Here is the devotion page for the Eleventh Sunday after Pentecost, July 31, 2016. (Click on the words!)
Just click on the picture to download the PDF file!
Did you miss a week? Go to the Weekly Devotion page to download past weeks!
Teach Us to Pray! Luke 11: 1-13, Tenth Sunday after Pentecost July 24, 2016
Here are a couple of ideas: invite the children forward to help lead the Lord’s Prayer wherever it occurs in your worship service. Invite the older children/youth to write one line about what they think each petition means and use that for the prayers of intercession or the prayers of the people.
*For a more “traditional” children’s sermon: Gather the children and ask them what are questions that they might have for God? Have a large piece of paper and a marker to write down their answers (or have a helper with you). Accept all answers (Pray for these things at the end). More than likely, some of these responses will connect somehow to the petitions in the Lord’s Prayer (the traditional version that we say, not necessarily the one in Luke.)Say: We ask God all kinds of things! Do you ever ask your mom, dad, grandma and grandpa etc, for things? Maybe dinner, or lunch, or help finding a toy? Yes! We all ask for help! God wants us to ask for help and for what we need.
God is always happy to hear from us which is why Jesus taught his disciples to pray! You can pray to God yourself, you don’t need an adult or a pastor to pray, you get to talk to God anytime you want about anything you want and God listens. And we can talk to God about all sorts of things Jesus says: food, God’s peace, our fears, forgiveness, help with a friend. We may always not hear an answer right away, but we know that God promises to hear us! Sometimes we hear God’s answer through other people, or reading the Bible or in all kinds of ways. Sometimes, Jesus says, we have to look in lots of places for God’s answer to us.
To help us remember the Lord’s Prayer and all of the different things that we can pray for, I made a colorful bookmark out of different colors of ribbon tied together that I keep in my Bible. At our worship station today, you can make one too!
Jesus, thank you for teaching us that God hears us always. Let us remember that we can talk to God about anything, anytime we want. (Pray for the items written on the large sheet.) We pray together the Lord’s Prayer now: (use whichever version is comfortable in your community.)
Have a table with the instructions available for all with ribbons cut into three inch lengths.
Lord’s Prayer in Color
Blue-“Our Father, who art in heaven’”
White-“Hallowed be thy name,”
Purple-“Thy kingdom come, thy will be done,”
Green-“On earth as it is in heaven.”
Brown (yellow beads)-“Give us this day our daily bread”
Red-“And forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us; and lead us not into temptation but deliver us from evil.”
Gold-“For thine is the kingdom and the power, and the glory, forever and ever, amen.
Tie each color of ribbon together with a knot making a bookmark for your Bible or any book.
Use this to help you to remember to pray unceasingly!
(For the bracelets-string the beads on in order and then tie the bracelet on your wrist.)
+God hears your prayers+
Weekly Devotion Page for July 24, 2016
Here is the devotion page for the Tenth Sunday after Pentecost, July 24, 2016. (Click on the words!)
Just click on the picture to download the PDF file!
Did you miss a week? Go to the Weekly Devotion page to download past weeks!
Children’s Sermon–Distractions and Prayer Luke 10:38-42 July 17th 2016
Preparation: get an assistant to either flash a light or make a small noise to distract you as you begin. Tell them to start out subtle before becoming more obvious to everyone.
Gather the children to you. Welcome them and start to tell them about the gospel story today. Prompt your assistance to start the light or noise distraction. As you start talking, fade off,lose your place, etc as you are distracted by the noise or light.
Say, “Wow I really want to focus on this Bible story but it’s hard, I keep getting distracted. Anyone else distracted?” Have the kids point out to you the distraction and then invite your assistant to join you. “This is like our bible story today. Jesus’s visiting sisters Mary and Martha. Martha is making dinner and trying to get this ready to be welcoming to her guest. Well she gets distracted by her sister Mary of helping her and she gets upset and tells Jesus to help her get Mary to come help. Jesus knows Martha is distracted by her worry and frustration and tells her that Mary is focusing in on Gods word and has also chosen a good thing. Jesus wants Martha to remember what the main focus is of being welcoming and that is to show care for others in Gods name.”
“Do you ever get distracted? What kinds of things distract you?” (Take answers, be prepared to prompt… Could mention the movie “Up” where the dog is always distracted by the squirrel or electronics, etc.). “Many things that are good and things that are not so good can distract us from remembering we are to focus on Jesus words and live our life based on his words and promises, even our thoughts and feelings can get in the way. I think I need that reminder to focus on Jesus and that many of us do. What are ways we can do this?” (Take answers, mention prayer and worship and reading scripture. If you use the inserts or other daily devotional in your congregation this is a great time to show it and teach again how to use it.)
Centering Prayer option: “All of these are good ways. And sometimes it good for us to take a little God time out. It can even be really short. It’s a time when we can just let our mind be open to listen for God. To do this we have to get pretty quiet, do you know how to be quiet? Let’s try. Good. Now I am going to set this time for just 30 seconds and we are going to try together to do a centering prayer. This means all we are going to breath in and think the word “Jesus” and breath out and think the words “Loves Me”. If other thoughts come just take a breath and remember your words. Let’s try together once and then we will set the timer.” Practice this together and see how it goes!
Jesus, you are our God. Help us focus on you. Thank you for your words of love for us. Amen
May your heart, hands, feet, head, words, and actions be surrounded in God’s peace.
Set up a centering prayer/meditation area. Put out some pillows to sit on or chairs that are set a part from the worship space. Or simply provide the resources in the pews. Provide card with different kinds of centering prayer. You can write some simple ones like the example of “Jesus loves me” or “Come Holy Spirit” and/or print up some other resources from here: Contemplative Outreach
Weekly Devotion Page for July 17, 2016
Here is the devotion page for the Ninth Sunday after Pentecost, July 17, 2016. (Click on the words!)
Just click on the picture to download the PDF file!
Did you miss a week? Go to the Weekly Devotion page to download past weeks!
Weekly Devotion Page for July 10, 2016
Here is the devotion page for the Eighth Sunday after Pentecost, July 10, 2016. (Click on the words!)
Just click on the picture to download the PDF file!
Did you miss a week? Go to the Weekly Devotion page to download past weeks!
God Knows Your Name Luke 10: 1-11, 16-20 Seventh Sunday after Pentecost, July 3rd, 2016 Year C
As you have the children come forward have a large piece of butcher paper and numerous crayons available on the floor. Invite them to write their name on the butcher paper as you begin. (Just first names are fine for time sake.) Say, “When you meet someone for the first time, what’s usually the first thing you tell someone about yourself? Yes, your name! Our names are very important and they help other people talk to us, call us on the phone, email us, send us a card or even a present! Without our names, life could be very confusing, couldn’t it? Our names help people remember what is special about us and us about them. Do we learn and remember names of people who we don’t see very often? No, it’s hard to know the names of people who we don’t go to school with, live in our neighborhood or have never even met! But we learn the names of people who are important to us and we see a lot in our lives. Knowing someone’s name is a way to say “I care about you!”
In our story today, Jesus sends the disciples out to all kinds of different towns and cities where they will meet all kinds of different people. Jesus reminds the disciples and us, that the most important thing to remember as we go along in our life meeting new people, learning new things, and telling people about God is that God knows our name, everything about us and says that we belong to God. When people don’t like you, or don’t want to even meet you, even though that’s hard, it’s ok because God knows you and your name and says “I care about you!” When we baptize babies, children or adults, we say their name because we know that God is saying that we all belong to God, God knows us and promises to always call us by name to God.
Besides learning people’s names, how can we tell people that God cares for them? (Accept all answers.) There are all sorts of ways to show God’s love! A few ways we do that as a church are….(Fill in with ministries of your congregation). And you are never too little, young or old to help in one of those activities! As you go back to your seat, I want you to draw a heart around someone else’s name (not your own) to show that God cares for them.
(Invite the children and the whole congregation to join hands for the prayer. Have everyone hold their hands out with thumbs to the left. Then when you join hands, you are supporting someone’s hand and someone else is supporting you. The true meaning of community!) Dear Jesus, thank you for caring for us. You know our names and everything about us. Help us to share you love and care with our friends, with our families and with people that we meet. May your peace fill us and the whole earth. Amen.
Take the sheet of butcher paper with the children’s names on it from children’s sermon and place it on a table with more crayons, markers, etc. Have people write their own name as well as draw a heart around someone else’s name. Invite the congregation to pray for the person whose name they drew a heart around. And to try and meet them if they don’t already know each other!
+God knows your name and cares for you+
Children’s Sermon – July 10, 2016 – Luke 10:25-37
Prepare: Make a poster (or a use a flip chart) that says “Who is my neighbor” across the top. If you are doing a worship station, either make the poster two-sided (same on the back) or make two posters. You will need one for the children’s sermon, and a different one for the congregation.
Invite the children to come forward with a request for help. Something like, “I need some of the smartest people in the room to help me answer this question, so please send all the children up here!”
Have your poster ready to go, and read it to the children. In today’s story about Jesus, someone asks him a pretty easy question, and, to be honest, I think that Jesus just over-thinks it. He launches into this long story about a traveler who gets attacked by robbers, and there are priests and leaders and people we don’t like . . . I just think it’s a mess!
So, let’s see if we can make sense of this question and maybe get a clearer answer than Jesus gave us. Who is your neighbor?
(write their ideas on the poster as they say them – you can, and should, repeat them for all the people to hear. Go with the flow here, but once things start to calm down, or it seems like a good time to add some complexity go on to the next part. You’re going to have to ad-lib a little depending on what they have said, what they say, etc.)
OK, so a neighbor is someone who lives next to you? What about across the street? OK, so what about the neighbor of my neighbor, is that my neighbor, too? I have a friend who lives about two blocks away . . . is she my neighbor? What about her neighbors, are they mine, too?
Here’s a tough question – what if all of these people look different from me? What if they have curly hair? Or different colored skin than me? Or what if they are really short, or really tall? What if they like tuna and I think it’s gross?
Boy, the deeper we get into this neighbor question the more difficult it is to answer! Maybe Jesus was right to tell a story rather than trying to give a simple answer. See, the story that Jesus tells about neighbors taking care of each other doesn’t put neighbors in a specific place – not next to you, or down the street. Jesus’ story doesn’t make sure that neighbors look like us, or think like us. Jesus’ story even says that sometimes the person we think should be a good neighbor isn’t a very good neighbor at all!
Maybe what Jesus is trying to say is that our neighbors aren’t just the people who live near us, or look like us, but instead they are anyone and everyone who needs our love and care.
Loving God, thank you for being our neighbor and for giving us people who love us a care for us. Help us to be loving and caring neighbors to all the people we meet. Amen.
God’s love binds up your heart.
For the worship station, set up a prayer station around you “neighbor” poster and encourage people to think about the people who they don’t want to be neighbors with.
Weekly Devotion Page for July 3, 2016
Here is the devotion page for the Seventh Sunday after Pentecost, July 3, 2016. (Click on the words!)
Just click on the picture to download the PDF file!
Did you miss a week? Go to the Weekly Devotion page to download past weeks!
Following Starts with Love Children’s Sermon Luke 9:51-62 June 26, 2016
Gather children to you. Who has ever played follow the leader? Yeah, it is a good game where one person leads others around and they follow the actions of the lead person. Which is easier for you, to be the leader or the follower?
I have a different kind of following game to try. Who will try this with me? (get a volunteer) We are going to sit (or stand) facing each other with our palms in the air. Now I am going to do some simple actions with my hands and _____ (name) is going to try to follow me.
How about you try–turn to someone sitting next to you have try out being the other person’s mirror (if you do not have time for this, encourage them to try this out during an open worship time, communion or after worship or at home) Which was easier to do? How did it feel to lead? How did it feel to follow?
We just read about Jesus telling his disciples, his friends, to follow him. They are worried because some people do not like them, a whole village in fact has sent all of them away. And they are worried because Jesus wants them to leave their family and homes and friends behind and follow him. Just like following the leader can be difficult in our little game, following Jesus may not always be easy. Sometimes people don’t like us, sometimes people are afraid of us, sometimes we are not sure what exactly we should do as followers of Jesus. When it’s difficult or we are unsure, we can remember that following Jesus starts with love. When the followers got messed up I noticed some giggling and then the leaders tried again. This happened in the game because we knew we were playing and we care about the people around us. Following Jesus begins with knowing that we can care about others and that we are first and foremost loved by God and then sent to share that love.
Jesus, help us to follow you. Help us to know how to begin with love and end with love. Help us remember your love for us goes anywhere. Amen
God in my head
God in my heart
God on my left
God on my right
Set up a space where people can try out the mirror game. Have a large mirror available with markers and let people write down prayers about following God.