- From Letters of the Early Church: 1 Corinthians 15:1-11
- From the Life of the Early Church: Acts 2:14-39
- We will also be reading together A New Creed
The hymns will be:
- #603 In Loving Partnership We Come
- Dare To Be (see insert)
- #580 Faith of Our Fathers
- #424 May the God of Hope Go with Us
The Sermon title is: Do You United Church Folks Believe Anything?
The sermon title is a two-edged question. On the one hand, United Church people have been accused of having no set beliefs. On the other, we are sometimes accused of being the church where anything is acceptable. And neither is true.
A story. I was working one of my first shifts at a new job. My relief comes in and learns that I am a candidate for ministry. "What church?" she asks. "United." "Oh, the social club."
"The Social Club". Not really a church, in her estimation. Certainly not a proper one anyway. My hunch, after working with her a while, is that we didn't believe the "right" things.
It is difficult to condense what the United Church believes. We are such a diverse group that there is almost always someone who will disagree. But we have a belief system. We have a way of expressing ourselves. For more on that take a look at the national website (see the link in the sidebar), particularly this section and this page.
This SUnday come and share as I, who was born and raised in this church, who learned what it means to be church in this denomination, try to explain what the United Church belief system is and a bit about how it developed/is always developing. And maybe, just maybe, we will then have an answer to the question Do you folks believe anything?
--Gord
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