Welcoming All The People

Reading Notes

Calendar Notes

Habits of Hospitality, week 2: WELCOMING ALL THE PEOPLE
The color from now until Advent is green, with two exceptions: All Saints Day or Sunday (November 1 or 5) and Christ the King/Reign of Christ Sunday (November 26).

In the Series and This Service

With a strong launch last week, it’s time to meet the energy and focus of last week’s ending and begin to take it up a notch. Consider starting this week with a reprise of last week’s “For Everyone Born” (Worship and Song, 3149) or “Welcome” (Worship and Song, 3152) as a way to pull a musical thread from last week to this and express the series theme of “Habits of Hospitality” and today’s particular theme of “welcome for all.” If you want a longer song set, develop one that begins with praise of God such as “Welcome into This Place” (CCLI #661606) and ends with one of these two songs.

Move from the opening song or song set directly into a prayer for illumination, followed by the reading of Scripture and the sermon.

Consider using the same form of intercessions you used last week as another way to continue the threads through this series.

Suggested Great Thanksgiving: For the Season after Pentecost (United Methodist Book of Worship, 70-71)

Suggested Act of Thanksgiving at and after the Offering (whether celebrating Communion or not): Ask people to take time during the offering to write down what they are thankful about people they may not know well yet, but will commit to welcoming more fully into their lives beginning in the coming week. During the prayer of thanksgiving after the offering, include time for all present to name the things wrote down, and if they wish, the people, out loud, all at once, creating a symphony of thanksgiving as a harbinger of greater welcome to come. If you use BOW 553, place this just after the line: “We thank you for friendship and duty,” by adding “and particularly for these people and their gifts we seek to welcome more fully into our lives…”

Suggested Hymns and Songs for Sending: “In the Midst of New Dimensions” (The Faith We Sing, 2238), “Pass It On” (United Methodist Hymnal, 572), “Sois La Semilla” (UMH 583). “He’s Got the Whole World in His Hands” (Songs of Zion, 85), or This Little Light of Mine (Africana Hymnal, 4150).

Additional Resources for this Service

2014 Planning Helps for these readings

Ecumenical Prayer Cycle: The Caribbean — Antigua and Barbuda, Bahamas, Barbados, Cuba, Dominica, Dominican Republic, Grenada, Guyana, Haiti, Jamaica, Puerto Rico, St Kitts-Nevis, St Lucia, St Vincent and the Grenadines, Suriname, Trinidad and Tobago