Welcome! If you are our guest today, we welcome you. Please know we are thankful for your presence. Our greeters are here to serve by answering your questions as well as providing for your needs. Please call on them or any member of our congregation.
GATHERING MUSIC Mallory Pickering
WELCOME and ANNOUNCEMENTS Miriam Malone, Lay Leader
* SHARING THE PEACE The Congregation
CONNECTING Rev. Beth Miller
PRELUDE Mallory Pickering
BRINGING IN THE LIGHT OF CHRIST The Acolytes
CALL TO WORSHIP Miriam Malone
Leader: How well God must like you – you don’t hang out at Sin Saloon, you don’t slink along Dead-End Road, you don’t go to Smart-Mouth College.
People: Instead you thrill to God’s Word, you chew on Scripture day and night. You’re a tree replanted in Eden, bearing fresh fruit every month, Never dropping a leaf, always in blossom.
Leader: You’re not at all like the wicked, who are mere windblown dust – Without defense in court, unfit company for innocent people.
People: God Charts the road you take. The road they take is Skid Row.
(THE MESSAGE, Psalm 1)
PRAYER Eternal Light, shine into our hearts.
Eternal Goodness, deliver us from evil.
Eternal Power, be our support.
Eternal Wisdom, scatter the darkness of our ignorance.
Eternal Pity, have mercy upon us.
That with all our heart and mind and soul and strength, we may seek your face and be brought by your infinite mercy to your holy presence;
through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen. (UM Book of Worship, 310.)
*OPENING HYMN OF PRAISE A Charge to Keep I Have UMH No. 413
*AFFIRMATION OF FAITH, THE APOSTLES’ CREED UMH No. 881
*GLORIA PATRI GLORY BE TO THE FATHER UMH No. 70
EPISTLE LESSON 1 Corinthians 15:12-20 Dan Denman
CONGREGATIONAL PRAYER and THE LORD’S PRAYER The Pastor
*HYMN OF PREPARATION Lord, I Want to Be A Christian UMH No. 378
THE OFFERING OF OUR GIFTS and TITHES
OFFERTORY PRAYER Rev. Percy Campbell
* DOXOLOGY Praise God, from Whom All Blessing Flow UMH 94
SPECIAL MUSIC The Choir
GOSPEL LESSON Luke 6: 17-26 The Pastor
SERMON God’s Honored Rev. Beth Miller
* HYMN OF RESPONSE Here I Am, Lord UMH No. 593
BENEDICTION
* RECESSIONAL MUSIC Seek Ye First UMH No. 405
POSTLUDE
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For reflection…”We are the agents of the Creative Spirit in this world. Real advance in the spiritual life, then, means accepting this vocation with all it involves. Not merely turning over the pages of an engineering magazine and enjoying the pictures, but putting on overalls and getting on with the job. The real spiritual life must be horizontal as well as vertical; spread more and more as well as aspire more and more.” – From The Spiritual Life by Evelyn Underhill, and also from A Guide to Prayer for Ministers and Other Servants, p. 86.
