October 9 @ St. Paul's UMC: Worship

The signs of autumn are all around us

Flowers from the Batches

Fellowship time is the place to be

Eigthteenth Sunday after Pentecost

Link to today's service

Today’s Meditation Verse: “But many who are first will be last. And many who are last will be first.” — Mark 10:31

Welcome... Pastor Charles

Prelude... Lorie Courier / “My Shepherd Will Supply My Need”

*Call to Worship... Tim Cook

Treasure is.... Gold and silver, frankincense, and myrrh.  Treasure is.... To have and to hold ‘til death us do part. Treasure is.... Family heirlooms offering precious memories. Come... bringing treasure, seeking treasure.   Come...treasured, treasuring.

—Katherine Hawker (2000), www.liturgyoutside.net

*Hymn... “Take My Life, and Let It Be” (UMH #399)

Litany for Native American Ministries Sunday... Tim Cook                         To be read responsively

For the unending baskets of food, coaxed from Mother Earth by the hands of her Native children; for potatoes, corn, beans, squash, peanuts and sweet potatoes; For the skills in planting, care and harvesting taught freely to the Europeans, for all these things which brought health and growth to the populations of Europe and new settlers to American shores, we offer a song of honor and thanks. 

For the creativity and skill of Native hands; for designing canoes, snowshoes, toboggans; and inventing lacrosse and hacky sack; For rubber which spawned thousands of new inventions, for technology and industry which rose from those gifts, we offer a song of honor and thanks. 

For the making of medicines: for quinine, ipecac, curare, petroleum jelly, witch hazel and a host of medications; For the medicine women and men who shared them freely, we offer a song of honor and thanks.

For rivers and streams, passes and paths; for the path making and path taking of America’s first peoples, for their leading the newcomers across these paths; For personal liberty; for freedom first experienced by European immigrants in the lodges and circles of Native nations, for the tribal democracy that gave birth to American democracy, we offer a song of honor and thanks.

Accept, O God, our honor song, and make our hearts thankful for what have been freely given. Make our hearts humble for what we continue to take. Make our hearts thoughtful for genuine repentance leading to action. Give our hearts power and peace to do as You bid us, in the    name of our brother and savior, Jesus the Christ, Your Song, and in the power of the Holy Spirit. Amen.

—Adapted from A Liturgy for Native American Sunday by Betty Jacob

Offering/Doxology (UMH #95)

Community prayer requests, concerns, and celebrations

Pastoral Prayer / The Lord’s Prayer... Pastor Charles

First Lesson: Psalm 111... Tim Cook

Choral Anthem... “Come Home,” arranged by Anna Laura Page and Jean Anne Shafferman

Epistle Lesson: 2 Timothy 2:8-15... Pastor Charles

This is the Word of God for the people of God. Thanks be to God.

Sermon... Pastor Charles / “That endurance thing”

*Hymn... “The Summons” (TFWS #2130)

*Words for the Journey... Pastor Charles