She Flies On - Gordon Light

“She comes sailing on the wind,
her wings flashing in the sun;
on a journey just begun, she flies on.
And in the passage of her flight,
her song rings throughout the night,
full of laughter, full of light, she flies on.”*

bump

I used a parachute in worship for the children's story a couple of years ago, and we all talked about the breath of God, feeling like wind, loving how the wind makes us feel, makes waves, how great a windy day with a sailboat is, aobut kites and so on - that the Spirit was in the wind, and now with our parachute we could help spread pentecost -spread the spirit of the wind to all the people in our congregation and even to the whole world, so we made wind with our parachute and it was beautiful!  It worked really well becasue our sanctuary was round rather than long &straight, so everyone could feel it. 

this year, its picnic weekend and SS graduation day and so on.  the story is feeding the 5000, so not much pentecost.

We do celebrate pentacost I am not sure what will happen this year our new part time minister in training is doing the service so I know it will be interesting. Especially when you throw the children into the mix they have some of the most revealing comments.

I do not know what is on the agenda for this Sunday.  

Last week, I was in the pulpit and spoke about Pentecost.

Let ya know what we do this Sunday.

I'm planning the Pentecost service as we speak -- it is always intergenerational and this year we are also celebrating communion and blessing some prayer shawls.  I haven't completely decided what fun elements to use this year, to bring it alive for the kids and adults.  One year we handed out balloons and had everyone blow them up but not tie them off, just hold on.  Then we talked about the power of the Spirit and its unpredicability -- counted to 3 and everyone let go of their balloons!  As they zipped all over the sanctuary there was much laughter, but I think also a moment to ponder how we cannot control the Spirit or predict what God will do. That was fun!  I might do that this year, but I'm also looking at pinwheels (although they are a bit harder to make than I'd thought) and/or spinners.  Stay tuned!  and oh yeah, gotta have birthday cake -- happy birthday, Church!

shalom

It's this Sunday.

Our Mission and Outreach is doing the service and is using the one from the Toronto Conference site.

We are also having a guest speaker who will discuss how to recognize spousal abuse. 

Not only do I have to read the Genesis story of Lot (my least favourite but was relieved to find out it will tie into the guest speaker) I have been assigned to Children's Time! This, my friends, is a warning about why you always attend Committee meetings!

Pray for me....

LB - always gets the tough crowd

We have a service being led by our Dream Team -> highlighting our gifts / talents, and having everyone fill in a card of what they are...how they are the wind of change, etc.  It includes how they volunteer, what they do in the church, outside of the church, what gifts they ahve, what talents that others could employ.

We have two other churches children & their leaders are  coming to our church.  One church is telling us about a marvellous choir that is coming to their church to raise funds for orphanage  in Uganda.

We will hopefully have folks wearing red/orange,etc....

we traditionally have bubbles on the front lawn.....and the kids are joining together for meet/greet games, and making pinwheels.

No. Actually I have no idea what you're talking about. Care to explain more?

As usual at our church, the Worship Team (you would call us lay people) lead the singing and prayers, and the Pastor does the sermon. 

Historically, the coming of the Spirit of God.

oh, and we are having soup, hotdogs & icecream cones after church

For information, Jae

PENTECOST: THE DAY WE SEE RED

Mention Pentecost and most elders see red!

No, no, no.  I don't mean they get angry or uptight or anything like that.  What I am suggesting is that most people identify Pentecost with a colour - red.

And so it is.  But Pentecost is more than just a colour.  It is a season rich in symbols, imagination and opportunity.  And colour.

The Pentecost story

Pentecost is the 50th day after Easter.  In the religion of the Hebrews/Jews it was a harvest feast - a season of reward.  Bringing in the crop is all the excuse needed for a celebration.

In Christian tradition Pentecost is also a season of reward, but it goes beyond the harvest festival services of past years and which still seem to remain in most non-rural churches even today. It celebrates the fruits and effects of the spirit rather than the birthday of the church. The birthing of new wisdom, new imagination and, if we link it with confirmation - new commitment.

Gertrud Nelson, attempting to escape the trap of superficial piety, helpfully suggests the mystery of Pentecost is not in the babble of tongues seen so often in charismatic and pentecostal gatherings, but the gift of tongues...

"the ability to hear and speak the word, each as we come to know it, understand it and proclaim it in the uniqueness of our personhood... to interpret the meaning of Christ's mission as it unfolds in our human experience, and through it we discover a common language" 

(Nelson 1986: 188).

Pentecost is one of the great feasts of the church year.

The symbols of Pentecost

Symbols are not new to worshipping congregations.  Wedding rings.  Birthday cakes.  Bread.  Wine.  Candles.  Most of us value the symbolic in our lives.

There are several symbols within the Pentecost experience.  Water, flame, dove, wind/breath and colour. Most are elements from nature, so when we celebrate inside we miss the natural setting of Pentecost.

So I encourage worship committees and liturgists to begin the celebration outside, or if the weather is not conducive to this - as could be the case in Tasmania - to at least begin the experience outside.

When members of the worshipping congregation arrive let them walk through a waterfall of red (with a touch of white) paper streamers. Maybe even invest in a couple of bamboo torches and have them burning. Both these experiences with invite worshippers to step outside their conventional imagination into a new fresh world of ritual and the poetic.

Once inside, red and white streamers can again be used - especially if worshippers have to ‘walk through’ the streamers.  If you have a tradition of using banners in worship now is the time to move away from banners with words to banners without words.  On the banners can be placed the symbols of 'flame' and 'dove'. A red candle can be lit.  Even a jug of water placed near the font.  A 'dove' mobile.  And remember the autumn leaves!

Nothing really radical about these suggestions - unless you haven't done it before. But two further things need to be considered: how (i) to experience 'wind/breath' as an important Pentecost symbol and, (ii) to move beyond the season of reward as only harvest festival.

Wind/breath 

Overlooking the Derwent River we experience wind most days.  It can be cold, raw, blowing right through you.  It can also be cooling and refreshing.

The spirit is often represented by wind. But a wind which "blows and touches and ripples and churns up what has become complacent and staid" (Nelson 1986: 53).  Our Pentecost liturgy needs to suggest this kind of wind.  A banner or balloons, yes.  But what about a wind sock?

Another way I try to encourage worshippers to experience wind as breath is to invite them to become conscious of their own breathing.  The rise and fall of their breath.  And then invite them to wonder at the way God transforms us with every breath we take.

Pentecost encourages us to use our creative imagination.

Beyond harvest festival 

Because Pentecost falls within Autumn it is easy to loose its unique place in our liturgical life and let it be caught up in something else - such as harvest festival.  This is to allow it to be captured as a rural festival.  But Autumn is both reward and maturation.  It looks like nature's end but it isn't.  It is a celebration of gifts, of fruits and of colour. It is a time of transformation.

I tend to think Pentecost and Autumn is also a good time for confirmation.

Church history can show us that confirmation has had, and continues to have, a mixed history.  It has been seen as graduation (mixing religious education processes with initiation), initiation (adult baptism), as well as maturation (become adult in the church).  The confusion still exists within all churches.

If we continue to feed our imaginations and discussions maybe we will be able to reestablish the link between Easter (initiation) and Pentecost (confirmation).  And maybe Pentecost will be the celebration of the fruits of community - life in the spirit of Jesus - rather than of something else.

Life in the spirit of Jesus is ‘different’.  It suggests creativity, imagination, enthusiasm, and community - the missing link.

Pentecost is a good time to celebrate life in the spirit of Jesus.  But our liturgical experience of Pentecost needs to be broad.  Otherwise it will just be the day when the minister wore red.

We celebrate Pentecost, full of enthusiasm! This year, the congregation has been encouraged to wear something red, orange, or yellow. Everyone will be given brightly coloured streamers to wave throughout the service. We'll have tons of upbeat music from More Voices.

It is 9:00 pm Saturday night, and we too are putting the finishing touches on tomorrow's Pentecost service.

The topic will be the mighty winds of change and, in the Presbyterian church it is desperately needed. I suspect by noon tomorrow our elders truly will be seeing red and one lay preacher could be out of a job.

our minister is off at meeting, so I shall be doing the service tomorrow. I wrote it just at the outset of a particularly savage bout of allergy and flu, that promptly knocked me out for three days - until just a few hours ago. So it will be interesting for me to see what i wrote.

I remember tying it to Babel (of tower fame), dry bones and the samaritan. I hope I was healthy enough at the time to connect them somehow.

graeme

We have been all encouraged to wear something red and we are singing VU 208.  I am doing the first solo so wish me luck. I have just finished practicing it AGAIN and I am having a bit of a time with it.  Ug.   We are then having a meeting afterwards because we have a JNAC that we have to consider.  Our Minister is retiring which is a real drag as we really adore him.  He is leaving us next year though so we still have a year with him and he will help us through this process.  I love pentacost as I am a Spirit girl.  I love the music etc. 

elisabeth: we will be with you in spirit, as you sing that solo...think of us as the wc spirit blowing through your sanctuary and lifting your voice for all to hear....

Thank you Pinga. 

I've just come back from our Pentecost service. Most of the congregation wore red, and the children made red paper doves that "flew" overhead.

Red and white doves are a symbol of the Uniting Church Of Australia - we have them on our church name badges also.

This morning's reading was from Luke. It was rather melodramatic - an image of a Billy Graham Crusade came to mind. (My own encounter with the Spirit was a more subdued affair!)

I've just delivered the pentecost sermon. The theme was the message of oneness in Pentecost. It's a tough message if you think about at all. I underscored that with the parable of the Samaritan. It becomes simply a goody goody story as told today. But quite different 200o years ago in the light of Jewish opinion of Samaritans.

So I talked about the twin towers and the orgy of prayer for the deaths of so many innocents - and condolences, and Franklin Mint TV offers.

Since then, well over a million innocents have died - plus million more of cripples and widows and orphans. How many of us have prayed for the sufferings of the the other side? Where are the Franklin Mint ads for the dead of Bagdadd?

Where is the oneness we should be celebrating at Pentecomst?

I invited interruptions from any who disagreed with me. To my great surprise, there were none at all.

graeme

We had our Pentecost service last Sunday because we hosted the Saskatchewan Conference Annual Meeting this week and today's service was the Service of Praise at the meeting.

Nothing special happened in our Pentecost service.  We are a pretty boring congregation.  Any attempts at livening things up or trying something a little different usually don't go over well, as I have learned from experience.  But I still keep trying

Well I survived Children's Time!  We used a game found on the Toronto Conference site, based on Tic Tac Toe.  There were eight squares with various phrases.  The question was "How do we see God working in our midst".

The very first child puts her stone on "In a Board Meeting", so I asked them how do they see God working in a board meeting.  A little girl puts up her hand and says that God is in the sky and we can look up.  I instantly respond to the congregation, "Ah yes, many a time those of us in a board meeting will look to the sky for guidance!"

It was all up hill after that....

except my mother said next time to remember to NOT bend over with my back to the congregation.

 LB - relieved

The spirit of the speaker will determine the spirit of the audience.     Roger Ailes

Bend over with your What!! to the congregation??

we had fun...

I did the kids story...somehow got the gifts of the spirit, the spirit filling us up...and our talents into one story ->  reason, the dream team lead the service.

we had a wonderful new banner, with the flames of pentecost, and a dove coming down into the dream catcher.

we had the sermon which was a skit put on about people's gifts & talents.

then....everyone filled in a card with their talents , and what they do..and what they do as a profession and if they want to be on a "who we are" sheet..

we had soup and hotdogs and icecream with all sorts of sprinkles and stuff after church. 

At our church we spoke in tongues!

Act2:1-21 was read in English. French, Armenian, German, Filipino, Swedish, Greek, Japanese and Spanish--simultaneously!! What a glorious cacophony !!

very neat, lyh

lyh, sounds wonderful

Today was Pentecost, as well as Anniversary Sunday. My congregation has typically focussed on the history of the building, which they are very proud of. So instead I told their history from the perspective of the people who have been worshipping together for the last 193 years. Turns out this wonderful building of ours is the eighth one in their history. I asked them to imagine how many more buildings they might use over the next 193 years, because God isn't finished with them yet, for the Spirit is still active...

We had crepe paper streamers, and some people dressed in red, but a bunch of us forgot.  We did the "She Goes Sailing" hymn (love Common Cup Company), celebrated Sunday School, and had a board meeting too.  Lots of red all over the place.  We also did a wicked rendition of  "Come o Holy Spirit" MV 23, and it's a great one for djembes!  The bubbles sound like a great idea, that would be awesome, I love bubbles.

I heard of a church that rigged up somekind of pully system from the front of the church to the front door and sent doves ( not real ones) soaring down and outside. Kind of cheesey in my opinion.