Welcome to our online service - 10 October
This service sheet can be used individually or with households.
We would encourage you to say (or even sing) hymns and songs out loud.
Prayers, other liturgy or readings can be said out loud or silently, corporately or individually.
If you are able, we would also like invite you to join us for our main Sunday service, 10am, live on Zoom and in the church. Even if you have never been to St Gabriel’s before we would love you to join us. Please get in touch with the vicar Alistair (vicar@saintgs.co.uk) and he will send you the Zoom details.
Please join us for public worship in the church building this Sunday at 11:30am.
Opening
We stand before the throne of God
with countless crowds
from every nation and race, tribe and language.
Blessing and glory and wisdom,
thanksgiving and honour, power and might
be to our God for ever and ever.
Amen.
SING: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h5D3LEjGF8A
Morning has broken
like the first morning;
blackbird has spoken
like the first bird.
Praise for the singing!
Praise for the morning!
Praise for them, springing
fresh from the Word!
2 Sweet the rain's new fall
sunlit from heaven,
like the first dew fall
on the first grass.
Praise for the sweetness
of the wet garden,
sprung in completeness
where His feet pass.
3 Mine is the sunlight!
Mine is the morning
born of the one light
Eden saw play!
Praise with elation,
praise every morning,
God's re-creation
of the new day!
Eleanor Farjeon (1881-1965)
(c) David Higham Associates Ltd
from The Children's Bells
published by Oxford University Press
CONFESSION
Jesus says, ‘Repent, for the kingdom of heaven is close at hand.’ So let us turn away from sin and turn to the Lord, confessing our sins in penitence and faith.
We confess our sin, and the sins of our society, in the misuse of God’s creation.
God our Father, we are sorry
for the times when we have used your gifts carelessly,
and acted ungratefully.
Hear our prayer, and in your mercy:
forgive us and help us.
We enjoy the fruits of the harvest,
but sometimes forget that you have given them to us.
Father, in your mercy:
forgive us and help us.
We belong to a people who are full and satisfied,
but ignore the cry of the hungry.
Father, in your mercy:
forgive us and help us.
We are thoughtless,
and do not care enough for the world you have made.
Father, in your mercy:
forgive us and help us.
We store up goods for ourselves alone,
as if there were no God and no heaven.
Father, in your mercy:
forgive us and help us.
ABSOLUTION
The Lord enrich us with his grace,
and nourish us with his blessing;
the Lord defend us in trouble and keep us from all evil;
the Lord accept our prayers,
and absolve us from our offences,
for the sake of Jesus Christ, our Saviour.
Amen.
COLLECT
God, our judge and saviour,
teach us to be open to your truth
and to trust in your love,
that we may live each day
with confidence in the salvation which is given
through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen
SING: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nuXltxvza5A
Father God, I wonder
how I managed to
exist without the knowledge
of your parenthood
and Your loving care.
But now I am Your child,
I am adopted in Your family, and I can never be alone, cause, Father God, You're there beside me.
I will sing Your praises,
I will sing Your praises,
I will sing Your praises for evermore. (Repeat)
2. Jesus Lord, I wonder
How I managed to go on,
Without the knowledge
of Your suffering
You bore to set me free.
For as I go through times of pain
I see You on the cross again,
And know that You will see me through,
For, Jesus, You have been there too.
I will sing ...
3. Comforter, I wonder
How I managed to exist
Without the knowledge of the family
That You have given me.
But, more than that, You show me truth,
You help me face reality,
I know I'll never be alone, for,
Comforter, You're here beside me.
I will sing ...
Ian Smale (c) 1984 Thankyou Music
READINGS
Acts 2:42-47 New International Version - UK
They devoted themselves to the apostles’ teaching and to fellowship, to the breaking of bread and to prayer. Everyone was filled with awe at the many wonders and signs performed by the apostles. All the believers were together and had everything in common. They sold property and possessions to give to anyone who had need. Every day they continued to meet together in the temple courts. They broke bread in their homes and ate together with glad and sincere hearts, praising God and enjoying the favour of all the people. And the Lord added to their number daily those who were being saved.
John 15:1-13 New International Version - UK
‘I am the true vine, and my Father is the gardener. He cuts off every branch in me that bears no fruit, while every branch that does bear fruit he prunes so that it will be even more fruitful. You are already clean because of the word I have spoken to you. Remain in me, as I also remain in you. No branch can bear fruit by itself; it must remain in the vine. Neither can you bear fruit unless you remain in me.
‘I am the vine; you are the branches. If you remain in me and I in you, you will bear much fruit; apart from me you can do nothing. If you do not remain in me, you are like a branch that is thrown away and withers; such branches are picked up, thrown into the fire and burned. If you remain in me and my words remain in you, ask whatever you wish, and it will be done for you. This is to my Father’s glory, that you bear much fruit, showing yourselves to be my disciples.
‘As the Father has loved me, so have I loved you. Now remain in my love. If you keep my commands, you will remain in my love, just as I have kept my Father’s commands and remain in his love. I have told you this so that my joy may be in you and that your joy may be complete. My command is this: love each other as I have loved you. Greater love has no one than this: to lay down one’s life for one’s friends.
This the word of the Lord.
Thanks be to God.
TALK written by Alistair Stevenson
Over the last 3 months the PCC has been exploring together the vision for us as a church as we enter the next chapter of our life together. It has been a really fruitful and exciting time as we have prayerfully discerned from God where we think he is leading us in the next five years.
Over the next three weeks, I want to share with you the outcome of this discernment process and more importantly invite you to join us as we as a church family live out this vision.
Let me say this right at the outset - whether you have been at St Gabriel’s for many years or have only recently joined or whether you are 1 or 100 (and every year in between) - we need you to make this vision possible.
As the PCC explored the vision we kept coming back to 4 key questions that shaped all that we discussed. The questions were:
1) Who are we?
2) What are we made for?
3) How do we behave?
4) Where are we heading?
And so, over the next three weeks, I am going to try and share what I, Catherine and PCC believe are the answers to these questions.
Let’s start with question one. This is the easiest one and it hasn’t changed since people began worshipping God here at St Gabriel’s - however many years ago. We are the church here in Greystones. As our straplines states - we are a church FOR Greystones. The New Testament uses the Greek word ‘ekklesia’ - 111 times in fact - as the word for church. It literally means a gathering or assembly of people. We are the ‘ekklesia’ here in Greystones. This means that we are the body of Christ, the body of believers, who gather here in Greystones to worship God and grow as followers and disciples of his son Jesus. We are a church FOR Greystones. This has always been the case and God willing, will always be the case. This is who we are.
Secondly - what are we made for? What is the church, the ‘ekklesia’, here in Greystones, made for? Again, I don’t think this changes, but I want to give us some language and in fact a visual picture that I think really helps us to grasps this. We’re going to come back to this picture again and again.
Over two weeks in August and September Catherine led us through Genesis 1 and 2 focusing on what it means to be made in the image of God. At the heart of the Genesis story we see relationships. Glimpses of the Holy Trinity, Father, Son and Holy Spirit in a relationship before the world was created. God creates the world - he creates humans - for a relationship between them and God and between each other - male and female. But we see a fundamental relationship between humans and creation - the world that God has created. It is clear that we were created for relationships.
If we are made for relationships - it makes sense that broken relationships are at the heart of the brokenness in our world - it is the result of the Fall. And so in the Bible, we read of God’s rescue plan to restore the relationships that are broken in the creation narrative of Genesis 1 - 3. The picture of Revelation is therefore a picture of relationships restored – between God and humans, between humans themselves and between humans and the world.
The life of Jesus was based around relationship: UP—with his Father; IN—with his chosen followers and Out—with the hurting world around him. The life of the early church based itself around relationship - UP in worship to God, IN with one another as the church grew together and OUT into the world that Jesus called them to go to share his love and be his witnesses.
The Bible makes it clear - we were made for relationships - Up with God, in with God’s family and Out to our world. Each of which become 3 parts of a triangle - a three-dimensional pattern for living.
We were created as three-dimensional beings - UP, IN and OUT. But when one dimension is missing or is suppressed the other two do not work as they should. If we do not have all three elements of the —the UP, the IN, and the OUT—we are out of balance, and we will wobble through life.
I love the triangle because it is simple. It is easy to remember. It not only gives us a prism through which we can see everything in the life of the church but also through which we can create balance in our owns lives. How am I doing in my Up relationship with God, in my IN relationships with other followers of Jesus and my OUT relationship sharing God’s love with the world?
In our reading this morning from the books of Acts we see each corner of the triangle being outworked by the early church. Over the coming weeks we’re going to explore each element in turn. And so today let’s look at the UP element of the early church - therefore how did they grow their relationship with God. Let’s look at the passage again and this time I’ve highlighted all the times where the early church was outworking its UP relationship with the Father.
“They devoted themselves to the apostles’ teaching and to fellowship, to the breaking of bread and to prayer. Everyone was filled with awe at the many wonders and signs performed by the apostles. All the believers were together and had everything in common. They sold property and possessions to give to anyone who had need. Every day they continued to meet together in the temple courts. They broke bread in their homes and ate together with glad and sincere hearts, praising God and enjoying the favour of all the people. And the Lord added to their number daily those who were being saved.” Acts 2: 42 - 47.
So the early church:
Learnt more about God through the apostles teaching
Broke bread as a sign of Jesus’ crucifixion and resurrection
Prayed
Praised
Teaching, communion, prayer and praise. Through these things, their relationship with God grew and flourished.
But we see in the triangle that when we attend to our IN and OUT relationships, it also impacts our UP relationship. When the early church met together in the temple courts and in their homes, when they shared their possessions and cared for those in need - it caused them to praise God for all he was doing and pray to God that he would more. The worship of God always seemed to be collective - together as a church family. When they gathered - their IN relationships - they also then attended to their UP relationship with God. And the result? The result was OUT - the Lord added to their number those who were being saved. And when someone gets saved, what do you do, you join heaven in worshipping God (UP) for a life re-born and re-made - a broken relationship with God made unbroken.
Here at St Gabriel’s we want to make sure that we are a church that continually grows our UP relationship with God. A.W. Tozer expressed it this way: “God formed us for His pleasure, and so formed us that we as well as He can in divine communion enjoy the sweet and mysterious mingling of kindred personalities. He meant us to see Him and live with Him and draw our life from His smile.” We were created for worship. As the Westminster Shorter Catechism states: ‘Man's chief end is to glorify God, and to enjoy him forever.’
So, if the triangle acts as a tool or a model to help us identify what are we made for - the next question is ‘How do we behave?’.
Our behaviour as a church will be impacted by our values. The values define the culture of our church. I would suggest that our values do change, dependent upon the times that we live in, state of society around us but also who is part of our church family.
Here at St Gabriel’s we want three values to be a the fore - or at the heart - of how we behave as a church. They are:
Hospitality
Everyone involved
Whole life and wholeness
We’re going to delve into each of these over the next three weeks. But what I want to do is take each of our values, in turn, to try and see them through the prison of the triangle. As we do this over the three weeks we will hopefully better understand each value.
So, how do we see hospitality, everyone involved and whole life and wholeness in our UP relationship with God. Let’s take each on in turn.
In the creation narrative of Genesis, we see that God creates earth and the place to ‘host’ humans - his more precious creation. The garden of Eden is his divine, cosmic temple that he invites us to come and live and not only that, as the host, he invites us to tend the garden that he creates. This is God’s world - he is the generous abundant host.
It is a theme picked up by Jesus in the Gospels, who often speaks of heaven - the realm of God - like a divine meal with God as the host. In Luke 15 Jesus uses the image of a great banquet as an analogy to those who will be invited into the new Kingdom.
In light of this, when we worship God, when we pray and grow in relationship with him, we get a foretaste of this divine banquet. In worship we experience God’s hospitality, the one who invites us into his presence and meets us there.
As a church, we therefore want to make hospitality at the heart of our worship. To be a church that seeks the presence of God in our midst through his holy Spirit - and invite others to come and worship Him.
Everyone involved.
In the Old Testament we see story after story of God’s people worshipping together. The Psalms are the songbook for God’s people - giving language to a corporate expression of praise and adoration.
In the New Testament, all barriers are removed. As Jesus dies on the cross, the curtain is torn in two - from top to bottom. All can enter in. No one is excluded. No longer did you need a priest to perform acts of ritual for forgiveness - all could come into the presence of God. Worship in the New Testament, when it is described is nearly always corporate - and everyone got involved. Everyone had something to offer.
In 1 Corinthians 14:26 we read “What then shall we say, brothers and sisters? When you come together, each of you has a hymn, or a word of instruction, a revelation, a tongue or an interpretation. Everything must be done so that the church may be built up.”
That is why, here at St Gabriel’s, we want our worship to include everyone - all ages and more than that, that all-ages are involved in leading worship.
Whole life and Wholeness.
Romans 12:1: says: “Therefore, I urge you, brothers and sisters, in view of God’s mercy, to offer your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and pleasing to God—this is your true and proper worship.”
When we worship God - when we tend to our UP relationship - we do so with all of ourselves. We offer, not just our voices, or our hands, we offer our whole bodies. It is the one of the greatest commandments as Jesus states to “Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength and with all your mind”. We worship with our whole life - heart, soul, soul, body, mind and strength.
And through the extraordinary mercy and love of God - through our whole life worship - God brings whole life transformation. We find wholeness - a shalom peace, joy, mercy and grace.
That is why here at St Gabriel’s we take about wholeness ministry. We want to support the whole life of every person.
Hospitality, Everyone Involved and Whole life / Wholeness – this are our values here at St Gabriel’s.
And so to close I want you to consider some questions for yourself. You may want to may some time in prayer and meditation – dwelling on these questions:
- How are you doing to develop a worshipful relationship with God?
- What can you do in the life of the church family to help us grow in our collective worship of God?
- How can you outwork our values in the life of this church?
The Creed
We believe in one God,
the Father, the Almighty,
maker of heaven and earth,
of all that is, seen and unseen.
We believe in one Lord, Jesus Christ,
the only Son of God, eternally begotten of the Father,
God from God, Light from Light,
true God from true God, begotten, not made, of one Being with the Father;
through him all things were made.
For us and for our salvation he came down from heaven, was incarnate from the Holy Spirit and the Virgin Mary and was made man.
For our sake he was crucified under Pontius Pilate;
he suffered death and was buried.
On the third day he rose again
in accordance with the Scriptures;
he ascended into heaven and is seated at the right hand of the Father.
He will come again in glory to judge the living and the dead, and his kingdom will have no end.
We believe in the Holy Spirit,
the Lord, the giver of life,
who proceeds from the Father and the Son, who with the Father and the Son is worshipped and glorified,
who has spoken through the prophets.
We believe in one holy catholic and apostolic Church.
We acknowledge one baptism for the forgiveness of sins.
We look for the resurrection of the dead, and the life of the world to come. Amen
PRAYERS - written by Linda Chambers
Today is ‘Safeguarding Sunday’
Gracious Lord, we pray for the Church of England national and local safeguarding teams. Grant them wisdom and discernment as they prepare and update advice, training and policies. Thank you for Jacqui Bailey, our Safeguarding Officer, for her commitment and dedication to the task - and all those working behind the scenes to make our church safe for all. Help us to value, nurture and protect those of us who may feel weak or vulnerable at any time.
We extend our prayers on this subject as we pray for those trapped in slavery today, with no protection from abuse – and no obvious way for those responsible to be held to account.
We cry out to you, Lord, for the millions of children exploited through child labour, especially working in hazardous situations and in remote rural areas. We pray for street children with no birth certificates, no identity, no obvious future, constantly exposed to abuse and exploitation. Please watch over them and keep them safe from harm.
Lord in your mercy / hear our prayer
Gracious Lord, we pray for world leaders attending the UN Climate Conference in Glasgow in early November. Please make it possible for delegates and representatives from poorer countries to come - and countries where vaccine rates are low.
As the host nation, may the UK government give strong leadership in making major decisions which affect us all. We pray that richer, industrialised countries will agree their fair share of carbon cuts in order to keep the temperature rises to no more than 1.5 degrees - and that no country vetoes these agreements. May the money already promised to help poor countries adapt to climate change actually materialise.
Give courage and confidence to your Church to speak up and pray with our global neighbours living in poverty who are most vulnerable to the climate crisis. Please give us grace to act justly, love mercy and walk humbly with you, the God of justice who loves creation and brings restoration and peace.
Lord in your mercy / hear our prayer
Gracious Lord, we bring to you our own concerns which may also be reflected in the local community. Give courage to those facing hospital appointments, treatment or surgery this week. Thank you for the medical staff who will be attending them. Draw near to those in the final stages of life - at home, in hospital or residential care, with the added anxiety due to current restrictions on visiting. Comfort those who have lost a loved one recently - and as they comfort others. Give courage to those facing painful anniversaries or the loneliness of separation and loss.
Thank you, Lord, for your church here at Greystones and for the ministry of Alistair and Catherine among us. As we develop our Vision, help us to grow as individuals in our relationship with you and.as a church through worship, prayer, teaching.
May we remain in Christ and his love and bear fruit in our lives, remembering that apart from Him we can do nothing.
Lord in your mercy / hear our prayer. AMEN
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 for ever. Amen
SING: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x7lFYvJHi8k
Thank you for saving me -
what can I say?
You are my everything,
I will sing your praise.
You shed your blood for me -
what can I say?
You took my sin and shame,
A sinner called by name.
Great is the Lord.
Great is the Lord!
For we know your truth has set us free -
You've set your hope in me.
2. Mercy and grace are mine,
forgiven is my sin -
Jesus my only hope,
the saviour of the world.
`Great is the Lord', we cry.
`God, let your kingdom come'!
Your word has let me see,
Thank you for saving me.
Great is .....
Thank you for saving me -
what can I say?
Martin Smith
OFFERTORY - Take a moment to consider how you are going to continue to give to the life of the church and support other aid agencies and mission organisations.
Yours, Lord, is the greatness, the power,
the glory, the splendour, and the majesty;
for everything in heaven and on earth is yours.
All things come from you, and of your own do we give you.
SING: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sss-g50Dw1Q
Take my life, and let it be -
Consecrated, Lord, to thee;
Take my moments and my days,
Let them flow in ceaseless praise.
Take my hands, and let them move -
At the impulse of thy love.
Take my feet, and let them be -
Swift and beautiful for thee.
2. Take my voice, and let me sing
Always, only, for my King;
Take my lips, and let them be -
Filled with messages from thee.
Take my silver and my gold;
Not a mite would I withhold.
Take my intellect, and use -
Every power as thou shalt choose.
3. Take my will, and make it thine:
It shall be no longer mine.
Take my heart: it is thine own;
It shall be thy royal throne.
Take my love; my Lord, I pour -
At thy feet its treasure-store.
Take myself, and I will be -
Ever, only, all for thee.
Frances R Havergal
BLESSING
Eternal God, giver of love and power,
your Son Jesus Christ has sent us into all the world
to preach the gospel of his kingdom:
confirm us in this mission, and help us to live the good news we proclaim;
through Jesus Christ our Lord.
And the blessing of God almighty,
the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit,
be among you and remain with you always.
Amen.
Go in peace to love and serve the Lord.
In the name of Christ. Amen.