AGM AND CELEBRATION OF MEMBERSHIPS
Welcome Everyone
Please take note of the special COVID-19 protocols as we help each other stay safe and healthyPlease follow along in this outline, noting that Bold Print is an invitation to participate
Acknowledgement of Traditional Territory and Ancestors
As we gather for worship, we acknowledge with respect the history, spirituality, and culture of the K’omoks First Nation and the Coast Salish Peoples on whose traditional and unceded territory we meet. We also honour the heritage of all indigenous peoples, as we recognize the need to seek healing and reconciliation between the descendants of the settlers and those who were here before colonization.
Let’s pause for a moment of silence to lament the deaths of the children found at the residential school near Kamloops and to remember that Every Child Matters…All my relations. All my relations.
GATHERING AND CENTERING
Call to Worship:
When our hearts are open,
When our egos trust enough to be at rest,
When we invite the Divine into our lives, not to do our bidding,
But to seek the ways of wisdom,
She comes – as breath, as fire, as calm stillness,
As disturbing holy presence..
Let us light our candle, let us open our hearts,
LET US WELCOME RUAH, THE SPIRIT OF GOD. Silence while a candle is lit.
Opening Prayer: Would you help us, God? Would you help us to look back on our life together? Would you help us to see how your Wisdom has guided us? Would you help us to see what we’re to do next? Would you help us to be your people in this place? Would you help us, God? Because we really need your help. Amen.
We Celebrate the Ministry of the Past Year
Welcome and Opening Remarks: Helen
DIUC Vision Statement: Sussan
We are a United Church, rooted in the Christian tradition. We seek to distill and exemplify the unifying and nurturing core of that tradition; namely, the life and teaching of Jesus, untouched by hierarchy, patriarchy, politics and the dominant culture. And, we extend from that core to receive and partner with people of diverse faiths, and others, who share in our love of the earth and all beings.
Attendance and Quorum
Motion to allow Elaine to chair the meeting.
Motion: That all those present who are not members of Denman Island United Church be given the ability to speak to the meeting and vote on temporal matters.
Motion: To approve the Minute of the Annual General Meeting of Aug. 9, 2020.
Motion: To approve this Order of Service as the Agenda.
Reflecting Back
Team Reports
Congregation reflections and questions
Appreciations: Carol Ralston and others – Helen
Motion: To accept the Reports as presented.
Prayers of Thanksgiving
Thank you, O God, for your abundant gifts of the Spirit.
We are overwhelmed and overjoyed at such bounty in our lives.
You give us the Spirit of Joy as we speak the language of celebration.
You give us the Spirit of Truth, the words and the passion to speak your truth.
You give us the Spirit of Life as we speak the language of Creation, stewarding your good creation even as it nurtures us all.
You give us the Spirit of Hope as we speak the language of caring and reaching out, turning from despair and defeat to possibility and wholeness.
You give us the Spirit of Love as we speak the language of compassion, calling and visiting those of us with illness or injury or disease, accompanying those who walk through the valley of the shadow of death.
You give us the Spirit of Wisdom as we speak the language of understanding, confronting the rhythms of life that change and transform.
You give us the Spirit of Peace as we speak the language of reconciliation. May we hear with healed ears and hearts that all of us are beautiful and unique beings, formed in the womb of the universe, blessed by our diversity and affirmed by holy authority. We pledge to share with all of creation the gift that is each one of us.
We thank you, living Spirit, that your mighty wind blows in and through us,
Rekindling our lives of faith, enabling us to live fully, completely and wholly, dancing in and through us with Wisdom’s joy and power.
Take our prayers and fold them to your heart as we repeat the words Jesus gave us to pray:
The Prayer of Jesus (adapted from a prayer written by Rev. Bret S. Myers)
O God, may your peace and justice dwell among us.
May your love and compassion live within and between us.
Nourish us daily with the necessities of life;
Sustenance for our bodies, and inspiration for our Spirits.
And may the forgiveness we give be that which we receive;
The kindness we show be that which we perceive.
Lead us on virtuous paths, and distance us from evil.
Gift us with hope that leads to renewal and reconciliation.
For your world is our world, And your reign, our reign;
Then, now, and always. May it be so. Amen.
WE LISTEN FOR THE WORD OF GOD
Reading: Proverbs 8:1-4, 22-31
Does not wisdom call,
and does not understanding raise her voice?
2 On the heights, beside the way,
at the crossroads she takes her stand;
3 beside the gates in front of the town,
at the entrance of the portals she cries out:
4 “To you, O people, I call,
and my cry is to all that live.
22 The Lord created me at the beginning[b] of his work,[c]
the first of his acts of long ago.
23 Ages ago I was set up,
at the first, before the beginning of the earth.
24 When there were no depths I was brought forth,
when there were no springs abounding with water.
25 Before the mountains had been shaped,
before the hills, I was brought forth—
26 when he had not yet made earth and fields,[d]
or the world’s first bits of soil.
27 When he established the heavens, I was there,
when he drew a circle on the face of the deep,
28 when he made firm the skies above,
when he established the fountains of the deep,
29 when he assigned to the sea its limit,
so that the waters might not transgress his command,
when he marked out the foundations of the earth,
30 then I was beside him, like a master worker;[e]
and I was daily his[f] delight,
rejoicing before him always,
31 rejoicing in his inhabited world
and delighting in the human race.
Reader: Holy Wisdom, Holy Word.
All: Thanks be to God!
Reflection: “Wisdom’s Dance”
This is a very special and unique service, where we both conduct the business of the church and formally welcome two of our beloved family into full membership. As I was preparing for it, I found myself thinking about two things.
First, as we worked on the membership liturgy, Helen and Wind challenged me to think about the importance of language especially when we are speaking of the divine. And secondly, I started to think about how we make decisions both in our own faith lives and in the life of the church.
And so I made the unusual, for me, decision to not use the prescribed lectionary readings, but instead chose the Proverbs passage on Wisdom that I think speaks to both of these challenges.
Wisdom, or Sophia in the Greek, is a hard lady to pin down. She has a long pedigree, popping up frequently throughout the Hebrew scriptures and in somewhat more subtle ways in the Christian scriptures. She is related to feminine goddess figures in the ancient Mediterranean cultures that surrounded ancient Israel such as Egypt, Mesopotamia and Greece. She has been eagerly adopted by Christian feminists in books such as “Sophia: the future of feminist spirituality”, where I first met her, and by contemplative teachers such as Cynthia Bourgeault in “The Wisdom Way of Knowing”, a book that I think several of you have studied in more depth than I have.
Wisdom dances through culture and scripture in many and varied ways, but in Proverbs 8 she is calling to us from smack dab in the middle of everyday life. Lady Wisdom is calling the people from the most public locations in town: from the heights, from the roadsides and the crossroads, from the entrance gates, calling to all who live. This is not an inscrutable old guru who has renounced the world, dispensing secret nuggets of learning to a chosen few followers. This is a young, vital woman raising her voice in the middle of the hustle and bustle of city life, calling us away from the seductions of Lady Folly, urging us to seek understanding right smack dab in the middle of the clatter of passing traffic, the throng of people anxious to enter the market, to buy and sell.
And as soon as she has our attention, does she give us some useful instructions for how to live? Not yet! Wisdom wants to be our teacher, to lead us to understanding, but first she wants us to read her resume. First, she wants us to hear the story of her ancient dance with the Creator, her existence at the very beginning of creation and her intimate role in its design.
The book of Proverbs was like a textbook for teaching right living to the sons of the upper levels of ancient Hebrew society. It was probably written around the time of the Babylonian exile, or just after it. However, the instructions that make up much of the book could well be much older folk sayings that were collected at this time, with essays added to the beginning and the end to place the sayings in the context of the story of personified Wisdom, linking them to her unique character and qualifications.
In this vivid depiction of Lady Wisdom, the writer ties together some elements that might seem to contradict each other at first glance, jumping from a setting at the heart of the city’s commercial action to the cosmic dance of creation. What ties them together is relationship, and strength and joy. The relationship between the divine and the created world, linked by learning and by experience. Strength rooted in knowledge rather than ignorance, in wise rather than foolish action, in action rather than passivity. Wisdom calls, raises her voice, takes a stand, cries out to all who live. Wisdom is God’s first compaion and rejoices with creator God in the world and the people that they have planned and made together. Wisdom is God’s daily delight. Wisdom is the link between God’s cosmic creativity and our individual struggles to live well in our confusing, chaotic world.
On this Trinity Sunday, we notice that just as Wisdom links divine to human, practical action to unfathomable mystery, so does the Holy Spirit, also frequently portrayed as feminine, link creator to creation. The relationship between the 3 expressions of God in the Trinity are by no means simple but they are mysterious and beautiful. After centuries of language limited to the traditional patriarchal images of Father, Son and Holy Ghost, we are beginning to supplement those words of power and hierarchy with a wealth of rich language for describing this difficult concept. Listen to this section from the Song of Faith of the United Church:
With the Church through the ages,
we speak of God as one and triune:
Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.
We also speak of God as
Creator, Redeemer, and Sustainer
God, Christ, and Spirit
Mother, Friend, and Comforter
Source of Life, Living Word, and Bond of Love,
and in other ways that speak faithfully of
the One on whom our hearts rely,
the fully shared life at the heart of the universe.We witness to Holy Mystery that is Wholly Love….(Song of Faith)
How comforting to know that we are not alone, how wonderful to have a choice of language for describing the Holy.
And how liberating to know that Wisdom’s voice calls to all that live. God’s partner who helped to dance the world into being, who taught the future leaders of a fractured nation, still calls to us across barriers of time, class, race, wealth and poverty, national identity, gender and sexual orientation. Wisdom delights in creation and calls to all who live within it, and the Holy Spirit dances and weaves us all together in God’s shimmering tapestry.
Wisdom tells us that there is a time for rules and regulations, for carefully considered choices between right and wrong actions, for studying and learning. But today, Wisdom also tells us that this is the time for listening to what we know deep in our hearts and for dancing and singing out of the deep, deep joy that comes from knowing we are all a part of God’s cosmic dance of love.
Let us pray:
Holy One, ground of our being, we thank you for all the language we have to try to express what cannot be expressed in words. Thank you for Wisdom and for the Holy Spirit, who accompany us, guide our decisions and make us glad. And thank you especially for Helen and Wind, who bring so much wisdom and strength and joy and commitment to this community of faith. Amen.
SOLO: MV #10, “Come and Seek the Ways of Wisdom”
GOD SENDS US OUT TO LIVE THE CALL
Nominations and Elections
Approval of Budget for 2021
Welcoming New Members
The church is a community of people with varied gifts,
united by the Holy Spirit.
We gather to celebrate God’s presence,
to discern God’s truth,
and to follow the way of Jesus.
Through our baptism we are welcomed into Christ’s church.
We exercise this membership
in The United Church of Canada,
and within the context of a local community of faith.
We now welcome into Denman Island United Church Wendy and Helen, who have demonstrated their belonging and commitment to this church over several years.
Sussan: On behalf of Denman Island United Church,
I present the following person(s)
whom we welcome into the membership
of this community of faith: Helen Wilson and Wendy Pope
Commitment of New Member(s)
Helen and Wendy, will you join with us
as together we celebrate God’s presence,
live with respect in creation,
love and serve others,
seek justice and resist evil?
I will, with God’s help.
Congregational Commitment
Dear friends in Christ,
Please stand as you are able to pledge to Helen and Wendy our support and care.
As your brothers and sisters in Christ,
we rejoice in the gifts you bring to us.
We pledge to you our love and our support.
With God’s help, we will together live out
the mission and ministry of Christ’s church.
Corporate Profession of Faith: A New Creed (Elaine)
We are not alone, we live in God’s world.
We believe in God:who has created and is creating,
who has come in Jesus, the Word made flesh,
to reconcile and make new, who works in us and others by the Spirit.
We trust in God.
We are called to be the Church: to celebrate God’s presence, to live with respect in Creation, to love and serve others, to seek justice and resist evil, to proclaim Jesus, crucified and risen,our judge and our hope.
In life, in death, in life beyond death, God is with us. We are not alone. Thanks be to God
Welcome
By the grace of God, Mother, Friend and Comforter,
we welcome you to the privileges and responsibilities
of membership in this congregation.
We give thanks to God for your witness among us.
The grace of Christ attend you,
the love of God surround you,
the Holy Spirit keep you.
Amen.
We Offer Our Gifts Back to God
SOLO: MV#191, “What Can I Do?”
Prayer of Dedication (in unison): We trust, loving God, that your
Spirit will come down upon our offerings so that, through them, faith in you will glow ever more brightly in your people. We ask that others will see our passion and will be drawn to the warmth of your love. Amen.
WE GO OUT, RENEWED AND INSPIRED
Adjournment
Commissioning
And now in the future, as in the past and the present, may God’s many holy names be praised.
Remembering how God has helped us,
Resolved to share in Christ’s ministry of helping one another,
Blown by the winds of the Spirit into the world,
We go now, thankful for a faith that holds us and that we hold now and always.
AMEN!
Used by permission from “Gathering” Pentecost 1, 2016: Call to Worship by Juanita Austin, Prayer of Dedication by Karen Boivin, Prayers of Thanksgiving adapted from prayers by Gord Dunbar and Don Uhryniw, Commissioning by Bob Root.
Used by permission from “Gathering” Advent/Christmas/Epiphany 2013-2014, Order of Service and Opening Prayer by Richard Bott.
