katyandtheword

Call to Worship:

God is Good

All the Time

All the Time

God is Good

Let us praise, our God

Let us praise our God who is always Good.

Prayer of Confession: God, I know sometimes that goodness and mercy are chasing me because I’m distracted, or too hurried. I know too that it is hard to feel goodness and mercy when I am overwhelmed or in survival mode. Help me. Help me to see and understanding and feel the goodness and mercy that are already in my life. Teach me ways to cultivate these: with rest, nourishment and a practice of living out of abundance instead of scarcity. Teach me to be a Psalm 23 sheep I pray. (Silent Confession) Amen.

Assurance of Pardon: God loves you, you are forgiven. Let us tell one another this truth: In Jesus Christ we are forgiven.

1st Scripture Reading Isaiah 40:9b-11

2nd Scripture Reading Psalm 23:6

Prayer of Dedication: Thank you for chasing me God. As I go into the world, remind me to stop for a couple of minutes, so that I can feel your goodness and mercy wash over me. Remind me I pray. Amen.

Hymns: Amazing Grace, Savior Like a Shepherd Lead Us, Jesus Loves Me, If I but Trust in God to Guide Thee, Lord of Our Growing Years, Here I am Lord, God of the Sparrow, As a Deer Longs for the Stream, My Soul in Silence Waits for God, Any Psalm 23, Morning has Broken, Breathe on Me Breath of God

Psalm 23 Series

Feel free to use/adapt with credit to Pastor Katy Stenta

Psalm 23 Week 3

Posted on June 3, 2021 by katyandtheword

The Message Psalm 23

Laughing Bird (Australian) Psalm 23

The Lord is my Grandma

Call to Worship:

God you are an abundant

You set your feast before us, full of grace and mercy

You show my enemies even, what it is like to live in the bounty of God

Come Let us bless God’s Holy Name

Prayer of Confession: God, we confess that sometimes we hoard your blessings. We think there is not enough, and yet you feed us in the presence of our enemies. Giving an unspoken invitation to join us. Remind us that if there is enough for them, there is surely enough for us and encourage us to be as abundant in grace and goods, as generous in our invitations and meals, as loving in our relationships as you are. It is a tall order, which is why you offer us nourishment along the way. Nourish us to do all of these things we pray. (Silent Confession) Amen.

Assurance of Pardon: God will always have the light on for us, and welcomes us back with open arms whenever we need forgiveness and nourishment. Let us share the good news with one anther: In Jesus Christ we are forgiven.

1st Scripture Reading Isaiah 40:18-20, 25-26

2nd Scripture Reading Psalm 23:5

Prayer of Dedication: God, you have provided the feast, nourishing our very souls. Our cup overfloweth, let us share that grace with others as we go, we pray in the name of Jesus Christ. Amen.

Hymns: Here I am Lord, Great is Thy Faithfulness, Precious Lord Take My Hand, There’s a Wideness in God’s Mercy, Come Thou Fount of Every Blessing, Love Divine All Love Excelling

Psalm 23 Series

Feel free to use/adapt with credit to Pastor Katy Stenta

Psalm 23 Week 2 Psalm 23:4

The Message Psalm 23

Laughing Bird (Australian) Psalm 23

The Lord is my Grandma

Call to Worship (Isaiah 40)

Have you not known, Have you not heard?

God is with us

When we need comfort, God will comfort us

Come, let us abide with God.

Prayer of Confession: (unison) God I confess, I am scared. Especially when evil surrounds me, even though I know your rod and staff are supporting me, I am afraid. I do not know whether to speak up or stay quiet in the midst of evil. I am uncertain at times if I should be standing firm or running away. And sometimes I find death to be very scary. Support me as I wrestle with these very real fears, I pray your Holy Shepherding Name. (Silent Confession) Amen

Assurance of Pardon: Hear the good news, God’s love is from everlasting to everlasting, ever available to support us even when our steps falter. Let us proclaim the good news: In Jesus Christ we are forgiven.

1st Scripture Reading Isaiah 40:1-2, 21-24

2nd Scripture Reading Psalm 23:4

Prayer of Dedication: God help me to remember that you walk with us in the shadow of the valley of death, for you have been there before and know what it entails. When I am afraid, remind me that you do not fear evil. Help us to be brave and comforted as we walk in the world today and everyday, we pray. Amen.

Hymns: It is Well with My Soul, Jesus Walked This Lonesome Valley, O Love How Deep How Broad How High, What Wondrous Love Is This, I love the Lord Who Heard My Cry

Psalm 23 Series

Feel free to use/adapt with credit to Pastor Katy Stenta

Psalm 23 – The Lord is my Grandma

Grandma, great and mighty God…

you take care of me and everything I need.

You make me rest in the cool, green grass

because grass is good for my eyes, and good for my soul.

You take me where the water is still and quiet,

where the waters soak up the chaos of the streams of life.

You bring me back to life, filling in the gaps and chips and fissures of from life.

You lead me in ways that are right so that I will be a credit to you.

Even though crevasses and ravines want to claim me,

I am not afraid because I am not alone.

Grandma, you are with me. Your crook guides and re-directs me.

Your walking stick, which aids and supports me, gives me comfort.

Grandma, you always cook for me. Y

you set a fine table no matter who is there—

even if people who don’t like me—or whom I don’t like–come over.

Grandma, you value me and praise me.

You cover me with so much love that it pours everywhere,

splashing on everyone there and even back onto you.

You hold my life like it’s precious.

You hold my life like it’s good.

You hold my life like it’s beautiful.

Because you treasure my life, I will treasure my life too.

I will live every day as a blessed day spent at your house.

Living forever in your house—and eating at your table–is heaven for me.

Thank you for being my great, and good, grandma.

Feel free to use/share with credit to Rev. Dr. Barb Hedges-Goettl (pronounced Gaatle)

Summer Psalm 23 Series

The Message Psalm 23

Laughing Bird (Australian) Psalm 23

The Lord is my Grandma

A sheep scale prayer

Week 1: Psalm 23: 1-3

Week 2: Psalm 23: 4

Week 3: Psalm 24: 5

Week 4: Psalm 24:6

https://katyandtheword.com/2021/06/01/summer-psalm-23-series/

https://www.agnusday.org/comics/47/psalm-23-enemy-2005

Feel free to use/adapt with credit to Pastor Katy Stenta

Psalm 23 Week 1

The Message Psalm 23

Laughing Bird (Australian) Psalm 23

The Lord is my Grandma

Call to Worship (based on Psalm 95:6-7)

Come, let us worship and bow down

Let us kneel before the Lord, our Maker!

For he is our God, and we are the people of his pasture

We are the sheep of God’s hand, come Let us Praise God!

Prayer of Confession: (unison) God I confess that sometimes I do not want to be a sheep. Sometimes it is hard for me to take direction, and I do not know if it is unwillingness, or ignorance or simply weariness that stands in my way. And yet you walk beside me, to comfort and protect me. Help me to accept you as my shepherd I pray. Amen (Silent Confession) Amen

Assurance of Pardon: Hear the good news, God promises to restore us, know the truth in your hearts: In Jesus Christ we are forgiven.

1st Scripture Reading Isaiah 40:29-31

2nd Scripture Reading Psalm 23:1-3

Prayer of Dedication: God you know we entered here thirsty. Send the Holy Spirit out with us, to shepherd us, comfort us, and to quench us. Send us into the world refreshed by your Word and Holy Spirit we pray. Amen.

Hymns: Create in me a Clean Heart, There is a a Balm in Gilead, Spirit of the Living God, Any version of Psalm 23

Psalm 23 Series

Feel free to use/adapt with credit to Pastor Katy Stenta

Prescient God: Rainbows & Trinities

Today I think that the most prescient thing God ever did was to hang their rainbow in the sky.

God knew what God was doing when they hung up the bow after the storms

Knowing that we needed the reminder that every storm runs out of rain–as Maya Angelou put it.

Knowing that it would be claimed and expanded by all of God’s queer children, proclaiming that love is love is love is love and that God created a multiplicities of genders and sexualities–just like God created a rainbow with thousands upon thousands of hues and in-betweens.

We need rainbows, because God knew

Before sociological studies and microscopic and macroscopic science; before we did our Genesis job of naming all of the people, places and things of the world, you knew that very naming would make us create divisions.

Before we made elaborate charts to discover and explicate the mystery of the Trinity, God, you knew

You knew how much we need rainbows

You knew racism would be a stumbling block of sin,

that normalcy is a illusion of bigotry

that being neurotypical or not is a spectrum….which is another word for rainbow

and that gray can beautiful color, and sometimes we sit in the gray–

God I always imagine that the Trinity is gray, in between and a part of the rainbow world you created.

And God, you knew that you, the Almighty and Many Breasted God needed to symbolically and in all practicalities disarm Godself.

Promising never to send natural disasters as punishment.

Never.

And putting the most powerful weapon of the time, the equivalent of a gun, up. Forever.

Because if God can disarm Godself, then it is clear what we should do.

In the midst of horrific gun violence in the US, the state imbued violence in the United States and Colombia, and in the midst of border wars in Armenia-Azerbaijan, climate asylum and violence in Syria, and the oppression and apartheid conditions in Gaza.

God you know we need to figure out how to live in concert and beauty in rainbows–and how to first and foremost disarm ourselves as you did thousands of years ago.

Thousands of years ago.

God, thank you for your prescience.

And for all the rainbows

And for giving us the time.

And the promises within the rainbow, that it won’t always be like this.

Help us embody your rainbow.

Help us to honor your rainbow.

Fill us with rainbows I pray.

Amen.

rainbow | National Geographic Society — Image

Feel free to Share/Adapt/Use this prayer with Credit to Pastor Katy Stenta

Pandemic Era Prayer

God, I am praying the prayer of an impatient people.

I truly feel that I am, and we are, the direct descendants of the Hebrews who grumbled and complained from the moment they were freed from Egypt. Impatient for the new beginning to start. I feel their pain.

I pray the prayer of chaotic leadership, lifting my prayer beside Moses and Aaron and Miriam and Tzipporah, who had to balance what the people want with what is best with the community, and the two often do not agree, and are almost always hard to discern.

God I’m praying the prayer of the weary, of Hagar alone and frustrated in the desert, of Abram and Sarai who had to move from place to place to place before finding a home and establishing a household. Is the end in sight? Can I recognize it when it is?

I’m feeling very anxious God. As the news of De-mask-us starts to filter out, and yet, and yet, I hold so many immune compromised people in prayer for cancer and surgery and long term illness. I’m praying the prayer of confusion as I try to sort out what is safe for my children and how to keep them masked, even as adults look forward to seeing one another face to face.

Lord, I’m praying the prayer of the privileged in a nation where vaccines a plentiful, and sometimes even wasted in the face of India’s medical catastrophe that on so great cannot help but spill over to her sister nations–a sharp reminder that it is already affecting us, and I hold onto my prayers for well resourced nations like Japan who, yet still, do not have access to the vaccines.

Lord, I pray the prayer of the brokenhearted, I shed tears with Jesus for Jerusalem and all of the violence that has been purposefully perpetuated against schools, hospitals and publishing houses in Palestine. I pray for the fight over land and water and occupancy that is being done in your name. I sorrow that oppression continues.

God I’m praying the prayer of ignorance, as one who has only been able to superficially take in what is happening in Colombia. Weary and heavy burdened I understand that police violence reigns terror in many places, including my own, and I do not even know what to do next to help to dismantles the powers and principalities as they exist now.

God I pray the prayer of a parent who has had a mere hours of true relaxation over the past year. Is that how it’s been for you God, have you been superbusy watching over us and drying our tears and helping us to clean up the messes?

God I’m praying a multitude of prayers today, as I face the window, a portal into a new era, uncertain as to what will come next, and still weary from what has happened. I am so ready to close the door of the pandemic, and yet am aware that this is not how things work.

So instead, I life this prayer of snips and bits to you.

Be with me in ::gestures broadly at everything:: I pray. Amen.

Feel free to use/share/adapt with credit to Pastor Katy Stenta

More Pandemic Prayers and Resources

Mundane Prayer to Survive the Day to Day

Pentecost Prayers

Call to Worship
Spirit of the living God, visit us on this day of Pentecost.
Come, Holy Spirit.
With rushing wind that sweeps away all barriers,
Come, Holy Spirit.
With love that overlaps the boundaries of race and nation,
Come, Holy Spirit.
With power from above to make our weakness strong,
Come, Holy Spirit.

Call to Worship
What are your dreams people of God?
To be filled with laughter, To cry with joy, not sorrow.
What are your hopes, people of God?
To be free of the chains that bind us
Rejoice, God makes our hopes and dreams come true.
Let us rejoice in God!

Based on: https://re-worship.blogspot.com/2011/11/contemporary-call-to-worship-psalm-126.html

Prayer of Confession: Almighty God, you poured your Spirit upon gathered disciples creating tongues, open ears, and a new community of faith. We confess that we hold back the force of your Spirit among us. We do not listen to your word of grace, speak the good news of your love, or live as a people made one in Christ. Have mercy on us, O God. Transform our timid lives by the power of your Spirit, and fill us with a flaming desire to be your faithful people, doing your will for the sake of Jesus Christ our Lord. (Silent Confession) Amen

From the Book of Common Worship (1993), of the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.)

Prayer of Confession: God we confess we have been too tired to prophesy or have visions or dream dreams. Instead we are in survival mode. Please breathe on us some of you energy and inspiration as we go into the world. Help us to see the future through your Holy Spirit we pray

Assurance of Pardon: Friends the Good News of the Gospel: In Jesus Christ, we are forgiven. Amen.

Prayer of Dedication: God, we pray that we might rededicate our lives to you. Send your Holy Spirit among us to inspire and sustain us. Holy Spirit Come, we pray. Amen.

Prayer of Dedication: God send your Holy Spirit upon us to love us and sustain us. Refresh us in the Holy Spirit we pray in Your Son’s most Holy Name Jesus Christ. Amen.

Gathering & Gospelling: Worship VI

Worship VI

Chapter 7: Create Good Controversy: Do Justice, Love Mercy, Walk Humbly

John 6:5-14

When he looked up and saw a large crowd coming towards him, Jesus said to Philip, ‘Where are we to buy bread for these people to eat?’ ⁶He said this to test him, for he himself knew what he was going to do. ⁷Philip answered him, ‘Six months’ wages^* would not buy enough bread for each of them to get a little.’ ⁸One of his disciples, Andrew, Simon Peter’s brother, said to him, ⁹‘There is a boy here who has five barley loaves and two fish. But what are they among so many people?’ ¹⁰Jesus said, ‘Make the people sit down.’ Now there was a great deal of grass in the place; so they^* sat down, about five thousand in all. ¹¹Then Jesus took the loaves, and when he had given thanks, he distributed them to those who were seated; so also the fish, as much as they wanted. ¹²When they were satisfied, he told his disciples, ‘Gather up the fragments left over, so that nothing may be lost.’ ¹³So they gathered them up, and from the fragments of the five barley loaves, left by those who had eaten, they filled twelve baskets. ¹⁴When the people saw the sign that he had done, they began to say, ‘This is indeed the prophet who is to come into the world.’

Genesis 12:1-2

Now the Lord said to Abram, ‘Go from your country and your kindred and your father’s house to the land that I will show you. ²I will make of you a great nation, and I will bless you, and make your name great, so that you will be a blessing.

Call to Worship:

God we know what heaven it like; for you promise it will be the place without hunger

No one will want for food or drink, for freedom or respect or for love or for companionship

God, in that place all greed will cease, we will learn to rely on your manna, knowing there is enough

Indeed, there will be extra, like the filling of the 5,000

For Truly God, your blessings spill over. touching all nearby

Come Let us worship God.

Prayer of Dedication/the Day: Lord Jesus, I want to be your disciple. I want to help you. Will point out to the people throughout the week that I’m supposed to be serving? Please bless them, heal them of their pains and illness. Let them somehow know that this food is from your hands. Amen. (Based on Prayer Unbinding the Gospel p. 179)

Confession: Reflective Questions:

Who is hungering for God?
Who is just simply hungry, without the basic provisions they need?

What is our calling as Christians to feed the hungry? What is one thing I can do this week to put my discipleship into practice?

Joys & Concerns: Add to your Prayer List for today any individuals from our 24hr day of praying for those you have contact with

Prayer for the Body of Christ, New Covenant , The Church’s Children

Prayer for the Neighborhood, The Greater Church, The World

Creative Activity: Group Prayer, ever person adds a line

Homework: Reflect over this summer. If you have notes from worship, look them over. If not, maybe look at your calendar and reflect about how it’s been going. How is your prayer going? What do you need to pay attention to go forward.

What is the most important thing your’ve learned/discovered/remembered this week and in the past 6 weeks?

Study Verse: I will bless you…so you will be a blessing—Genesis 12:2

Prayer of the Day/Dedication: Holy God, we are yours, the church is yours, our work is yours. I pray you bring energy, intelligence, imagination and love to us and your church. Please use us for your purposes as we continue to the good news of gathering at church with every one we meet. In Christ’s holy name we pray. Amen.

Hymn Suggestions: I’m Gonna Live So God Can Use Me, Lift High the Cross, O Love that Will Not Let Me Go, There’s a Wideness in God’s Mercy, Amazing Grace

Gathering & Gospelling Worship Series

If you want doc versions, sample bulletins, and the handouts as a separate materials page, email me at Katyandtheword at Gmail

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