New beginnings
This will be the very last printed worship resource provided by the circuit staff. We began, more than five years ago, early in lockdown, when we were posting 50+ copies per week as well as making our worship available as voice recordings and online. Now our shared worship life has moved on, and the staff believe that there is no longer a significant need to provide worship in this way.
If you’re not able to access worship in person, there are still several options. All our written worship is available on the circuit website manchestermethodists.org.uk – just type a minister’s name into the search bar and you’ll see the worship they have prepared over the years, with prayers, a reflection and links to sing along with the hymns.
You can join Whalley Range’s worship, which is shared over the telephone every Sunday morning, accessible even if you don’t use a computer, and circuit worship is live-streamed every Sunday evening via Zoom – please contact the circuit office on administrator@manchestermethodists.org.uk or on 0161-226 2702 for details for both.
Thank you to staff members past and present, who have faithfully served the circuit in this way over the last five years. Above all, thank you for being part of the worshipping community of prayer and praise that is at the heart of the life of the Manchester Methodists.
Invitation to Worship
Come, all people from all places,
Let us be glad and sing for joy!
Let us praise the God who blesses and guides us.
Hymn: StF 125 Praise and thanksgiving, Father, we offer
- Praise and thanksgiving,
Father, we offer,
For all things living
You have made good;
Harvest of sown fields,
Fruits of the orchard,
Hay from the mown fields,
blossom and wood. -
Lord, bless the labour
We bring to serve you,
That with our neighbour
we may be fed.
Sowing or tilling,
We would work with you;
Harvesting, milling,
For daily bread.
3. Father, providing
Food for your children,
Your wisdom guiding
Teaches us share
One with another,
So that, rejoicing
With us, our brother
May know your care. -
Then will your blessing
Reach every people;
Each one confessing
Your gracious hand.
When you are reigning
No one will hunger:
Your love sustaining
Fruitful the land.
Coming to God in prayer
Here in this place of prayer,
we bring you our anxiety: open our minds to receive your peace.
We bring you our longing: open our ears to hear your word.
We bring you our wounds: open our hearts to receive your healing.
We bring you our future: open our lives to hear your call.
God of encounter,
of conversation and of conversion,
we worship you in this place of prayer as your people.
God of all hearts and all nations,
may all we hear and share today
equip us to receive graciously,
to speak wisely
and to share generously in Jesus’ name.
Forgive us, Lord,
when we refuse to cross over the boundaries
that we have created;
boundaries of difference, of preference,
of comfort, of attitude.
Do not judge us as our faithlessness deserves,
but help us to turn away from our prejudice,
to receive your cleansing
and to begin again in your name.
Amen.
Reading: Acts 16:9-15
During the night Paul had a vision: there stood a man of Macedonia pleading with him and saying, ‘Come over to Macedonia and help us.’ When he had seen the vision, we immediately tried to cross over to Macedonia, being convinced that God had called us to proclaim the good news to them.
We set sail from Troas and took a straight course to Samothrace, the following day to Neapolis, and from there to Philippi, which is a leading city of the district of Macedonia and a Roman colony. We remained in this city for some days. On the sabbath day we went outside the gate by the river, where we supposed there was a place of prayer; and we sat down and spoke to the women who had gathered there. A certain woman named Lydia, a worshipper of God, was listening to us; she was from the city of Thyatira and a dealer in purple cloth. The Lord opened her heart to listen eagerly to what was said by Paul. When she and her household were baptized, she urged us, saying, ‘If you have judged me to be faithful to the Lord, come and stay at my home.’ And she prevailed upon us.
Hymn: StF 654 The love of God comes close
The love of God comes close
Where stands an open door
To let the stranger in,
To mingle rich and poor:
The love of God is here to stay
Embracing those who walk his way.
The peace of God comes close
To those caught in the storm,
Forgoing lives of ease
To ease the lives forlorn:
The peace of God is here to stay
Embracing those who walk his way.
The joy of God comes close
Where faith encounters fears,
Where heights and depths of life
Are found through smiles and tears:
The joy of God is here to stay
Embracing those who walk his way.
The grace of God comes close
To those whose grace is spent,
When hearts are tired or sore
And hope is bruised or bent:
The grace of God is here to stay
Embracing those who walk his way.
The Son of God comes close
Where people praise his name,
Where bread and wine are blest
And shared, as when he came:
The Son of God is here to stay
Embracing those who walk his way.
Words: John L Bell & Graham Maule (c) 1988, 1997
WGRG, Iona Community, G2 3DH
Reflection
There are many stories in the Bible which matter a lot more than you might think, and this is one of them. Paul has been travelling around the Middle East, proclaiming the good news of Jesus’ death and resurrection, and he seems to have expected to carry on in that area. But God has other ideas! Paul dreams of a man from Macedonia, across the sea in Northern Greece and so in Europe – a whole new world in need. ‘Come over and help us’, pleads the man – and Paul would never refuse such a request to share the life-changing message of the Gospel. So begins a whole new chapter in his mission, criss-crossing the Mediterranean by sea and land and offering God’s love to everyone who listened.
The surprises of this story don’t stop there, though. Paul might have expected to meet the man from Macedonia who had come to him in a dream – but instead he encounters a group of women sharing in prayer. Lydia, one of these women, is the very first person to receive Paul’s message of God’s love in Jesus and to be baptised. Maybe you remember how Mary Magdalene was the first woman to meet Jesus when he rose from the dead – now here is another woman stepping out in faith to welcome Christ, ahead of those around her. I wonder whether Paul is taken aback, or whether he has learnt by this time that he is living with a God of surprises.
There are many Christians whose experience echoes Paul’s. We make plans to do God’s work, and then we find that God has other ideas. Perhaps, like Paul, we limit ourselves to places and situations that are already familiar – the church community we know well, the place we’ve lived for many years.
Perhaps we expect to find ourselves collaborating with people who are like us, rather than crossing boundaries of gender or nationality. We believe in a God who crosses boundaries and tears down barriers, inviting us to recognise that we are all one in following Jesus. At this time of year, we remember John and Charles Wesley, receiving the gift of the Spirit in late May 1738 and then finding themselves following God’s call to bring the good news to people living in the horrendous circumstances associated with the beginnings of the Industrial Revolution. John Wesley described this as ‘consenting to be more vile’ – but he did it, and Methodism grew because of their courage in overcoming barriers for Christ.
God hasn’t changed since the Wesleys’ times. In the multi-cultural world of our city and circuit, we don’t have to go far to find ourselves challenged by our God of surprises. I’m thinking about all the collaboration at the Wesley Centre, where we provide a home for the Manchester Multi-Faith Centre among many other great charities. Or the new work at Trinity Ancoats, where very soon now a coffee shop will create opportunities to talk about faith with all comers. Or the many churches in the circuit which are home to Christians from all parts of the world, Manchester included. Seventy years ago our forebears in the faith would never have imagined all these new ways of loving our neighbours – now they are part of life. I wonder where God is calling us to journey next in the repeated invitation to ‘come over’ to new places and new ways of living the Christian life.
For there is still such need to break down barriers in Christ’s name. Earlier this week, the President of the Methodist Conference put her name to a letter from a wide group of religious leaders, calling the Prime Minister to reconsider his words on migration. Elsewhere in the world, words go alongside actions to oppress, restrict, expel and kill those who are ‘different’ – including Christian minorities facing persecution. As we hear this story, we recognise Paul’s courage in crossing boundaries and recognising God at work in strangers in strange places – and we pray for that same courage to follow our God of surprises into the new places where God wants to bring people together in the power of Christ’s love.
Hymn: StF 685 In Christ there is no east or west
- In Christ there is no east or west,
In him no south or north,
But one great fellowship of love
Throughout the whole wide Earth. - In him shall true hearts everywhere
Their high communion find.
His service is the golden cord
Close binding humankind - Join hands, then, children of the faith,
Whate’er your race may be!
Who serves my Father as a child
Is surely kin to me. - In Christ now meet both east and west,
In him meet south and north;
All Christlike souls are one in him,
Throughout the whole wide Earth.
John Oxenham (1852 – 1941)
Prayers for others and for ourselves
Remembering the man of Macedonia in Paul’s vision,
we pray for those pleading in our world today:
for nations pleading for peacemakers;
for the oppressed pleading for justice;
for the starving pleading for food;
for the caged pleading for freedom;
for the lonely pleading for company;
for the unemployed pleading for work;
for the suffering pleading for respite;
for the bereaved pleading for comfort.
Lord, honour our prayers, inspire our lives
and change the hearts of all those
who diminish the lives of others.
We ask this in the name of Jesus,
who went where he was needed
and who redeems us all.
Amen.
Amen! We praise your name, O God!
A closing prayer
Living Lord,
make us boundary breakers,
pioneers in new territories,
receivers from strangers.
Send us to sit in new places,
to be open to new influences,
all in, and for, your love.
Amen.
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