May 14, 2023

Celebration Service/ Mother’s Day

Prelude

Gathering Music: Sunshine Gospel Singers

Loving God, Loving Each Other

Welcome

Capener Music Scholarship & DSJ Scholarship Preview

Congregational Hymns

Love Lifted Me (Cokesbury Hymnal #233 Verse 1 & 2)

Love, Mercy, and Grace (Cokesbury Hymnal #153 Verse 1, 2 & 3)

Thanksgiving

Doxology 95

Praise God, from whom all blessings flow;

praise Him, all creatures here below;

praise Him above, ye heavenly host;

praise Father, Son, and Holy Ghost.Amen.

Celebration Choir

Lily of the Valley

Celebration Ringers

The Gift of Love

Prayer over Names

Pastoral Prayer & Lord’s Prayer

Prayer Response

I Love You, Lord (In Faith We Sing Hymnal #2068)

Prayer of Illumination

Lord, open our hearts and minds by the power of your Holy Spirit, that as the Scriptures are read and your Word is proclaimed, we may hear with joy what you say to us today. Amen.

Scriptures

Acts 17:22-31

Then Paul stood in front of the Areopagus and said, "Athenians, I see how extremely religious you are in every way. For as I went through the city and looked carefully at the objects of your worship, I found among them an altar with the inscription, 'To an unknown god.' What therefore you worship as unknown, this I proclaim to you. The God who made the world and everything in it, he who is Lord of heaven and earth, does not live in shrines made by human hands,

nor is he served by human hands, as though he needed anything, since he himself gives to all mortals life and breath and all things.

From one ancestor he made all nations to inhabit the whole earth, and he allotted the times of their existence and the boundaries of the places where they would live, so that they would search for God and perhaps grope for him and find him--though indeed he is not far from each one of us. For 'In him we live and move and have our being'; as even some of your own poets have said, 'For we too are his offspring.'

Since we are God's offspring, we ought not to think that the deity is like gold, or silver, or stone, an image formed by the art and imagination of mortals. While God has overlooked the times of human ignorance, now he commands all people everywhere to repent, because he has fixed a day on which he will have the world judged in righteousness by a man whom he has appointed, and of this he has given assurance to all by raising him from the dead."

John 14:15-21

"If you love me, you will keep my commandments. And I will ask the Father, and he will give you another Advocate, to be with you forever. This is the Spirit of truth, whom the world cannot receive, because it neither sees him nor knows him. You know him, because he abides with you, and he will be in you. "I will not leave you orphaned; I am coming to you. In a little while the world will no longer see me, but you will see me; because I live, you also will live. On that day you will know that I am in my Father, and you in me, and I in you. They who have my commandments and keep them are those who love me; and those who love me will be loved by my Father, and I will love them and reveal myself to them."

This is the Word of the Lord

Thanks be to God!

Sermon

Invitation to Christ and Church Membership

Stewardship Moment

Hymn of Response

Blessed Assurance (United Methodist Hymnal #369 Verses 1 & 3)

Receiving of New Members

(Congregational Response)

We give thanks for all that God has already given you

and we welcome you in Christian love.

As members together with you at Christ United Methodist Church,

we renew our covenant faithfully to participate

in the ministries of the Church by our prayers, our presence,

our gifts, our service, and our witness, that in everything

God may be glorified through Jesus Christ. Amen.

Benediction (Light Taken into the World)

Benediction Response

Blessed Assurance (United Methodist Hymnal #369 Chorus)

Postlude