they need to realize is that the thing they ALREADY have IS faith. It’s like Jesus is saying how much faith do you have? and I’m like I don’t know Jesus, it’s not very much it’s like barely any and Jesus is saying “perfect!”
Nadia Bolz-Weber, “A sermon on faith and doubt,” Oct. 2, 2022
LIGHTING THE ALTAR CANDLE
2023 Trinity Liturgy: Live in Peace
GATHERING
ENTRANCE
REFLECTION
Did I offer peace today? Did I bring a smile to someone’s face? Did I say words of healing? Did I let go of my anger and resentment? Did I forgive? Did I love? These are the real questions. I must trust that the little bit of love that I sow now will bear many fruits, here in this world and the life to come.
Attributed to Henry Nouwen
LIGHTING THE ALTAR CANDLE
2023 Easter Liturgy: So That We May Be One
ENTRANCE
REFLECTION
If one goes into one’s own heart, one will find oneself in the heart of everyone else, and everyone else, as well as oneself, in the heart of Ultimate Mystery..
— From The Contemplative Outreach Newsletter, vol 25–June 2010 in The Thomas Keating Reader
2023 Lent: It Depends on Faith
ENTRANCE
REFLECTION
Religion declined not because it was refuted, but because it became irrelevant, dull, oppressive, insipid. When faith is completely replaced by creed, worship by discipline, love by habit; when the crisis of today is ignored because of the splendor of the past; when faith becomes an heirloom rather than a living fountain; when religion speaks only in the name of authority rather than with the voice of compassion – its message becomes meaningless.
— Abraham Joshua Heschel,
God in Search of Man: A Philosophy of Judaism, p. 3
