Sunday service for 5 November 2023

Sunday 5 November 2023 — Martin Fair visiting
Gourock St. John’s Church of Scotland
Service prepared by Revs. Martin Fair and Teri Peterson
Manse: 632143 
Email: TPeterson (at) churchofscotland.org.uk
Email Charlene, Parish Assistant: CMitchell (at) churchofscotland.org.uk

Prelude Music (praise band)

*We Gather As God’s Family (As the Bible is brought in, we stand and sing)
A family gathered in love,
striving for justice and joy,
blessing the broken-hearted,
and sharing the hope of God’s kingdom.

Welcome & Announcements

Call to Worship
One: You, God, are my God,
    
earnestly I seek you;

All: We thirst for you,
    
our whole beings longs for you,

in a dry and parched land
    
where there is no water.
One: I have seen you in the sanctuary
    
and beheld your power and your glory.

All:  Because your love is better than life,
    
our lips will glorify you.

One:  I will praise you as long as I live,
    
and in your name I will lift up my hands.

All: We will be fully satisfied as with the richest of foods;
    
with singing lips our mouths will praise you.

Hymn 510: Jesus calls us here to meet him (tune: Lewis Folk Melody)

Prayer with sung prayer Mungu ni mwema
     Mungu ni mwema
You are good, O God, and you have shown us your goodness.
We thank you for teaching us, leading us, parenting us —
you are committed to love and you call us
to commit ourselves wholeheartedly to you, your community, your way of life.
     Mungu ni mwema
We confess that we have not committed wholeheartedly.
We have committed part of our hearts, part of the time,
and part of our lives, part of the time,
and part of our minds, part of the time.
We chafe under instruction,
and though we long for your promise we can’t see how it can be true.
So we don’t tell your story,
we don’t talk about you with others,
we don’t teach the next generation,
because we don’t want to rock the boat
and we don’t want to be on the hook for when things don’t work out
and we like to have plenty of options just in case
and there’s so much else going on.
Forgive us, O God, for neglecting your word and your way.
Forgive us for speaking one thing but doing another.
Forgive us for putting your commands into a box
to be dusted off every now and then
but otherwise deemed irrelevant or impossible in our modern world.
     Know that God is Good
We know you are good…at least, some part of us knows.
May your forgiveness seep into us so that we know it with our whole selves.
May your goodness reach into our minds
and displace the worry that we must somehow be good enough to earn your love.
May your goodness reach into our hearts
and soften the hardness that has crept in and that keeps us from feeling with and for our neighbours.
May your goodness reach into our souls
and fill us with grace that spills out in word and deed.
May your goodness reach into our bodies
and strengthen us to reach out in love.
You are devoted to loving the world, O God,
and your love transforms us from the inside out,
and we give you thanks for the ways you change the world by changing us.
     Halle – hallelujah
Amen.

Sanctuary Children’s Time

Scripture Reading: Deuteronomy 6:1-9 (NLT) & Acts 2:42-47 (NRSV)

These are the commands, decrees, and regulations that the Lord your God commanded me to teach you. You must obey them in the land you are about to enter and occupy, and you and your children and grandchildren must fear the Lord your God as long as you live. If you obey all his decrees and commands, you will enjoy a long life. Listen closely, Israel, and be careful to obey. Then all will go well with you, and you will have many children in the land flowing with milk and honey, just as the Lord, the God of your ancestors, promised you.
Listen! The Lord is our God, the Lord alone. And you must love the Lord your God with all your heart, all your soul, and all your strength. And you must commit yourselves wholeheartedly to these commands that I am giving you today. Repeat them again and again to your children. Talk about them when you are at home and when you are on the road, when you are going to bed and when you are getting up. Tie them to your hands and wear them on your forehead as reminders. Write them on the doorposts of your house and on your gates.

~~

They devoted themselves to the apostles’ teaching and fellowship, to the breaking of bread and the prayers.
Awe came upon everyone, because many wonders and signs were being done by the apostles. All who believed were together and had all things in common; they would sell their possessions and goods and distribute the proceeds to all, as any had need. Day by day, as they spent much time together in the temple, they broke bread at home and ate their food with glad and generous hearts, praising God and having the goodwill of all the people. And day by day the Lord added to their number those who were being saved.

For the word of God in scripture
for the word of God among us
for the word of God within us
thanks be to God.

Sermon: Growing Up, Growing In, Growing Out – the Very Rev. Dr. Martin Fair

Hymn: Bless the Lord (10,000 Reasons) (praise band)

Sanctuary Offering (choir to sing Colours of Day)

*Sanctuary Offering Response: God Our Creator, vv. 1 & 4 (tune: Bunessan; words: John L Bell & Graham Maule)
God our Creator, you in love made us
who once were nothing but now have grown.
We bring the best of all our lives offer;
for you we share whatever we own.

And with the people summoned together
to be the Church in which faith is sown,
we make our promise to live for Jesus,
and let the world know all are God’s own.

Prayer and Lord’s Prayer
Our Father in heaven, hallowed be your name.
Your kingdom come,
your will be done on earth as in heaven.
Give us today our daily bread.
Forgive us our sins,
as we forgive those who sin against us.
Lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil.
For the kingdom, the power, and the glory are yours, now and forever. Amen.

Hymn: Send Us Out (praise band)

Benediction

*Sung Benediction Response (John L Bell, tune Gourock St John’s)
Now may the Lord of all be blessed,
Now may Christ’s gospel be confessed,
Now may the Spirit when we meet
Bless sanctuary and street.

Postlude Music

Announcements

* Next Sunday is Remembrance Sunday and the service begins at the earlier time of 10:45am, followed by a short wreath laying at the anchor, then parading down to the cenotaph for the service at 12:15. The sanctuary service will be livestreamed to our Facebook page, technology permitting.

* We worship in the sanctuary on Sundays at 11am, and all Sunday worship is also online. If you are able, please enter by the front door in Bath street, and only those who need step-free access should use the back door. If you feel unwell, please worship online, to protect both yourself and others in our community.

* Starter Packs are short of Shaving Foam and Shampoo. 
The FoodBank are short of biscuits, UHT milk, tinned soup, tinned custard, tinned tomatoes. You can bring donations to the church and place them into the boxes in the vestibule. Thank you!

* Bowl and Blether will be on Monday 6 November and Monday 20 November, with doors opening at 11:30 and soup served from noon – 1:30. Volunteers are needed and welcome, especially at the new third Monday of the month!

* Wednesday Evening Bible Study meets at 7:30pm at the manse.

* The Kirk Session will meet on Thursday 9 November at 7:30pm in the sanctuary.

* The Contact Group next meeting is on Tuesday 14 November at 2pm in the large hall.  The speaker will be Alan Aitken MBE, sharing about the 125th anniversary of the 2nd Gourock Boys’ Brigade.  All are welcome at this and any of the meetings held fortnightly.  The group’s syllabus is now available from Fiona Webster for a donation of £5.

* Inner Visions: Art and Spirituality festival begins with an exhibition opening at Friday 17 November from 6-8pm, and runs for two weeks, closing on Friday 1 December from 5-6pm. This festival brings together local artists, our community, and the church to explore how creativity and spirituality go together, and how creativity can help us connect to our Creator and to one another. We will be looking for people willing to staff the exhibition for an hour or two at a time throughout the two weeks — just to be present in the sanctuary while the doors are open, and to welcome people and be hospitable while they’re in. Please sign up! Thanks!
During the festival, there will be a lecture by Alec Galloway on the history of expressing spiritual themes in artwork, especially in stained glass, on Sunday 19 November at 3pm. There will be a panel discussion with the artists who created the pieces for the exhibition, discussing how they went about creating them, the process and meaning behind each piece, and how artwork is important in feeding and expressing their spiritual lives, on Saturday 25 November at 6pm. There will be a Spirituality Cafe service on St Andrew’s Day, Thursday 30 November at 7:30pm.

* Did you know that the ministry we do at St John’s costs about £3000 per week? Everything we do is funded by your generous giving — all our support for young people, older people, bereavement care, community outreach, worship, study, spiritual growth, and community work is because of your offering. If you would like to set up a standing order in order to facilitate your spiritual discipline of giving, or if you would like to make an extra gift to support the ministry St. John’s does in our parish, you can give online by clicking here. If you would like to set up a standing order, please contact Teri and she can give you the treasurer’s details. You can also send your envelopes to the church or the manse by post and we will ensure they are received. 
It is also possible to donate to the work of the new parish assistant, speak to Anne Love about how to go about directing new donations to that new item in the budget.

* Don’t forget to follow us on Facebook and Youtube, and to sign up for our email devotions! Midweek you can watch Wine and the Word on Youtube, pray with video devotions on Facebook, and consider a new angle on something with a devotional email. Feel free to share with your friends, too!

* Free period products are available in the church toilets for anyone who might need them, thanks to Hey Girls and Inverclyde Council.

* The Church of Scotland has a new online learning platform called Church of Scotland Learning (more info here). The first set of modules is now available, and are designed with members of local congregations in mind and will help to grow faith, stretch minds and explore possibilities. They are set at an introductory level and accessible for all. We hope this will ignite people’s interest in learning more. Currently available topics include Vows for Elders; Vows for Ministers; Conversations in Discipleship, Exploring Discipleship, Talking About Your Faith; New Ways of Being Church; Knowing You Knowing Me (Learning to understand more fully where God is and what God is calling us to do); Theological Reflection for Everyone; Equality Diversity and Inclusion; and Unconscious Bias and Me. More modules will be added periodically, so sign up today by clicking here!

* Would you be able to host two university students from the USA from 8-11 June, 2024? They will each need their own bed, though they can share a room, and you would be providing them breakfast and dinner, bringing them to church on Sunday, and being a welcoming and engaging host as they get a cultural exchange experience. There would be some financial help to cover the food expenses. If you might be interested, please be in touch with Teri or Seonaid Knox, so we have a sense of how many students we can host.