Next Sunday, Sept 21 we will worship together at Olivet in West Elizabeth at 9:45am. There will not be a service at Bethesda.
Worship
Service for September 14, 2025
Prelude
Announcements:
Call to Worship
L: Fools say in their hearts, “There is no
God.”
P: We proclaim that God’s presence is real
and alive and thriving!
L: Evildoers declare through their actions,
“We go through life alone.”
P: But we see God’s grace, faithfulness, and
steadfast love in our lives, and in the world around us.
L: Praise be to God!
P: Praise be to God!
Opening Hymn – Rejoice Ye Pure in Heart #169 5 vrs. Brown
Prayer of Confession
Gracious and loving God, we
find it difficult at times to place our trust in You. Too often we look at the world, and see only
violence, pain, destruction, and signs of hopelessness and despair. Too often we rely on our own strength, our
own plans, our own devices, rather than trusting in Your hand to hold us, Your
love to sustain us, and Your wisdom to see us through. Forgive us, Holy One. Help us turn to You when we are lost, that we
might find our way home. Help us
navigate the treacherous waters of this world, that we might experience Your
abundant grace, mercy, and love. Help us
put our trust in You, that the faith and love that are in Christ Jesus may
shine in our lives for all to see. AMEN. (Silent prayers are offered) AMEN.
Assurance of Pardon
L: Like the sheep who wanders away from the
care and guidance of his shepherd, we have all been lost.
P: We give thanks to God for not leaving us
in that state but pursues us out of His compelling love and sense of
justice. 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 and Lord’s
Prayer
Jesus
Christ, light of the world, we dare to bring our whole selves before you this
morning, asking that you shine your purifying light on us once again. Illumine the dark corners no one else sees –
the shadows of doubt, the pockets of loneliness, the specters of fear, the
gloom of discouragement. Lift our face
to behold you in the full radiance of your light, that something of your
perfect love, truth, and peace may radiate into our lives and awaken us to the
full truth of who we are, by your grace and in your mercy.
Loving
God, remind us that we are here because you invite us, seek us, come to us, and
embrace us. We are here because as
shepherd seeks a lost sheep, you seek us when we are lost. As a woman searches for a lost coin, you
rejoice when we are found. Teach us ways
to give thanks.
Gracious
Lord, shine your healing light into every place of darkness and despair, we
especially pray for your children who die at the hands of violence, we pray for
those caught up in alcohol and drug abuse, we pray for those who are sick and
need your healing powers.
Help find
a way, Lord, to ease the suffering of the world, to find a way towards peace
and to bolster the good works that others share.
This
morning we lift up to you our friends and loved ones…
We also
ask that you hear our inner most prayers in this time of silence.
Hear us
now, O Lord, as we pray together; …Our Father who art in heaven, Hallowed by
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.
Hymn – All Hail the Power of Jesus’ Name #142/43
Scripture Reading(s):
First Scripture Reading – Psalm 14
Second Scripture Reading – Luke
15:1-10
Sermon – Rejoice With Me
(Based
on the Lost Parables from Luke 15:1-10)
I entered church ministry in the mid 80’s, when the
American Christian Church was at the tail-end of the church growth movement which
peaked in about the mid 70’s and had begun to decline. So, I’ve served my entire ministry in
diminishing returns when it comes to church growth. And sometimes that can feel like a personal
failure. Other times, it feels like a
personal challenge. But how do you turn
the tide against an ocean wave of societal trends? Because it isn’t just one church that’s declining,
it’s all Christian Churches. In fact, it’s
all religious based institutions.
For decades we’ve wondered what we could do to get people
back or to keep people from leaving when we often have them at a young
age. Last year I ran across a letter to
the church about this very issue from a GenX’er. Generation X are those born after the baby
boomers; after me. So, they are those
who were born between the late 1960’s and the beginning of the 1980’s and then
of course, their children who are known as the Millennials those born in the
late 80’s, who grew up as we turned into the new century, then Gen. Z’ers born between
1997 and 2012, and now the new generation known as Gen Alpha’s.
The letter was directed at those big non-denominational,
high production-type of churches, but I think there was a message in it for us,
as well. In summary, here’s what this
GenX’er had to say about church:
You may think you know why people are leaving you, but
I’m not sure you do.
You think it’s
because “the culture” is so lost, so perverse, so beyond help that they are all
walking away. You believe that they’ve
turned a deaf ear to the voice of God; chasing money, and sex, and material
things. You think that the gays and the
Muslims and the Atheists and the pop stars have so screwed up the morality of
the world that everyone is abandoning faith in droves. But those aren’t the reasons people
are leaving you. They aren’t
the problem, Church. You are
the problem.
The
writer then says; Let me elaborate in five ways …
1.
Your Sunday productions have worn thin.
The stage, and the lights, and the bands, and the
video screens, have all just become white noise to those really seeking to
encounter God. They’re ear and eye candy for an hour, but they have so
little relevance in people’s daily lives that more and more of them are
taking a pass. Yeah, the songs are cool
and the show is great, but ultimately Sunday morning isn’t really making a
difference on Tuesday afternoon or Thursday evening, when people
are wrestling with the awkward, messy, painful stuff in the trenches of
life; the places where rock shows don’t help.
We can be entertained anywhere. Until you can give
us something more than a Christian-themed performance piece—something that
allows us space and breath and conversation and relationship—many of us are
going to sleep in and stay away.
My response: We,
here, don’t do production. We don’t have
live bands, loud music, stage production lighting, fancy technology. Yes, we’ve embraced some technology to
enhance our worship services, to reduce our carbon footprint a bit by relying
less on wasteful paper, and to get people to look up, rather than down. For people to have access to us on-line.
But are we addressing the concerns that the writer brings
up at the end of this segment? Are we
providing space, breath, conversation and relationship in a real and tangible
way?
2.
You speak in a foreign tongue.
Church, you talk and talk and talk, but you do so using a
dead language. All the religious buzzwords that used to work 20 years ago
or more no longer do. This spiritualized
insider-language may give you some comfort in an outside world that is
changing, but that stuff’s just lazy religious shorthand, and it
keeps regular people at a distance. They need you to speak in a
language that they can understand. People don’t
need to be dazzled with big, churchy words and about eschatological frameworks
and theological systems. Talk to them plainly about love, and joy, and
forgiveness, and death, and peace, and God, and they’ll be all ears. Keep up the church-speak, and you’ll be
talking to an empty room soon.
My response: aside from singing the Gloria Patri and the
Doxology, we don’t have much churchy language in what we do in worship on
Sunday mornings. Actually, I try very
hard to not use churchy language when I preach.
I think we do speak plainly about love, and joy, and forgiveness, and
death, and peace, and God. So, where’s
the disconnect? What aren’t we doing
right?
3.
Your vision can’t see past your building.
The coffee bar, the cushy couches, the funky Children’s
wing and the uber-cool Teen Center are all top-notch. In fact, most of your time, money and energy
seems to be about luring people to where you are instead
of reaching people where they are. Rather than simply stepping out into the
neighborhoods around you and partnering with the amazing
things already happening, and the beautiful stuff God
is already doing, you seem content to wait for the sinful world to
beat down your door.
Your
greatest mission field is just a few feet away and you don’t even realize it.
You want to reach the people you’re missing?
Leave the building.
My response; we don’t have any of that
- no cushy couches, no Funky Children’s Wing or Uber-cool Teen Centers. We’ve got a building that we simply try to
maintain. But the author of the letter
does have a point. The mission field
isn’t here, inside these walls – it’s out there. And how often are we, as a church, out there?
4.
You choose lousy battles.
We know you like to fight, Church. That’s obvious. When you want to, you can go to war with
the best of them. The problem is, your
battles are usually internal.
Every day we see a world suffocated by poverty, and
racism, and violence, and bigotry, and hunger; and in the face
of that stuff, you get awfully, frighteningly quiet. We wish you were as courageous in those fights, because
then we’d feel like coming alongside you; then we’d feel like going to war with
you. Church, we need you to stop being
warmongers with the trivial and pacifists in the face of the terrible.
My response: Here, I think the author has a very
significant point. We’re so afraid of
being called out as a liberal or a conservative, of being Republican or
Democrat that we’ve lost sight of simply calling out what’s right and what’s
wrong. There are movements afoot, and yes,
they can seem political because everything has a political bent to it. But they are also about justice which, guess
what? Is a Biblical concept. About moral commandments (Thou shalt not’s)
and all the parables Jesus taught. Yet,
for the most part we remain silent because we’re afraid of standing on a
particular side.
5.
Your love doesn’t look like love.
Love seems to be a pretty big deal to you, but your brand
of love seems incredibly selective and decidedly narrow; filtering out all the
spiritual riff-raff, which sadly includes far too many of us. You advertise a “Come as You Are” party, but
let us know once we’re in the door that we can’t really come
as we are. We see a Jesus in
the Bible who hung out with lowlifes and prostitutes and outcasts, and loved
them right there, but that doesn’t seem to be your cup of tea.
Church, can you love us if we don’t check all the
doctrinal boxes and don’t have our theology all figured out? It doesn’t
seem so. Can you love us if we cuss and
drink and get tattoos? We’re doubtful. Can you love us if we’re not sure how we
define love, and marriage, and Heaven, and Hell? It sure doesn’t feel
that way. From what we know about Jesus,
we think he looks like love. The
unfortunate thing is, you don’t look much like him.
My response: I’ll take a serious stand against this
author about this one. Perhaps other
churches act differently, but I think this church does welcome the stranger, love
the lost, care for those who are different.
So, how do we show the world that they mean the world to us? How do we let them see that they are truly
welcomed here?
The author goes on.
It’s here, in my flawed, screwed-up, wounded,
shell-shocked, doubting, disillusioned me-ness that I’ve been waiting
for you to step in with this whole supposedly relentless, audacious “love of
Jesus” thing I hear so much about, and make it real. We’ve been praying for you to stop
evangelizing us, and preaching at us, and fighting us, and judging
us, and sin-diagnosing us, long enough
to simply hear us …
…
even if we are the problem.
Even if we are the woman in adultery, or the
doubting follower, or the rebellious prodigal, or the demon-riddled young man,
we can’t be anything else right now in this moment; and in this
moment, we need a Church big enough, and tough enough, and
loving enough; not just for us as we might one day be then, but for
us as we are, now.
So yes, Church, even if we’re all petty,
and self-centered, and hypocritical, and critical, and (I’ll say it),
“sinful”—we’re still the ones searching for a place where we can be
known and belong; a place where it feels like God lives, and you’re the
ones who can show it to us. Even if the
problem is me, it’s me who you’re supposed to be reaching,
Church.
So,
for the love of God; reach already.
Today’s passage from Luke tells us to
leave the 99 sheep that are safely in the fold and go after the lost and lonely
sheep that has wandered off, left the protection of the fold. We are told that although the woman has 10
silver coins and loses one, she will sweep through her entire house, searching
for that one lost coin. She will
overturn furniture, seek it in every crevice and not stop until it has been
found. And then, when found, both the
shepherd and the woman gathered their friends together and said, “Rejoice with
me, for what was lost is now found!”
It’s time that we were more urgent in our searches, that
we were more focused in seeking out and finding the lost. Perhaps this letter can serve as a wake-up
call for us to be more diligent in the way that Christ was diligent during his
own time on earth. So, how can we
address these issues? How can we be more
diligent? How do we let the world
outside these doors know that there are people here, waiting for their hurts
and needs, waiting for their cries and concerns, waiting for their upturned
lives that need a soft place to land?
Perhaps we need to stop waiting for them to come here and start finding
ways to go after them. Maybe we need to
find ways of leaving the 99 and finding the lost one. Maybe we need to be more diligent in
searching through the house, upturning furniture and finding that one coin. So Church, how do we do that? I would really like you to take some time
over the next couple of weeks and think about that. And, if you are able, I’d really like for you
to join us in Bible Study that begins at the end of this month. We’ll be reading the book, If the Church Were
Christian; Rediscovering the Values of Jesus.
If you can’t join us for the discussion portion of the Bible Study on
Tuesdays at 10am beginning on Sept 30th, order a copy of the book anyway and I’ll
have a lesson guide available for you to think about on your own.
Thanks
be to God. AMEN.
Offertory –
Doxology –
Prayer of Dedication –
Gracious and loving God, we thank You for these
gifts and ask that they be used to help the needy in our community and
throughout the world. As we offer You
these gifts, we offer ourselves as well, that together we might transform the
world with Your grace and love. AMEN
Closing Hymn – I Sing the Mighty Power of God #288/128
Benediction –
Go now in
peace, and in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, be found by the great Shepherd
and in His name seek out that which is lost.
AMEN
Postlude
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