2022 Summer Sermon Series

Our Worship Council is delighted to share our summer plan for worship! We have three wonderful sermon series planned. One of the gifts of following the Narrative Lectionary is that we have "summers off," and that gives us more flexibility to get creative during the summer months!
A POLITICAL PRAYER: PRAYING THE LORD'S PRAYER IN CAESAR'S EMPIRE (June 12–July 10)
We will begin by re-visiting the Lord's Prayer. One of the challenges presented by this prayer is its familiarity. For many of us, the Lord's Prayer is the one that we have prayed most frequently in our lives! Of course, the danger of familiarity is that the words of the prayer simply become rote for many of us. Does a prayer mean—or do—anything if we utter the words automatically, without any sense of the significance they possess? This series will help us revisit the Lord's Prayer from a new angle—not of American partisan politics, but rather from its context within the first-century Roman Empire. Our hope is that this series will help us to understand the deep layers of meaning in the prayer and approach it with new intention. Perhaps even more so, we hope that when we do pray this prayer again, we will be empowered to pray it in a way that is transformational once again—just as it surely was for Jesus’s earliest followers!
WELCOMING THE STRANGER: A SERMON SERIES ON RUTH (July 17–August 7)
We are delighted to offer a sermon series on this short but very meaningful book from the Hebrew Bible! Ruth is a familiar story to many of us, but its four chapters are full of surprises for readers who pay attention! We will wonder what it means to embrace someone who for all intents and purposes should be an outsider—Ruth, a Moabite. We will consider what it means that this outsider becomes a central part of God's story in the world (she is even mentioned in the genealogy of Jesus in Matthew's Gospel!). And we will ask where God is at work in the story—and in our stories—even when it seems at times as though God is absent!
CONFESSIONS OF A SKEPTICAL PASTOR (August 14–September 4)
Pastors are people, too. (At least ours is! Maybe we shouldn't speak for others!) Our pastor has doubts and fears and anxieties just like everyone else. He questions and wonders and wrestles with the typical answers churches have given throughout the ages to hard spiritual questions: Is it okay to doubt? Does God really have a plan for your life? Is sexual activity within marriage the only option for Christians? What does it mean to be people of faith in a racially diverse world—especially when most of our churches are anything but diverse? This series will be an opportunity for Rev. Art to speak from his heart, to express his doubts, and share his own perspectives on some of these challenging but important topics.
SCHEDULE:

I. A Political Prayer: Praying the Lord’s Prayer in Caesar’s Empire (5 weeks; based on Matthew 6:9–13)
  • 6/12/22 - Our Father in heaven, hallowed be your name. ("Who's Your Daddy?" - Sermon recording here.)
  • 6/19/22 - Your kingdom come. your will be done, on earth as it is in heaven. ("There is No Plan B" - Sermon recording here.)
  • 6/26/22 - Give us this day our daily bread. ("Scarcity Mindset" - Sermon recording here.)
  • 7/3/22 - And forgive us our debts, as we also have forgiven our debtors. ("Who are You Willing to Invite to the Table?" - Sermon recording here.)
  • 7/10/22 - And do not bring us to the time of trial, but rescue us from the evil one. ("The Seduction of Violence" - Sermon recording here.)
II. Welcoming the Stranger: A Sermon Series on Ruth (4 weeks) III. Confessions of a Skeptical Pastor (4 weeks)