LENT AND HOLY WEEK Our Lent and Holy Week worship services and activities fall between February 22 and April 9 this year, so this “cover page” may be a helpful place to have them all spelled out together. Ash Wednesday, Feb. 22 – The season of Lent begins with “Ash Wednesday” on Feb. 22. We [...]
At the back of our Old Testament is a collection of books often called “the minor prophets.” “Minor” not because the messages of those pages are any less important than the messages of the other pages of the Bible, but because they are short books. Compared to Isaiah’s sixty-six chapters or Jeremiah’s fifty-two, some of these books are only one or two chapters long. They have names like Obadiah, and Zephaniah, and Habakkuk, whom we looked at two Sundays ago. The Lectionary, that list of recommended Scripture passages for our worship services, only steers us to the minor prophets for one brief period in its three years’ worth of readings. That period is late Summer and early Fall, of “Year 3” – and that is now. So today we’re going to take advantage of this short Lectionary window of opportunity to look at part of the book by the minor prophet Zechariah. […]
Bible passages from the book of Acts are recommended for our consideration each year at this time. After Jesus’ resurrection on Easter and his ascension into heaven forty days later, his disciples started telling his story and sharing his teachings, to people in and beyond Jerusalem, eventually resulting in the formation of Christian churches. So on the Sundays following Easter, we often review the stories of their doing that – and those stories are found in the book of Acts. One thing the book of Acts emphasizes is that the early church grew, as the story of Jesus was told. It grew in numbers, and it grew in faith. “Growing in numbers” is a concept we pretty easily understand, though it’s not quite as easy a thing to actually do as we would like. “Growing in faith” is a little more ambiguous phrase: what all does it mean, to “grow in faith”? […]
A common theme for worship services on the Sundays after Easter is . . . well, now what? Where do we go from here? We’ve told our best story; we’ve celebrated our biggest event; we’ve talked about what it means. Now we turn around and look ahead and think about proceeding with everyday life as Christians and as churches, now that the big events are over. Where do we go from here, in light of the Easter message? Who are we, as a post-resurrection community? What do these events lead us to believe, and what do we do about it, now that we’ve seen again what God has done? […]
On most Sundays, we come to church and we pick up our bulletins and we get into our places and at a little before 10:30 we begin our worship with our Organ Prelude – Choral Introit – Call to Worship; and then we continue on down through the usual schedule of activities printed on [...]