What's Inside Week 1

Pastoral Welcome

Good morning Church

Why am I wearing a pastoral robe?

Call To Worship

Leader: We are God's beloved people!People: Called to lives of kindness, humility and compassion!

Leader: God seeks to clothe us with love and to bind us together in harmony.People: God desires that we bear with one another and forgive as Christ forgives.

Leader: We are God's beloved people! People: Called to lives of peace and patience; called to live with grateful hearts.

All: We worship the God who calls us beloved!

Pastoral Prayer

Oh God, thank you for gathering us together as the body of Christ this morning. You are amazing God. Your love for us is more than we know. The amount of second chances you offer us is more than we ever offer others. Thank you Lord Jesus for living the life we couldn’t live dying the death that was our to die and setting us free from Sin and Death. On this day in particular where we celebrate our freedoms we first and foremost just celebrate that we are free to follow you, and that we are free to gather together in worship. God we know the miracle that is the church. Guard us from complacency, be with us as we come to a more full understanding of your spirit in and amongst us.

Lord in your Mercy, Hear our Prayer

Lord we pray for compassion and kindness. We pray that we would open our eyes to the perspective of those that are suffering and most in need in our world. We lift up specifically people experiencing homelessness, people struggling with fights to diseases and illness, we lift up those that are going hungry and thirsty, we pray for the strangers in our own land. We pray that might be instruments of your compassion in the world around us.

Lord in your Mercy, Hear our Prayer

We pray for humility. In all that we do, would we recognize that we are doing it for your glory and not for our own. Help us to see ourselves in proper proportion to you, and in proper proportion to our neighbor. Guard our hearts from pride, and from selfishness.

Lord in your Mercy, Hear our Prayer

God we pray for gentleness. We pray that the power we have we might use cautiously. We pray also for those that hold power over us, and those that lead us. We pray that they might be led by a spirit of gentleness as well.

Lord in your Mercy, Hear our Prayer

Lord we pray for Patience. When we don’t have the answers, when the burdens that we are faced with seem just a little bit more than we can handle remind us of the strength we find in your spirit. We join our prayers with those in our community struggling with grief and loss. We join our prayers also with those awaiting long sought after news in hospital beds and doctors offices, Lord God give us the patience to live our daily lives.

Lord in your Mercy, Hear our Prayer

We pray for forgiveness with in our church specifically. God we pray that we would meet each other with a level of forgiveness that reminds others of your forgiveness of us. When people we know tell us of the burdens that they are going through help us to bear those burdens with them.

Lord in your Mercy, Hear our Prayer

We lift up ourselves and we pray that we would clothe ourselves with these things: compassion, kindness, humility, gentleness, patience and forgiveness. We lift up to you in this moment of silent worship the outpourings of our own heart.

(wait 10 seconds)

Lord in your Mercy, Hear our Prayer

Most of all God

May the peace of Christ which surpasses all understanding

dwell richly in us.

We pray for peace within ourselves. for peace within our community, and as such for peace in our world. With your peace in our hearts and our minds we pray the prayer that you taught us saying:

Our Father who art in heaven, hallowed be thy name. Thy kingdom come. Thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven. Give us this day our daily bread, and forgive us our trespasses, as we forgive those who trespass against us, and lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil. For thine is the kingdom and the power, and the glory, forever and ever.

Amen.

WCR

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Celebration

Emily Cupris

Offering

What’s Inside

When you see those doors for the first time, what did you think about the type of people that were inside?

What do think about the people that are next to you right now?

ONLY 21% OF NON-CHRISTIAN PEOPLE HAVE A POSITIVE PERCEPTION OF THE LOCAL CHURCH

HALF-OF NON-CHRISTIAN AMERICANS DON’T TRUST LOCAL PASTORS (83% of Christians trust clergy)

Barna Cities research

The moral of the story what’s inside is one thing to the insiders and an entirely different thing to outsiders

And if I don’t think I am like the people in your church I am probably not going to go to your church

Pre-Scripture

Paul

Paul is all about the community of the church

he bounces from one church to the next instructing and teaching them about what it means to be the church

He is writing a letter to the corinthians and includes the part where Christ is the head

It is an instruction on how to live out the type of community where Christ is the head that they talked about earlier in the book of Colossians

This comes after the list of things to avoid

This is very similar to the Fruits of the Spirits

Scripture

Colossians 3:12–17 NRSV

12 As God’s chosen ones, holy and beloved, clothe yourselves with compassion, kindness, humility, meekness, and patience. 13 Bear with one another and, if anyone has a complaint against another, forgive each other; just as the Lord has forgiven you, so you also must forgive. 14 Above all, clothe yourselves with love, which binds everything together in perfect harmony. 15 And let the peace of Christ rule in your hearts, to which indeed you were called in the one body. And be thankful. 16 Let the word of Christ dwell in you richly; teach and admonish one another in all wisdom; and with gratitude in your hearts sing psalms, hymns, and spiritual songs to God. 17 And whatever you do, in word or deed, do everything in the name of the Lord Jesus, giving thanks to God the Father through him.

Our outside changes who we become inside

ancient baptismal ritual - baptismal font steps that went into font, put away old clothes and you were given a brand new set of clothes. new white shining baptismal clothes

Every day we have an opportunity to put off the old and to clothe ourselves with these things

Our outside clothing choices change who we become inside

We dress in clothing for the other person

We create a sense of occasion, or we try to signal to the other person something.

If you walk through a hospital and you see someone in a white lab coat they are probably wearing that to notify you that they are a doctor

Professions that have uniforms wear those things largely for the comfort of the other

What we choose to do as a church shapes us over time

How we choose to react to our spouse changes our relationship

What we say to our kids when we are mad at them shapes who we are on the inside

Worship and connect are both mentioned here

ancient baptismal ritual - baptismal font steps that went into font, put away old clothes and you were given a brand new set of clothes. new white shining baptismal clothes

Every day we have an opportunity to put off the old and to clothe ourselves with these things

We are called to Unity under Christ

All of the virtues concern how we relate to other people, Christianity is community

Christianity IS community

We don’t just do this as individuals

our individual spiritual life affects our collective spiritual life

God is searching for a body

The bigger argument here is that Christ is the head and the church is the body

That everything we do as the body of the church is meant to represent God

Not literal, like the brands that we wear

but if we are the body of Christ what are the ways that we react to the world around us

Is the “clothing” that we wear compassion, kindness, humility, meekness, and patience

By those things I mean

Compassion

Holman - “a heart felt sympathy of those that are in need”

Kindness

The action that compassion has

Humility

You may have heard humility summed up as not thinking less or yourself but rather thinking of yourself less

Meekness

Which is described by holman as “power under control” as in if you think about an entire ship being able to be controlled by a single rudder that might be a representation of what meekness looks like

Patience

is the capacity to bear injustice without revenge or retaliation

Those are supposed to be the ways that we react as followers to our world around us

When things aren’t fair we are told to be patient

When we hold power and privilege in someway we are told to practice meekness and to keep that power under control

When we want to make something all about us or our accomplishments we are taught to put on the clothing of humility

When those around us are angry and we might think they are irrational we are told to show compassion and react with kindness

Well Paul, that’s great and all but what happens when that doesn’t work out and we keep messing up and those around us keep messing up at showing these things?

When that doesn’t work and people mess up… forgive

forgive, forgive, forgive, forgive, forgive

Not as a command but because you have already been forgiven by God

All of the “clothing” that we are told to wear boil down to compassion

Boil down to to standing in awe of what those around us have to carry

of not just being sympathetic but being empathetic

All of these clothings items are a response to God

We wear masks out in public because we have compassion on those among us that are at risk

When we hold power and privilege based off of our race or gender, or orientation or religious belief or anything else we are told to put on meekness. Remember meekness is not weakness either

When we know that things aren’t fair and haven’t been for a long time we react not with revenge or with retribution, but with patience

When that thing that our family member or co-worker said just isn’t able to leave our mind we forgive

Wearing these type of clothing is what responding to God’s love is all about

We partner with God on what’s inside. 

That none would see us and that all would see God

This is a decision that we individually need to make and no one is going to make for us

Church Goal for the year - glorify God in everything that we do

Transition to Communion