We finished up the final week of our three week mini-series on Generous Living this week. The thrust was that generosity inspires more generosity, and we tied that in with a strong thanksgiving theme. A thankful heart is a generous heart. As we are thankful and grateful to the Lord for all He provides and does, we are more likely to want to be generous since we recognize that all we have comes from His graciousness.
It was a great time of being together and giving thanks. May we not only give thanks at this time of the year, but may we always be thankful people. Enter his gates with thanksgiving and his courts with praise. (Psalm 100:4)Service Flow:
Welcome/Announcements/Greeting (asking what’s your favorite Thanksgiving dish?)
Call to Worship (1 Thessalonians 5:18)
Video: Start Small
Time of sharing: I’m thankful for…
Forever
Everlasting God
Video of verses on giving thanks
Prayer (Psalm 89:1-2)
Medley of Give Thanks, How Great Thou Art, and How Great Is Our God
Message
Offering (received special Thanksgiving Offering mentioned last week)
One Pure and Holy Passion
Dismissal (Ephesians 5:4)
It was a great time of being together and giving thank together. We intentionally started the service with helping people to think about the importance of giving thanks, and recognizing that sometimes we simply don’t know where to start or how to do it. To help people, we showed a video from Shift Worship called “Start Small.” Check it out below.
We then moved into a time of allowing people to give thanks by completing the sentence “I’m thankful for…” and then moved into worship through singing. After a couple of songs, we again drew attention to the biblical instruction to give thanks by showing a number of verses on the screen for people to read and think about.
Thanks verses from Chris Gambill on Vimeo.
We created a medley from some familiar songs that most people would know: Give Thanks, How Great Thou Art, and How Great Is Our God. It worked together really well.
We then moved right into the message, our third in the series about generosity. Following the message, we allowed people an opportunity to give. It seemed the logical and appropriate response step. During the offering, we showed another missions highlight video.
After singing the final song, I offered a thanksgiving week challenge that I actually got from Jordan Fowler over at worshiptrench.com. He wrote about being struck with the words of Ephesians 5:4 and was challenged to go for a week of intentionally giving thanks instead of complaining. (I have to say that I haven’t done as well as I would like.)
We ended the day as a church with our annual Thanksgiving Banquet. Great food and good times together.
If you were there, I’d love to hear your thoughts on the day.
Happy Thanksgiving! Head over to Fred’s Sunday Setlists for more posts like this.
