Worship Resources for
the Center for Faith and Giving
6th Sunday of Easter
Acts 17:22-31
Psalm 66:8-20
1 Peter 3:13-22
John 14:15-21
Call to Worship (in response to Psalm 66)
One: Come and hear! I will tell you what God has done.
Many: God has listened, and heard our prayers!
One: We rejoice, for God’s steadfast love lifts us up.
Many: Even when we’ve been through fire and water
One: God brings us out to a spacious place!
Many: So today we praise God who has not let our feet slip.
All: With our voices, our lives, and our offerings,
we thank God for keeping us among the living.
Opening Prayer
God of Grace,
Even in challenging times, we thank you for keeping us among the living.
Gathered to worship you, we remember and give thanks for the ways you
hear our prayers and do not reject us from your presence.
With joy-filled hearts, we lift up this congregation
as we seek to be followers of Jesus, the Christ.
Wrap us close in your Spirit,
and continue to sustain us day by day. AMEN
Moment for Stewardship
For those of us who live (or lived) with the love and care of a parent, and for those who experience (or experienced) the love of other adults who nurtured and cared for us when our parents could not, Jesus’ words in John 14 come as a refreshing declaration: “I will not leave you orphaned.”
We are not left without One who loves us!
Because of Jesus’ declaration, we can be assured we are not without God’s Spirit, even in the toughest of times.
In grateful appreciation for that reality, our innate response is to find ways to express our gratitude.
How do you say thank you for the assurance of God’s Spirit with you/with us?
One way is to make an offering of our finances. We recognize we trade our time and skills for money, and then are able to share money as one way of helping create God’s Realm on earth.
Today we give our finances to help support the outreach of this congregation. Let’s be generous with our offering!
Prayer of Thanksgiving
Holy God, you sent Jesus to teach, heal, and love.
Now, as Jesus’ disciples/followers,
we offer these gifts along with our time and our talents,
to share the Good News of your love made known for each and for all.
Accept this offering, and the good intentions of our hearts,
so we might be investors in your Realm on earth. AMEN
Invitation to Communion
(Consider using Chalice Hymnal #398 as your communion hymn, pointing out the plea, “Savior, abide with us, and spread thy table in our heart.”)
John’s Gospel includes the affirmation: “…(The father) will give you another Advocate (or helper)… You know him, because he abides with you.”
To abide is “to stay with.” When we share communion, we use our eyes, our ears, our hands, our mouths to experience how God’s Spirit abides with us. These gifts of bread and cup are physical elements which we see, touch, smell, and taste as we consume them.
In this act of “communing,” we experience Jesus’ helper abiding with us.
What a gift!
All are invited to share in this act, taking into our own bodies the bread and the juice. This allows each of us to celebrate the presence of the Spirit filling us, making us one part of Christ’s body on earth.