penultimate

Today is the final Sunday and penultimate day of my sabbatical leave. I am quite excited about the prospect of being back in the pulpit* next Sunday. There’s been a lot to reflect on during my sabbatical leave – too much to encapsulate here – but one of the things I have been doing is reflecting on our six values as a church. I prepared a series of daily Bible readings on the themes of those and today’s is:

Psalm 150:6 “Let everything that has breath praise the Lord.”

Each day I wrote a brief reflection starter on the reading. Today’s is:

“Do you have breath? You know what to do!”

We have a series of daily prayers based on our values and the Sunday prayer is based on our purpose to ‘love God, love people’:

“Jesus, as a community of your followers we commit ourselves afresh to you. Today we humbly offer our voices, our thoughts, our ideas, our plans, our hopes and our expectations in worship. Take all that we are and all that we bring and bless it for your purposes. We eagerly come to you to sit at your feet to hear from you, meet with you and revel in your presence by your Spirit.

“Give us your heart for all people and help us to love without limit as you have loved us. Prepare us to listen to your words of encouragement, inspiration, hope, correction and love. May our time dedicated to you today prepare us for the week ahead and  the people we will meet whom you want to bless through us.”

As I contemplate being back in the pulpit* from next week that prayer resonates strongly with me. Church services are not a performance by people, nor are they dictated by God. They are what happens when God’s Spirit inspires us, when God’s Spirit fills us and when God’s Spirit takes what we bring and transforms them. The miracle of an interaction of the divine and human in those moments means that disparate needs can be met in the same moment.

I have been an ordained Baptist Minister for 32 years and I still am humbled and rejoice at the times when after a service someone says to me that they felt God say something to them through it. It’s not uncommon for them to attribute it to something I said when I know I didn’t say that thing, but somehow God’s Spirit in them takes the words from my mouth and translates them to what that person needs to hear.

Exciting isn’t it?

Be blessed, be a blessing

*while we have a large pulpit I use a wooden lectern at the front of the platform as it’s less formal and closer to the people.