October 6, 2019 – Rev. John Callaway Preaching - World Communion Sunday

Preparation for Worship

“In time it became a story that early Christians told around the table when they gathered for worship. As they blessed, broke, and shared the miraculous bread of the Lord’s Supper, they remembered that other time when bread was miraculously blessed, broken, and shared, and it was as if Jesus stood among them again, laying his hands on a little so that it became enough for all.” 

- Barbara Brown Taylor, The Seeds of Heaven

We Praise God

Chiming of the Hour 

Prelude                      This Is My Father’s World               James Pethel 

                                 Rev. James Richardson, organist

Choral Introit       Now to Your Table Spread                John Ireland 

Now to your table spread we come, each one in faith

That you alone provide the words of life and death:

In wine and bread, in promised food
We find your loving heart, O God. 

(The text is by Shirley Erena Murray)

Welcome and Call to Worship                      Rev. Katie Callaway

Invocation                                                              Rev. John Callaway 

Hymn 470                O Day of Rest and Gladness                 WOODBIRD 

Affirmation of Faith            

We are not alone, we live in God’s world and we worship the One who has created and is creating, who has come in Jesus, the Word made flesh, to reconcile and make new, who works in us and others through the Spirit. 

We are relational beings, called to be with and for one another. In gathering at the table, we are communing with our Triune God and we are communing with one another. 

We are called to be the Church: to celebrate God’s presence, to live with respect in Creation, to love and serve others, to seek justice and resist evil, to proclaim Jesus, crucified and risen, to remember the life, ministry, and love of the One we follow. 

In life, in death, in life beyond death, God is with us. 

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; and forgive us our sins, as we forgive those who sin against us; and lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil; for thine is the kingdom and the power and the glory, forever and ever. Amen. 

Offertory Sentence

Receiving of Tithes and Offerings

Offertory                 Prayer for Our World                 Noel Rawsthorne 

Presentation and Doxology No. 591               OLD HUNDREDTH

Praise God, from whom all blessings flow; 

Praise Christ, all people here below; 

Praise Holy Spirit evermore;

Praise Triune God, whom we adore. Amen.

Offertory Prayer

Celebration of Holy Communion

Invitation to Christian Discipleship 

We Go Into the World

Hymn 439             In Christ There Is No East or West               ST. PETER 

Events in the Life of the Church

Pastoral Benediction

Choral Response   Here Is Our Common Wealth              John Ireland 

Here is our common wealth in sharing what is good,

As though all humankind around one table stood,

This bread to break, this wine to taste:
One people in the name of Christ. 

(The text is by Shirley Erena Murray) 

Postlude                 Praise the Lord, All Ye Nations      Robert J. Powell