PRELUDE/ENTRANCE
GREETING/ANNOUNCEMENTS
*OPENING SONG
“Love Divine, All Loves Excelling” UMH 384
*CALL TO WORSHIP
Liturgist: Today we celebrate our mothers, grandmothers, aunties, and all the women who have loved us.
People: Thank you God for giving us mothers.
Liturgist: We remember with deep gratitude all the ways they demonstrated their love for us.
People: Sometimes we did not understand them, but we know that God understood.
Liturgist: We take time to remember our mothers because a mother's love is most like God's love.
All: For their tears, for their hugs, for their wisdom, for their unfailing trust in our abilities, we give thanks today.
OPENING PRAYER (Together)
Loving God, we know your love because we have mothers. We thank you for the mothers who carried us in their wombs, nourishing, protecting, and bringing us into the world. We thank you for the mothers who did not give birth to us, yet loved us just the same. With gratitude we remember their words of encouragement when we have felt unsure or afraid; we thank you for their kindness when the world has treated us unkindly; we thank you for their soft, comforting arms and the gentle way they kissed away our tears; we thank you that they protected us with the fierceness of a lioness protecting her cubs; we thank you for the times when they corrected us rather than letting us continue down wrong paths. Help us to live so that their investment in us might not be in vain. We honor our mothers with lives of service to you in the name of the Risen Christ, for it is in his Name we pray. Amen.
PRAYER OF CONFESSION
WORDS OF ASSURANCE
SHARING GOD’S PEACE
JOYS AND CONCERNS
PROCLAMATION AND RESPONSE
A TIME FOR CHILDREN
SPECIAL MUSIC
FIRST SCRIPTURE Acts 9:36-43
SECOND SCRIPTURE Proverbs 23:22-25
MESSAGE “Make Your Mother Proud!”
RESPONSE TO THE WORD
*SONG OF RESPONSE
“I Was There to Hear Your Borning Cry” TFWS 2051
PRAYERS OF THE PEOPLE
THE LORD’S PRAYER
*OFFERING OF OURSELVES
*DOXOLOGY UMH 95
*PRAYER OF THANKSGIVING
HOLY COMMUNION
GREAT THANKSGIVING UMH 15 THE LORD’S PRAYER
SHARING THE BREAD AND CUP
SENDING FORTH
*SONG OF DISMISSAL
"Savior, Like a Shepherd Lead Us" UMH 381
*BENEDICTION
*PEACE
"God Be with You till We Meet Again" UMH 672
Verse