Worship Service for June 20, 2021 - Happy Father's Day!

 

Worship Service for June 20, 2021

Happy Father's Day

Here is today’s worship service in its written form.  Click here (when highlighted) for the YouTube link for today’s worship service at Bethesda.

You can join us for corporate, in-person worship at Olivet (9:45am) and Bethesda (11:15am).

 

Prelude

Sounding of the Hour (at Bethesda only)

Call to Worship

L:      In the midst of life’s storms, God is there.        

P:      What have we to fear?

L:      In the darkness and terror, God is with us.

P:      Of whom shall we be afraid?

L:      Rise up, people of God for you are loved and saved.

P:      Thanks be to God who cares deeply for us.  AMEN

 

Opening Hymn – This is My Father’s World

Prayer of Confession

          God of love and power, we listen to the stories of miracles and doubt that these things can happen today.  We look at the waves of misfortune, distress, misery, distrust, and anger and wonder how we can still those waves.  We feel the pressures of power and fear flooding into our lives, threatening to drown us and wonder where You are.  Forgive us for the smallness of our faith.  Forgive us for our doubts.  Help us place our trust in You, Lord.  Help us fix our eyes on You and on the ministries to which You have called us.  For we ask these things in Jesus’ name.  (silent prayers are offered)  AMEN.

Assurance of Pardon

L:      Fear not!  God is with us, stilling the storms and raging fears in our lives.  Place your trust in God always. 

P:      We trust our faithful God and believe.  AMEN.

 

Gloria Patri

Affirmation of Faith/Apostles’ Creed

I believe in God the Father Almighty, Maker of heaven and earth; And in Jesus Christ His only Son our Lord; who was conceived by the Holy Ghost, born of the Virgin Mary, suffered under Pontius Pilate, was crucified, dead, and buried; He descended into hell; the third day He rose again from the dead; He ascended into heaven, and sitteth on the right hand of God the Father Almighty; from thence He shall come to judge the quick and the dead.

I believe in the Holy Ghost, the holy catholic Church; the communion of saints, the forgiveness of sins; the resurrection of the body; and the life everlasting.  AMEN

 

Pastoral Prayer

Lord of wind and water, of calmness and peace, be with us this day.  Calm our fears as we face uncertain futures.  Help us relinquish control and place our trust totally in You.  Remind us to continue to faithfully work for good, with gratitude for the many blessings You have poured upon us.  When the waves and torrents threaten us, let us again turn to You, remembering Your saving mercies and love.  Give us courage to become disciples who can calm the seas of doubt and anger, bringing hope and peace.  Gracious God, plant a mustard seed of faith in us so that we can flourish in the midst of difficult times.  Allow that seed of faith to grow continually in our lives.   

Lord, we give You thanks for Fathers and Father figures in our lives this day as we celebrate their work and example among us, as they planted the seeds of wisdom, courage, faithfulness, care, compassion, and strength in our own lives.  Allow them to celebrate this day in honor and gratitude for Your work in their lives.

As we have brought before You situations that require help and healing mercies, remind us again that You are with each person and situation, offering Your love and mercy.  We thank You for the many ways in which You have healed us.  For all the goodness You have poured on us, we offer prayers of gratitude and love, as we pray for….

 In God’s amazing grace, God hears our every prayer.  Now, with one voice, we pray together saying…

Our Father, who art in heaven, hallowed be Thy name.  Thy kingdom come. Thy will be done, on earth as it is in heaven.  Give us this day our daily bread.  Forgive us our debts as we forgive our debtors.  And lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil.  For Thine is the kingdom, and the power, and the glory, forever.  AMEN.

 

Scripture Reading(s): 

OT – 1 Samuel 17:4-11, 32-49

NT – Mark 4:30-41

Sermon –

A Storm and a Seed

Mark 4:30-41

 

I’m deeply indebted to Rev. Kerra English for the idea of today’s sermon, which in large measure she offered to her own Presbytery as source material.  In the book, Imagining the Small Church: Celebrating a Simpler Path by Steve Willis, he writes in the introduction that this “book boasts no ten or fifteen steps to a successful small church.  Instead, I hope to encourage you to give up on steps altogether and even to give up on success, at least how success is usually measured.  I also hope to help the reader imagine the small church differently; to see with new eyes the joys and pleasures of living small and sustainably.”  

I keep reading over and over how the church was in trouble long before the pandemic hit and now how we are seriously in trouble – as if we are, right now, out on the lake with Christ, in the midst of the storm. 

So, with what do we measure a church’s success?  What metrics do we use to describe it?  As Presbyterians, we tend to be less chatty than some other denominations about the number of souls we’ve saved, but we still measure our vital statistics in the number of people in the pews and the number of dollars in our banks.  At the end of the year the Presbytery wants to know and the Office of General Assembly Statistics wants to know, and even in casual conversations at gatherings, that is the question I’m always asked, how many members do you have or how many people attend your services.  Larger numbers must mean better success, and dwindling numbers must mean failure, or maybe even death.  How in the world will we keep people coming to church?

The notion that Christianity is dying, that if we don’t start growing soon, we will pass from simply being irrelevant to being non-existent sounds scary, but I need to tell you that it has been selling books and workshops to anxious pastors for all of the 35 years I’ve been in ministry.

Will we grow or will we die is the question that gets posed as if the numbers are the ONLY story of the church’s relevance.  And the next move is then to ask already stressed-out pastors, “What steps are YOU going to take to save the church?  I have seriously read every, five step, nine step,  twelve step book to a successful church.  The truth is, there are no steps – other than one foot in front of the other.  There is no solution – only a deeper dive into the vulnerability of BEING the church wherever it is that we happen to be planted.  Jesus isn’t the one calling us to save the church. Let me propose instead that Jesus calls us to simply BE the church, over and over and over again.  To plant seeds, to share story, to try and live just a bit more ethically, morally, and thoughtfully for the welfare of other human beings.

 “With what shall we compare the kingdom of God?  What parable shall we use for it?”

The answer wasn’t “the kingdom of God is like a profitable corporation.”

The answer wasn’t “the kingdom of God is like a sold-out auditorium.”

The answer wasn’t “the kingdom of God is like receiving a huge financial windfall.”

The answer was, “the kingdom of God is like a mustard seed.” A What???

A MUSTARD SEED.

The kingdom of God is like a tiny seed that is planted so it can grow.  Then when it does grow – it becomes a home, a nest, a habitat for a variety of birds who will come and go as they please.

If we want to grow like the kingdom of God, like the community of the faithful that Jesus was talking about, we cannot let those articles or event statistics about being a dying church scare us.  Fear not, my friends.  We have to embrace that the church will hold a thousand funerals, bury what  “used to be,” and do so willingly.  If Christians can’t talk about, let alone, embrace the power of endings to give rise to something new – what’s the point of the Passion narrative exactly?  This is our story.  This is where we shine.  They thought Christ was dead.  They buried him.  Jesus told his followers over and over again that the ending was necessary, that it had a  purpose, that it was indeed essential to the story, but they didn’t really know, couldn’t actually imagine that he would have to be buried, planted in the earth to die, but then rise again.

I remember when I first started at Olivet in 2007 when we had our first conversation about being a dying church.  Everyone was looking at the numbers, and as is the case in most small congregations, the numbers painted a grim story of limitations.  There could only be a few more years of paying a full-time pastor and Olivet would face immediate financial struggles.  There were no children actively involved in the church.  Congregational members were discouraged.  Fears that we might die were at the forefront of everyone’s thoughts.  In the midst of those fears, Olivet went to part-time ministry which is now a partnership with another congregation, Bethesda.  Bethesda went through the same anxiety at about the same time period, as well.  And yet fourteen years later, fourteen years later, we are all still here – you, me, and them.  We are still living the very same reality we were living fourteen years ago.  The fearfulness of being caught up in the storms of life and being capsized by the waves of death remains a fact, a truth, a reality, but you know what?  So does living, so does the resurrection to something new remain a fact of the gospel message.  We are here only by the grace of God.  It’s time for us to embrace that and truly live into it.

There are lots of assumptions we have to bury about success, but as we bury them, what we’re really doing is planting seeds of faithfulness, of trust in the living God to do something with our resources.  Ok, so we can’t be the church we were in 1950 or 1970 or even in 2019.  From this day forward it’s more important to be what we can be.  To simply BE the church.  By letting go of past expectations, we’ll find Christ stilling the waters of anxiety and we will start to fling mustard seeds everywhere.

As we continue to face new challenges (and believe me, there will be more) we will need to start to think about success in new ways.  It won’t be the same old metrics or the same old script.  To boost our numbers or fail as a church.  The growth will be in spirit of those who are here, who have been in the boat with Christ, who have planted the mustard seeds in the neighborhood, in authentically embracing what we can be, not fuss about what we can’t be.

Valuing productivity and proliferation as what it means to be “successful” amplifies a cultural message, not a spiritual one.  For our small church to not just exist but to thrive – we have to quit believing in the message that our numbers are what tell the story of our ministry.  That message becomes a self-fulfilling prophesy.  If God has truly planted us where they are – than let us celebrate the mustard growing right here where the local birds can make their nests and learn to fly.  Let us be like the mustard seed.  Bury the church as it “used to be” and watch what might grow up in that place.  I know that is a scary proposition.  I know that the storms of doubt will inevitably come when we embrace that idea.  But we are not in the boat alone.  Christ is there beside us to calm our fears, to quiet the waves of doubt.

We need to give the church, at large, with the capital “C”, a new message – a lesson in actually BEING the church.  The size and impact of a congregation will not be measured by butts and bucks, but by the size of our hearts and our love of Christ for others.  It will be measured by the Spirit of a people who sat terrified in the boat of doubt, but watched as the Lord calmed our fears, while we then planted a mustard seed of faith and embraced the resurrection of new life.

Thanks be to God.  AMEN.

Offertory –

Doxology

Prayer of Dedication

Almighty God, from whom comes every good and perfect gift; we give You praise and thanks for all Your tender mercies, for Your creative spirit that breathed our very lives into us, for Your earthly bounty that springs forth and sustains us, even for Your discipline that corrects us, for Your patience that holds us, and for Your love that redeems us.  Give us the boldness to share Your love with others and the joy of thankfulness in all these gifts.   We offer them to You in service.  AMEN.

Closing Hymn – The God of Abraham Praise

Benediction

As the Lord has given to you such peace and healing, now go into the world offering God’s love and hope to others.  Go in peace and remember that God goes with you.  AMEN.

Postlude