9:00am - Worship Service
Welcome
to Worship
Prelude “Elegy”
– Wagner Deb Papavizas
*
Call to Worship Matthew
5:14-16
Leader: We have encountered the Word, calling us into
communion with God and with each other,
People: And
calling us into discipleship to carry on Christ’s work in our world.
Leader: So we come together here, joining hands in
the great quest:
People: To worship God, to love each other, and
to serve the world
*Opening Song “We
Gather Together” UMH
131
Passing the Peace
Kid’s Time
Invocation
Pastor: O Lord, open our lips
People: and our mouth shall show forth thy praise
Pastor:
Praise the Lord
People: The Lord’s name be praised.
Pastor: God, you are
the source of our life. Gather us now
together, we pray. Form us into a holy
community of your own people. Mold us by
the breath of your holy spirit. Reveal
in this corporate body the face of your anointed Christ. Amen.
Prayer of Confession/Assurance of Grace UMH 893
* Statement of Faith of the United Church of Canada UMH883
* Hymn Gloria
Patri UMH 70
Psalter Psalm 65 (with Sung
Response) UMH 789
Welcoming
New Members
Introductions
/ Sharing our Concerns
Community Prayer/Lord’s Prayer
Choral Response “Now Thank We All Our God” Chancel
Choir
Celebrating our Joys
Scripture Lesson Deuteronomy
8:7-18
. . . because the LORD your God is
bringing you to a wonderful land, a land with streams of water, springs, and
wells that gush up in the valleys and on the hills; a land of wheat and barley,
vines, fig trees, and pomegranates; a land of olive oil and honey; a land where
you will eat food without any shortage— you won’t lack a thing there— a land
where stone is hard as iron and where you will mine copper from the hills. You
will eat, you will be satisfied, and you will bless the LORD your God in the
wonderful land that he’s given you. But watch yourself! Don’t forget the LORD
your God by not keeping his commands or his case laws or his regulations that I
am commanding you right now. When you eat, get full, build nice houses, and
settle down, and when your herds and your flocks are growing large, your silver
and gold are multiplying, and everything you have is thriving, don’t become
arrogant, forgetting the LORD your God: the one who rescued you from Egypt,
from the house of slavery; the one who led you through this vast and terrifying
desert of poisonous snakes and scorpions, of cracked ground with no water; the
one who made water flow for you out of a hard rock; the one who fed you manna
in the wilderness, which your ancestors had never experienced, in order to
humble and test you, but in order to do good to you in the end. Don’t think to
yourself, My own strength and abilities have produced all this prosperity for
me. Remember the LORD your God! He’s the one who gives you the strength to be
prosperous in order to establish the covenant he made with your ancestors —and
that’s how things stand right now.
Message “Let Us All Give Thanks” Rev Malcolm Stranathan
Receiving
God’s Tithe and our Offering
(Today
we are taking a special collection for Imagine No Malaria.
If
you would like to make a contribution, please note Imagine No Malaria #3021190 in the memo section of your check.)
Offertory Anthem “We
Thank You Lord” Chancel Choir
*Doxology
*Hymn “Come Ye Thankful People Come” UMH 694
Touching
Lives for Jesus Christ – Announcements
*Sending
Forth
Postlude “Praise My Soul, the King of Heaven” – Smith Deb P.
* You are invited to stand in heart or posture
Announcements: UMW Thanksgiving Bake Sale: Today,
This Sunday – 11/23
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Next Sunday – 11/30
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Acolyte
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9:00
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Valerie Stanford
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Phoebe Island
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Children’s Time
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9:00
11:00
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Brian Cornell
Brian Cornell
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Wendy Singer
Wendy Singer
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Counters
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Larry Murdoch,
Will Scott,
Sam Hergert
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Greeters
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9:00
11:00
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Ken &
Alice Ellis
Mark Coffin
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Mark Coffin
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Liturgist
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Ellen McKinzie
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Betty Cashmark
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Power Point
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9:00
11:00
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Carolyn
Powers
Sharon
Waligora
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Susan
Kalbach
Sharon
Waligora
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Projection
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9:00
11:00
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Adam Johnson
Sam
Hergert
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Bonnie
Luepkes
Sam
Hergert
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Sound
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9:00
11:00
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Scott
Johnson
Bill Ray
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Help
Needed!!
Bill Ray
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Ushers
Captains
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9:00
11:00
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Help
Needed!!
Gary
& Patricia Heinz
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Chuck
& Sue Strickland
Gary
& Patricia Heinz
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New Small Group Advent Study
UnderWraps
starts Next Sunday, November
30. Sign up now.
How Bold Is Our Story?
Several weeks back I was on
my facebook account I came across an advertisement that was by a church
consultant who asked the question, “How Bold is your story?” In a matter of
sixty seconds, he posited that, an individual church’s survival is going to be
connected to “How Bold a story” that they will have to share. That question has haunted me these last
couple of weeks. How Bold is our story?
Today’s scripture text refers
to “A Bold-Enough story” of a people who back in Exodus 13 were told never to
forget that once they were slaves in Egypt. It is a story of promise, it is a story
of a chosen people, and it is a story of the unlimited possibilities
especially because of the inexhaustible resources availed to the people when
they put their trust in the promise keeper.
One of the five scrolls of
the Torah, the book of a Deuteronomy is a long discourse as Moses prepares to
pass the reigns of leadership to his successor Joshua. The people are standing on the banks of the river
Jordan the soon to be no longer nomadic Israelite people are listening as Moses
who reminds them of the promise from God that once they were slaves in
Egypt.
-
Before they were slaves in Egypt,
o a promise was made by God to
their ancestor the elderly and once barren Abraham and Sarah were promised that
if they left their homeland they would be taken to a new land where their
descendants would be greater than the stars of the heavens.
o In saying Yes to God, Abraham
and Sarah became the chosen people who God established a covenant. God was their God; they God’s people.
o It took the reality of this
promise many generations, not all easy, even enduring hundreds of years of
slavery in Egypt and once released they spent forty years in the wilderness but
now the chosen people of the nation of Israel looked across the river to the
unlimited possibilities that awaited them.
The
charge … do not forget … all that awaits you is by God’s providence, God
rescued you from Egypt, brought you to this land
Let’s
listen as today’s scripture is read by Ellen this morning …
When I hear this story, humility seems to be the
manner in which the people were to enter into the new land. And yet there had to be such enthusiasm as
they looked across the river Jordan … (yeah, yeah .. Moses what ever you say!
--- he had 20 chap to go)
All
they had to do was rely on God from this time onward.
From
this point on, and all through the rest of the Old Testament Scriptures, the
Israelites would now be reminded of this Bold Story. Their festival’s like the Passover (celebration
how God brought the people our of Egypt) and the Festival of Booths (in which
the family would live in tents for a time as a reminder of the humble roots as
a nomadic people during the wilderness years) would become annual reminders of
God’s promises.
When
their passion for the bold story was replaced with arrogance or unfaithfulness
(and there are plenty of examples in the writing of the prophets) and they
would be sent into exile or become occupied by foreign powers … it was the
recalling of the Bold Story that reminded the people from where they came and
often became the re-centering cry which led the people to forgiveness and
restoration.
A Bold Story can indeed
bolster a people … it has worked well for the Jewish people
How bold is our story?
No doubt, the Churches story
is intricately woven together in the Bold Story of the Jewish faith. We too are a people with a promise from God, The
Apostle Paul tells us we are grafted into the covenantal promise made by God to
the Jewish people but we are also called a chosen priesthood and we are a
people with unlimited possibilities, Not because of our own merit but because of
who we are in Christ Jesus and God the Father and yet.
We have dropped a lot of
language that is rich in the promises of that we have in Jesus Christ. We The People, who in this land of liberty do
not like to talk about how we were once slaves in the land of Egypt. We don’t like to acknowledge how some of us
are descendants from slaves and others slave owners even for many of us our
ancestors were indentured servants, infact, anything slavery has been so
cleaned up from our language that we have also dropped the language about how
we were once slaves to sin and death.
We have dropped the language of atonement
instead we talk about God’s love and God’s grace both of which are expressed in
the atonement of sin that only comes through another things that we have
dropped from our language which is the blood that was poured out. (Recollect some of the hymns …”There is
power, power, wonder working power in the … blood … of the lamb”)
We have turned Jesus into a
kind teacher and moral guide and we have dropped language about him being Savior
and Lord. Our Savior in that he frees us
from sin and death because of his blood poured out on the cross and despite the
fact that the cross took his life the grave was insufficient to contain him for
on the third day, the stone was rolled away and he was discovered first by the
women and then by Peter and John and then by his disciples and we are told by
many more… and because of this action accomplished by God, we are told that
despite the fact that we too may one day die, death has no eternal bounds on
us. “Because he lives we also shall
live.”
And we think that because we live in the land
of the free and the brave, that we are not called to call anyone Lord over us
but because Jesus is God’s son, because we were freed from sin and death, we owe
everything to Jesus.
(Oh to Jesus, we surrender,
All to him we freely give)
How bold is our story?
When we remove
the language of how far Jesus saved us from ourselves, when we have watered
down the story and washed out the blood, when we have emasculated Jesus into a
moralist philosophy … is it any wonder why we can’t get other non-believers let
alone ourselves excited about being followers of the way?
Lord have mercy, Christ have mercy, Lord
have mercy
How bold is our story … it means coming to the
throne of grace once again. The
Israelites time and time again had to seek God’s forgiveness. Perhap it is time for us to do the same … As
we head into a time of reflection, I’m going to invite you to turn in your
hymnal to the hymn “Just as I am …”
The
altar rail is ready, If you came here today, seeking a message for all things
that we should be thankful for, let’s start at the most important thing. God’s love and forgiveness for us expressed
in Jesus Christ …
Well there is an old song
that starts with these words
We’ve a story to tell to the nations
…
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Celebration
and Praise
Worship with a Beat! - 11:00 am
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Welcome
‘Beautiful Day’
‘Your
Grace is Enough’
‘Forever’
Prayerful Conversations
Kids Time
Deuteronomy
8:7-18
“Let Us
All Give Thanks”
Rev
Malcolm Stranathan
Reflection
‘How
Great is Our God/Give Thanks’
Announcements
Sending Forth
‘You
Never Let Go’
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Songs sung during the service are used by permission
with License No. 1415942.
Movie clips are used by permission with License No.
501045180
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Bulletin cover and MS PowerPoint art and graphics
designed by Lori Stewart, 2014
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