Saturday, September 20, 2008

September 20, 2008 Gathering

WELCOME

Welcome to The Pub Church! We are a church in a pub. So please feel free to move around, order drinks and food, and above all express your thoughts and ideas freely!

We all come with stories, talents, gifts, and hopes. It is our prayer that with all our differences and all our strengths, we will come together and drink in the spirit! This is sacred space.

ANNOUNCEMENTS
Food, sharing of resources, a reading,
and our stories

PEACE – TOAST

In this place we creatively express;
Some of us are focused, some are a mess!

We participate during the sermon
And people do connect, we are learnin’

Greet all with a handshake, toast or a wave
At all times feel free to yell, rant or rave

Fake not friends, we can arrive as we are.
Cheers! Here’s to sacred space in a bar!

A READING

- From Bryan Stone’s, Evangelism After Christendom, (12).

“Jesus talked about the reign of God as a radically new order that comes to put an end to age-old patterns of wealth and poverty, domination and subordination, insider and outsider that are deeply ingrained in the way we relate to one another on this planet. But in order for that new order to become a serious option for the world, it must be visibly and imaginatively embodied in the world. And if scripture is a faithful witness, the purpose of God throughout history is the creation and formation of a new people whose mission is to do just that…But (if that is to be so, then good news)* will have to be understood …as a fundamentally subversive activity, born out of a posture of eccentricity (living “off-center” or “outside the center,” at the margins) and out of the cultivation of such deviant practices as sharing bread with the poor, loving enemies, refusing violence, forgiving sins, and telling the truth.”

*my rewording

FEEDBACK AND FINAL ANNOUNCEMENTS
Check the BLOG: thepubchurch.blogspot.com
Music

CLOSING COMMUNION

Our true home is in the present moment.

To live in the present moment is a miracle.
The miracle is to walk on the green earth in the present moment,
To appreciate the peace and beauty that are available now.
Peace is all around us.
* From Life Prayers, Thich Nhat Hanh p. 367

As we gather in this present moment
Let us remember that in every moment we are cooperating in some reality, we make something real by our very presence and participation, by our embodied reality, by how we live and relate to one another.

In this moment then, let us make real a community of the Spirit, a people who are peaceable and beautiful in our relations with one another, with the earth, and with the Divine. Let us do that even as we share this bread and this wine now...