Sunday, January 28, 2007

Adult Forum &
Sunday School begin @ 9:30
Worship Begins @ 10:30
All are welcome!

Adult Forum
Living Love
Focus Scripture: 1 Corinthians 13:1-13
Love provides for the possibility of life lived in the close quarters of the Body of Christ. Our love for one another and the world grows out of God's gracious love for us. Prophecy that prepares us to receive God begins in the speaking and doing of love. Such love enlivens community. Such love persists. By such love we are fully known. Paul urges the community of Christ to love expressed in action. How might this text shape or transform the way we embody love today, especially in the context of community? How does love prepare us for God, and how does God prepare us for love?

Worship
4th Sunday after the Epiphany
Scriptures: 1 Corinthians 13:1-13; Jeremiah 1:4-10; Luke 4:21-20; (Psalm 71:1-6)
Prayer for the weekend as you prepare for worship: Love is who you are, O God. Love is how you have come in Jesus Christ. Love is how you call us to be the Body of Christ. Teach us to love in word and action. May we persist in love, even as you persistently grace us and all with your Love. Amen.
Preaching: Greg Ledbetter; Worship Leader: Jodie Tooley; Adult Choir: Joy in the Morning

Sunday, January 14, 2007

Coffee Time @ 9:15
Adult Forum &
Sunday School @ 9:30
Worship @ 10:30
All are welcome!

Adult Forum
Revealing Love
Focus Scripture: John 2:1-11
Additional Scriptures: Isaiah 62:1-5; Psalm 36:5-10; 1 Corinthians 12:1-11
We can depend on God's abundant love. Whether offering renewal to those without hope in Isaiah's time or changing water into wine at the wedding of Cana, God gives us extravagant gifts. The abundant gifts of God's Spirit work in the midst of the community of God's beloved people to reveal Christ, then and now. In what ways does Jesus' life and ministry reveal God's abundance to you? In what ways does God continue to bring abundance into the world today?
Discussion Leader: Lenita Shumaker




Worship
2nd Sunday after the Epiphany
Celebrating the Witness of Martin Luther King, Jr.
Scriptures: 1 Kings 19:9-18; 1 Corinthians 12:1-11; 1 Peter 2:1-10
Additional Readings: Selections from Letter from Birmingham Jail and Beyond Vietnam
Prayer for the Weekend as You Prepare for Worship: O God, it is your will to hold both heaven and earth in a single peace. Let the design of your great love shine on the waste of our wraths and sorrows, and give peace to your church, peace among nations, peace in our homes, and peace in our hearts.
Preaching: Greg Ledbetter; Head Usher:Max (Jim) Foust; The Ramblers: How Much Can One Heart Hold (Kate Campbell) and When God Made Me (Neil Young); Adult Choir: On Eagles Wings

Words for Meditation
from Martin Luther King, Jr.

Love must be our regulating ideal.
…If we fail to do this,
our protest will end up as a meaningless drama
on the stage of history,
and its memory will be shrouded
with the ugly garments of shame.
Montgomery Improvement Association, December 5, 1955,
Recounted in Stride Toward Freedom, 1957

I learned that the inseparable twin of racial injustice
was economic injustice…
Here I saw economic injustice firsthand,
and realized that the poor White
was exploited just as much as the Negro.
Stride Toward Freedom, 1957

I am absolutely convinced
that there is no basic difference
between colonialism and segregation.
They are both based on a contempt for life,
and a tragic doctrine of White supremacy.
So our struggles are not only similar;
they are in a real sense one.”
SCLC African Freedom Dinner, April 20, 1959

If today’s church does not recapture
the sacrificial spirit of the early church,
it will lose its authenticity,
forfeit the loyalty of millions,
and be dismissed as an irrelevant social club
with no meaning for the twentieth century.”
Letter from Birmingham Jail, April 16, 1963