Service of welcoming and sending out

Service of Welcoming and Sending Out - 17 November 2008
This service was put together by Simon Oxley

This week in the Ecumenical Prayer Cycle we remember the people and churches of the Cameroon, Central African Republic and Equatorial Guinea

Greeting and Welcome

We approach God together (stand)

Welcoming God, you stand with open arms to receive everyone.
Embrace us in your love.
Sending God, you challenge and inspire us to leave our comfort, familiarity and certainty.
Move us towards your kingdom.
Companion God, you travel through life with us.
Alert us to your presence in ecstasy, insight, and devastation.
Transforming God, you make all things new.
Inspire us with discontent with the way things are.
Welcoming God, you stand with open arms to receive everyone.
Embrace us at the end of our activities, our contracts and our lives.

We sing together (remain standing)

The Love of God is broad like beach and meadow,
wide as the wind and an eternal home.
God leaves us free to seek him or reject him,
The gives us room to answer Yes or No.
The Love of God is broad like beach and meadow,
wide as the wind and an eternal home.
We long for freedom where our truest being
is given hope and courage to unfold.
We seek in freedom space and scope for dreaming,
and look for ground where trees and plants can grow.
The Love of God is broad ...
But there are walls that keep us all divided;
we fence each other in with hate and war.
Fear is the bricks and mortar of our prison,
our pride of self the prison coat we wear
The Love of God is broad …

O judge us Lord, and in your judgement free us,
and set our feet in freedom’s open space;
take us as far as your compassion wanders
among the children of the human race.
The Love of God is broad ...

We read Genesis 12.1-10 (sit)
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. I will make of you a great nation, and I will bless you, and make your name great, so that you will be a blessing. I will bless those who bless you, and the one who curses you I will curse; and in you all the families of the earth shall be blessed." So Abram went, as the Lord had told him; and Lot went with him. Abram was seventy-five years old when he departed from Haran. Abram took his wife Sarai and his brother's son Lot, and all the possessions that they had gathered, and the persons whom they had acquired in Haran; and they set forth to go to the land of Canaan. When they had come to the land of Canaan, Abram passed through the land to the place at Shechem, to the oak of Moreh. At that time the Canaanites were in the land. Then the Lord appeared to Abram, and said, "To your offspring I will give this land." So he built there an altar to the Lord, who had appeared to him. From there he moved on to the hill country on the east of Bethel, and pitched his tent, with Bethel on the west and Ai on the east; and there he built an altar to the Lord and invoked the name of the Lord. And Abram journeyed on by stages toward the Negeb. Now there was a famine in the land. So Abram went down to Egypt to reside there as an alien, for the famine was severe in the land.

We read Matthew 17.1-5
Six days later, Jesus took with him Peter and James and his brother John and led them up a high mountain, by themselves. And he was transfigured before them, and his face shone like the sun, and his clothes became dazzling white. Suddenly there appeared to them Moses and Elijah, talking with him. Then Peter said to Jesus, "Lord, it is good for us to be here; if you wish, I will make three dwellings here, one for you, one for Moses, and one for Elijah." While he was still speaking, suddenly a bright cloud overshadowed them, and from the cloud a voice said, "This is my Son, the Beloved; with him I am well pleased; listen to him!"

We reflect on what we have heard

We sing together (Stand)
Ausgang und Eingang,
Anfang und Ende
liegen bei dir, Herr,
füll du uns die Hände

We send out and welcome colleagues (sit)

We pray for those who have left or will be shortly leaving their work at the Ecumenical Centre and we name before God ….. Names of recent and forthcoming departures will be read.
We thank you for their service and their companionship with us in this place.
We pray that you will bless them in their new life wherever you may lead them.

We pray for those who have come to work in the Ecumenical Centre and we name before God … (Names of recent arrivals will be read.)
We thank you for these new colleagues in your work.
We pray that here they will find opportunities for fulfilled lives in your service.

We pray for those who remain working in the Ecumenical Centre that we may never take each other or the opportunity of working for God’s kingdom for granted.
We thank you for the work you have given us to do.
We pray that we may be good and faithful servants of Jesus Christ.
We pray together

As we pray this morning we hold before God the people and churches of the Cameroon, Central African Republic and Equatorial Guinea and especially our colleague Nyambura Njoroge and former colleague Kersten Storch and their families as they mourn.

Fleeing God,
you escaped with your people through the desolation of the wilderness;
you flee today with the refugees in the Democratic Republic of Congo and too many other places
huddling, bewildered, with those driven from their homes and their land.
God of the barren places, fire us with the demands of your justice.

Despairing God,
you experience the pain of your people’s loneliness;
today you sit alongside those trapped in the valley of depression and despair,
grieving with the bereaved in their isolation and disorientation,
journeying with us through the pain of damaged and broken relationships.
God of the barren places, warm us with the glimmering glow of hope.

Responding God,
you experience the frustration and anger of a people who want an easy solution;
you travel today in the highs and lows of addiction,
waiting impatiently with the growing numbers in the dole queues,
listening to victim and perpetrator of the violence in homes and on the streets.
God of the barren places, teach us to see, hear and respond.

Beckoning God,
calling your people onwards to new opportunities;
you call us forward to serve you in new ways,
the direction sometimes clear, or at times shrouded in mist,
sometimes calling us home, yet always with a changed perspective.
God of the barren places, sustain us as we journey into the unknown.

Strength, Lord. Give me strength.
The strength to bear, with some measure of happiness, my sorrows and cares,
strength to make my love abundant in your service,
strength never to reject the poor,
nor to bend my knees before arrogant power,
strength to live the life of the Resurrected One each day,
strength to subject, with love, my strength to your will.
Prayer from the Cameroon

We pray the the Lord’s Prayer (each in our own language)

We sing together (stand)

One more step along the world I go,
one more step along the world I go;
from the old things to the new
keep me travelling along with you:
And it's from the old I travel to the new;
keep me travelling along with you.

Round the corner of the world I turn,
more and more about the world I learn;
all the new things that I see
you'll be looking at along with me:
And it's from the old I travel to the new;
keep me travelling along with you.

As I travel through the bad and good,
keep me travelling the way I should;
where I see no way to go
you'll be telling me the way, I know:
And it's from the old I travel to the new;
keep me travelling along with you.

Give me courage when the world is rough,
keep me loving though the world is tough;
leap and sing in all I do,
keep me travelling along with you:
And it's from the old I travel to the new;
keep me travelling along with you.

You are older than the world can be,
you are younger than the life in me;
ever old and ever new,
keep me travelling along with you:
And it's from the old I travel to the new;
keep me travelling along with you.

We bless one another (stand)

We lift up our eyes to the hills— from where will our help come?
Our help comes from the Lord, who made heaven and earth.
The Lord will not let your foot be moved;
the one who keeps you will not slumber.
The Lord who keeps Israel will neither slumber nor sleep.
The Lord is your keeper;
the Lord is your shade at your right hand.
The sun shall not strike you by day, nor the moon by night.
The Lord will keep you from all evil;
the Lord will keep your life.
The Lord will keep your going out and your coming in from this time on and forevermore.
[Adapted from Psalm 121]