We approach you, God..

Leader: Most wonderful God, we approach you with our little lives, our tiny minds and our large ignorance,

People: But also with our purest longings and hopes.

L: We want to worship you with all that we have and are,

P: But unless you encourage and assist us,

L: We will fail in this our holiest intention.

P: Therefore please let your Spirit move in our hearts and minds,

L: Lifting us above things of secondary importance,

P: And concentrating our whole being on your love and beauty.

When I survey the wondrous cross...

Leader: When I survey the wondrous cross, on which the Prince of Glory died,

People: my richest gain I count but loss, and pour contempt on all my pride.

Leader: God be praised for the wondrous cross, the tree of life,

People: which bears upon itself the scars and wounds of the world,

Leader: yet heals the sick, brings hope to the desperate and comforts the oppressed.

People: God be praised for the cross, which guides the lost, feeds the hungry, and shelters the poor;

Leader: inspires the anxious, illumines the wise, and challenges the fearless;

People: saves the condemned, and meets the need of every age and every land.

Everyone: God forbid that we should glory, except in the cross of Jesus Christ our Lord.

The Supper of the Lord

Leader: Come, let us celebrate the supper of the Lord.

People: Let us make a huge loaf of bread, and let us bring abundant wine, as at the wedding in Cana.

Leader: Let the women not forget the salt; Let the men bring along the yeast.

People: Let many guests come, the lame, the blind, the poor.

Leader: Come quickly. Let us follow the recipe of the Lord.

People: All of us, let us knead the dough together with our hands.

Leader: Because today we celebrate the meeting with the Lord.

People: Today we renew our commitment to the Kingdom.

Cry out, people of faith!

Leader: Cry out, people of faith! Rejoice and praise God!

People: If we did not sing praise, the very stones would cry out!

Leader: Cry out, people of faith, for your Savior draws near to Jerusalem.

People: Hosanna! God saves! Blessed is the one who comes in the God's name!

Leader: Blessed is Jesus Christ, who did not turn back for fear of the cross. Let us praise the God who loves us, sharing Christ's sufferings, and facing with courage our path of faith.

People: Hosanna! God saves! Blessed is the One who comes in God's name!

Welcome to the Calls to Worship Blog

I am a minister in the Christian Church (Disciples of Christ) and I find myself scrambling to come up with an appropriate Call to Worship every week. I don't always follow the Lectionary so there aren't always as many resources for me to match it up with the scripture.

So I'm really putting together this blog for my own purposes, as a way to archive and organize all the Calls to Worship I have used and will use. Will I recycle them? Maybe, if enough time has passed.

I've been writing calls to worship for nearly 3 years now and my wife was doing it for about a year before that, so we've amassed quite the collection.

Sources

I probably end up writing most of my own Calls to Worship. If I don't, I typically get them from two main sources:

Worship Connection - a great free resource provided by Cokesbury and the UMC. Follows the lectionary.

Chalice Worship - this is the worship resource book put out by my denomination; a copy sits under my computer at all times. The responsive calls to worship it has are good, but it's not really viable to use every week because the list is so short.

I also get a bunch from scripture, and I often use Eugene Peterson's Message translation so that we actually think about the words we're saying.

You'll also see a bunch that use the words from hymns - another invaluable resource.

Tags

This is probably the biggest reason I wanted to do this in blog format. I can tag each post with a source, scripture, occasion, theme, etc. This will make it much easier for me and maybe someone out there to find just the right one on a given week.