Worship - May 10, 2015

Worship Order for Sunday

Long Green Valley Church of the Brethren
Long Green & Kanes Rds., near Glen Arm, Md.
May 10, 2015
Worship 10:00 am Sunday School 11:10am

Mother’s Day

“I’ve loved you the way my Father has loved me. Make yourselves at home in my love. If you keep my commands, you’ll remain intimately at home in my love. That’s what I’ve done—kept my Father’s commands and made myself at home in his love.”
(John 15:9-10 from The Message)

Beginning with Praise (9:50 am) “When the morning stars together” 34
Announcements
Prelude “To a Wild Rose” MacDowell

*Call to Worship

*Hymn “For the beauty of the earth” 89

*Opening Prayer

Scripture 1 John 5:1-6

For Children “Four Feet, Two Sandals”
(by Karen Lynn Williams & Khandra Mohammed)

Moment for Mission Gary Miller

Returning our Tithes and Offerings

Offertory “When There’s Love at Home” McNaughton
(Please sign the attendance pad and pass it on)

A Litany for Mother’s Day

Sharing a joy, a concern, a word of testimony or praise
(please be brief, and aware of God's listening presence)

Hymn “Help us to help each other” 362

Pastoral Prayer

Video “The start of an unbreakable bond”

Speaking together the words of Jesus John 15:9-17

Message “Abide and abound” (mp3)

*Hymn “Love divine, all loves excelling” 592

*Benediction

*Postlude “O Power of Love” Bortniansky

*Rise in body or in spirit

#'s are from Hymnal: A Worship Book

Worship leaders - see basic guidelines

Call to Worship

One: Sing to the Lord a new song because he has done wonderful things!

All: His own strong hand and his own holy arm have won the victory!

Left: The Lord has made his salvation widely known;

Right: he has revealed his righteousness in the eyes of all the nations.

Left: God has remembered his loyal love and faithfulness to the house of Israel;

Right: every corner of the earth has seen our God’s salvation.

One: Shout triumphantly to the Lord, all the earth!

All: Be happy!

Men: Rejoice out loud!

Women: Sing your praises!

Men: Sing your praises to the Lord with the lyre—

Women: with the lyre and the sound of music.

Men: With trumpets and a horn blast,

Women: shout triumphantly before the Lord, the king!

One: Let the sea and everything in it roar; the world and all its inhabitants too.

Left: Let all the rivers clap their hands;

Right: let the mountains rejoice out loud altogether before the Lord

All: because he is coming to establish justice on the earth!

One: He will establish justice in the world rightly;

All: he will establish justice among all people fairly.

Psalm 98 from the Common English Bible
Copyright © 2011 by Common English Bible

Opening Prayer

O God who lit the stars
             and kindled in our hearts a flame of love for you,
      we pray that you’d make our seeking fruitful,
                                             our thinking sound,
                                             our singing hearty, and
                                             our silence real.
            Turn us again, O Lord,
                  and draw us unto you with cords of love.
            Cleanse our hearts,
                  and keep our bodies pure.
            Rule our wills
                  and guide our hands;
                        through Jesus Christ, our Lord. Amen.

by Allen Hacket (adapted), Prayers for a Pastor
©1951 Women's League of the Central Union Church, Honolulu, Hawaii
as found in For All Who Minister, ©1993, Brethren Press, p. 86

1 John 5:1-6

All those who put their trust in Jesus as the Messiah are the offspring of God. Everyone who loves the parent will also love the parent’s offspring. Loving God and loving God’s offspring are bound up together, and when we are living by the instructions God has given us, we can be sure that we are doing both. You see, the essential way to express our love for God is to follow God’s instructions for living right. There is no great difficulty in this; God’s instructions do not weigh us down. Anything that God has given birth to will win, hands down, in the struggle against the corrupt ways of the world. Our faith, expressed in love and obedience, is the sure-fire winner, and there is nothing the world can put up against it to stop its march to certain victory. Who can defeat the powers that would drag us down into the world’s mire? The one who trusts in the human Jesus as the Son of God, that’s who! When Jesus Christ came into the world, he was not just united with us in our struggle through a baptism of water, but through a baptism of blood. The Spirit is the one who has testified to all this, and the Spirit is truth itself.

from the Laughing Bird version
©2001 Nathan Nettleton

Returning our Tithes and Offerings

Dear Lord, out of your great love for us you have provided for our needs.
There is food for our tables, clothes to cover us, a roof over our heads and someone to love us.
For these gifts we are grateful.
Bless now our tithes and offerings, we ask, so that they may be used to make disciples for Jesus Christ. Amen.

by the Rev. Dr. LaGretta Bjorn,
pastor of Cadwalader Asbury United Methodist Church (Trenton, NJ)
from “Today We Celebrate Our Mothers: A 21st Century Worship Resource”
© 2015 Discipleship Ministries

A Litany for Mother’s Day

One: Mothers come in many different forms, and today we celebrate them all!
All: Thank God for mothers!

One: Everyone here is either a son or a daughter.
All: Thank God for my mother!

One: For those women who have joined God in Heaven and whom we miss dearly here on earth.
All: Thank God for the mothers of the past.

One: For every woman who is working day and night to raise her children right now.
All: Thank God for the mothers of today.

One: For all the women who are expecting, but aren't quite mothers yet!
All: Thank God for the soon-to-be-mothers.

One: For the women who took in others' children through adoption and foster care.
All: Thank God for the mothers with hearts so big.

One: For those women who have lost a child to death and must carry on.
All: Thank God for the mothers who are so strong.

One: For all the women who have desperately wanted to have children of their own, but chose instead to mother everyone else.
All: Thank God for the mothers in spirit.

All: We thank you, Lord, for the women who have influenced our lives in so many ways. We pray that we will honor them in everything we do. Amen.

Pastoral Prayer

written closer to the time (if not at the moment)

Speaking together the words of Jesus

One: As the Father has loved me, so I have loved you;

All: abide in my love.

One: If you keep my commandments, you will

All: abide in my love,

One: just as I have kept my Father’s commandments and

All: abide in his love.

One: I have said these things to you so that my joy may be in you, and that your joy may be complete.

All: This is my commandment, that you love one another as I have loved you.

One: No one has greater love than this, to lay down one’s life for one’s friends.

All: You are my friends if you do what I command you.

One: I do not call you servants any longer, because the servant does not know what the master is doing;

All: but I have called you friends, because I have made known to you everything that I have heard from my Father.

One: You did not choose me but I chose you.

All: And I appointed you to go and bear fruit, fruit that will last, so that the Father will give you whatever you ask him in my name.

One: I am giving you these commands so that

All: you may love one another.

John 15:9-17 from the New Revised Standard Version
copyright © 1989 by the Division of Christian Education of the
National Council of the Churches of Christ in the United States of America.
Used by permission. All rights reserved

Benediction

As you move from this time of worship as a community of faith and head into a brand new week, remember what Jesus said:

“You did not choose me
            but I chose you.
      And I send you into the world
                  to bear fruit that won’t spoil.
            As fruit-bearing branches, know that
                        whatever you ask of your Vinegrowing God,
                                in relation to me, the Vine
                                       you will be given.
      The root command remains:
                  Love one another.”