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.
2020 Trinity Liturgy: Finding Comfort
click here for a printable copy of the 2020 Trinity Liturgy
ENTRANCE
REFLECTION
As the years pass, I am coming more and more to understand that it is the common, everyday blessings of our common everyday lives for which we should be particularly grateful. They are the things that fill our lives with comfort and our hearts with gladness – just the pure air to breathe and the strength to breath it; just warmth and shelter and home folks; just plain food that gives us strength; the bright sunshine on a cold day; and a cool breeze when the day is warm.
Laura Ingalls Wilder, Writings to Young Women from Laura Ingalls Wilder: On Wisdom and Virtues, p 66
2020 Easter: Witnesses to Hope
click here for a printable copy of the 2020 Easter Liturgy
ENTRANCE
REFLECTION
The Christian faith is one that does not pretend things aren’t bad. This is a faith that does not offer platitudes to those who lost children this week to suicide or a tornado. This is not a faith that produces optimism. It is a faith that produces a defiant hope that God is still writing the story and that despite darkness a light shines and that God can redeem our crap and that beauty matters and that despite every disappointing thing we have ever done or that we have ever endured, that there is no hell from which resurrection is impossible.
Nadia Bolz-Weber, “Sermon on Why Hope and Vapid Optimism Are Not The Same Thing,” May 28, 2013 at https://www.patheos.com/blogs/nadiabolzweber/2013/05/sermon-on-why-hope-and-vapid-optimism-are-not-the-same-thing/
2020 Maundy Thursday online
click here for a printable copy of the 2020 Maundy Thursday Liturgy WELCOME AND INVITATION CALL TO WORSHIP Leader: Are you prepared to come to the feast of Jesus, the Christ, whose life was poured out for you? People: By the grace of God, we are. Leader: Are you able…
2020 Lent : How Can These Things Be?
click here for a printable copy of the 2020 Lent Liturgy
GATHERING
ENTRANCE
REFLECTION
For God so loves the world
That she gives us awe,
Shivers on our arms,
Shooting stars.
For God so loves the world
That God gives us
Chrysalis to butterfly,
Horizon lines,
The ability to feel sore
After good work.
For God so loves the world
That he gives us
The day’s first light,
Ancient stories,
The ocean inside a shell.
For God so loves the world
That they give us
Whimsy,
And attention,
Righteous anger,
Winged birds,
Our steps that
Can be heard
Together.
Laura Martin, Associate Pastor
Rock Spring Congregational
United Church of Christ, Arlington, Va.
Used by permission
Lent 2020: Ash Wednesday
REFLECTION Wisdom marks our foreheads with ashes as we begin the journey through Lent. She intuits what these forty days may hold in store for us and tries to prepare us. Remembering Jesus’ forty days in the wilderness, she knows the trials, temptations, and vulnerability one…