Worship Series for September 7 – 21
Before we are invited, we are already included. Accepting God’s invitation means being deliberate about cultivating our relationship with God, with each other, and with all of God’s good creation. But this is not a “me and God/Jesus/the Spirit” thing, as our focus on individualism has led us into the loneliness of the quietly desperate lives (or, these days, loudly aggressive lives) about which Thoreau wrote. God invites us into community, community that is not about winning and losing, but loving and sharing.
Sunday, September 7 | 8:30am & 10:45am Worship
Text: Genesis 1:1-2:4a
Theme: Each thing God brings into existence is individually good, but taken as a whole, it is VERY good. Think of Minnesota-speak: “I’m fine…” “I could be better.” On our own we are indeed “fine.” But together, as a creation that inhales and exhales as one, we are certainly “better.”
Preacher: Pastor Steve Sylvester
Sunday, September 14 | 8:30am & 10:45am Worship
Text: Genesis 21:1-3; 22:1-14
Theme: “I’m not that kind of God.” In the olden days, gods demanded radical obedience, even to the point of requiring the sacrifice of the firstborn. But Abraham’s God is not the kind of God that gives laughter (that is the meaning of the name Isaac) and then cruelly takes it away. Abraham’s God seeks relationship instead of blind fealty.
Preacher: Pastor Steve Sylvester
Sunday, September 21 | 8:30am & 10:45am Worship
Text: Genesis 27:1-4, 15-23; 28:10-17
Theme: One of the things about relationships is that they can break. We are tied to one another by God’s intention, but those are strings that we sometimes let rot or intentionally cut. The mother favors one son, the father the other, and the sons themselves turn on each other. This is not what God wants for us, so in ways that we often cannot fathom, God is always at work mending and retying the ties that bind.
Preacher: Pastor Steve Sylvester