Our September All Age Worship was led by our worship leaders.
To illustrate the Gospel reading Luke 14:25-33 we reflected on tall buildings:
We then turned to the Old Testament, Jeremiah 18:1-11 and to illustrate this we used a video trailer to “A Journey to the Potter’s House” which is a 90 minute illustrated sermon by Michael Ferris.
The message from Jeremiah is that there are times when tough love is necessary to bring healing and reverse the effects of evil in the world. There is no exhaustive list of the ways in which we can fall short of God’s will. In our times we might think of additional flaws in the potter’s clay: climate change, plastics, pollution, deforestation, animal extinctions, poverty, hunger, homelessness, inequality, injustice, racism, misogyny, violence ... we are called change our ways and actions – to allow God to work within our hearts to mould and reshape us into something new.
God’s love is freely available to everyone; however, Jesus calls us to a kind of discipleship that is not cheap. His command to "Follow me" is both a free gift and a costly demand; it requires commitment, discipline and self-sacrifice. It is not an easy path to follow, but if we allow God’s love to shape us, he will lift us up when we fall short, and he will enable us to share His love with others.
September marks the start of a Methodist New Year. Today’s readings prompted us to plan and prepare for turning into action the promises we will make at our Covenant Service, to open our hearts and allow God to work out his plan through us. We used the following video to prepare for prayer.
God the Potter, we pray for ourselves, that we may take time to reflect on our faith and be ready to allow you to shape and mould us to be the people you want us to be. That we might come prepared to make our Covenant Prayer, knowing how freely the gift of your love and the hope of eternal life is given to us, and willing to pay the cost of setting our whole being on following Jesus.
In His name we pray.
Amen.
The service drew The Vine worship resources.