Develop a Discipleship System
Call to Worship
Children of God, what has God done for you?
God saves, provides, and holds us in God’s steadfast love.
Consider and remember: in the joyful times and in the sorrowful times, what has God done for you?
God covers us and lifts us up, protecting and empowering us with steadfast love.
When you have been like the fig tree in Jesus’ story that seems unable to produce and that everyone has given up on, what has God done for you?
God tends the soil and waters the ground, nurturing us into life with steadfast love.
Children of God, come, let us worship God who never gives up on us!
We come to worship and cling to God, for God’s steadfast love never fails!
Written by Dr. Lisa Hancock, Discipleship Ministries, September 2024.
Prayer for the Day
We are wounded, worried, betrayed, afraid, and injured. We are physically, mentally, and emotionally challenged.
Drink from these waters and you will never thirst again.
We chase thrills, happiness, wealth, health, longevity, him, her, peace; the right job, the right look, anything to lessen our pain. We exhaust even ourselves with our efforts.
Drink from these waters and you will never thirst again.
We continue, broken—day in and day out, hopelessly applying quick fixes. The pain will not subside. We are beckoned by an eternal yearning. We remember a prayer that grandmamma taught us; a lesson learned the hard way, or a word from the Word spoken by a sage. We long for relief, we seek it, search for it, yearn for it— relief that can’t be purchased or bartered.
Drink from these waters and never thirst again.
God we are grateful that your thoughts and your ways are higher than our own. Thank you for forgiving our sins. Thank you for new mercies each new day. Thank you for always welcoming us back into fellowship with you. Thank you for providing waters from which we may drink and never thirst again.
Written by Toni Payne in The Africana Worship Book, Year C (Nashville: Discipleship Resources, 2008), 89.
Prayer of Confession
God, you call us to step more deeply into ourselves
as we amend and awaken to who you desire us to be.
Let us acknowledge our transgressions in stillness and in silence
So that may prepare our hearts for change.
Moment of silence
We confess that we have not always brought forth good fruit.
In the midst of chaos and frenzy, we have often lost our way.
Our feet have strayed from the place where we met you.
Our egos have kept us from noticing our missteps;
Yet, with you, we know there’s another chance for change.
There is another opportunity to bear good fruit
In a world full of spoiled and rotten produce and systems designed to kill,
We are called to be the change that sustains generations.
Let us lean with you into this chance for transformation.
Words of Assurance
God’s grace and mercy abounds.
God is with us in the change.
God’s everlasting arms embrace us.
Each of us is beloved, affirmed, and set free.
Amen.
Adapted from Rev. Mia M. McClain on the Worship Ways site of the United Church of Christ, https://www.ucc.org/worship-way/lent-3c-march-20-2022/.
Benediction
May God bless you with the hope to cling to God, knowing that in the highs and lows, the joys and the sorrows, the known and unknown of this life, God’s love never fails. Thanks be to God! Amen.
Written by Dr. Lisa Hancock, Discipleship Ministries, September 2024.
