A Liturgy to Celebrate! Going Off to College Week Two of 2017 Christian Education Season August 13, 2017 Elinor Brown If your church doesn’t have anyone going off to college, please still plan to celebrate and pray for those going to college (community kids, grandkids, family, etc.). Preparation for the Sunday: Locate a copy of the song by Kool and the Gang to play as a gathering “Celebration” song for worship each Sunday of the CE Season. You may not want to play the entire song since it is about four minutes long and repeats. Ask your worship committee or a creative bunch of folks to decorate the worship area with college-type items. Line the table with road maps. You may want to decorate the altar or communion table with items such as a college mascot, a laptop computer, pom poms, a letter jacket, a small suitcase, etc. Make a prayer tree for each person going off to college or beginning a career after high school graduation. Place a large branch in a bucket or vase of stones. Have enough pieces of paper (8-1/2x11” cut into fours) and pens for members to write a brief prayer for the student. If you have more than one student, have the paper in a particular color for each student. Pass these out before worship asking members to write the prayer for worship. Then they can save the papers for later in the service. Have clothes pins available. Place the prayer tree(s) near the altar. Have a poster size picture of the student(s) displayed or as a part of a slide presentation. It need not be a graduation photo(s), but might be one of them doing some sort of service in the church. Look through the Additional Activities at the end of this liturgy and decide which of these you will do. Make plans to do them and gather materials as needed. You will also need to publicize and recruit people to help you with them so leave plenty of time to do so. Call to Worship Each line of this call to worship is to be a body prayer—a prayer acted out with motions. You may want to ask several children to lead this call and have them it with the “rehearse” congregation before the worship service begins. They may also want to lead the Prayer of Confession body prayer. Leader: With all my heart I praise you Lord, Women: and with all that I am I praise your holy name!
A Liturgy to Celebrate! Going Off to College Week Two of 2017 Christian Education Season August 13, 2017 Elinor Brown If your church doesn’t have anyone going off to college, please still plan to celebrate and pray for those going to college (community kids, grandkids, family, etc.). Preparation for the Sunday: Locate a copy of the song “Celebration” by Kool and the Gang to play as a gathering song for worship each Sunday of the CE Season. You may not want to play the entire song since it is about four minutes long and repeats. Ask your worship committee or a creative bunch of folks to decorate the worship area with college-type items. Line the table with road maps. You may want to decorate the altar or communion table with items such as a college mascot, a laptop computer, pom poms, a letter jacket, a small suitcase, etc. Make a prayer tree for each person going off to college or beginning a career after high school graduation. Place a large branch in a bucket or vase of stones. Have enough pieces of paper (8-1/2x11” cut into fours) and pens for members to write a brief prayer for the student. If you have more than one student, have the paper in a particular color for each student. Pass these out before worship asking members to write the prayer for worship. Then they can save the papers for later in the service. Have clothes pins available. Place the prayer tree(s) near the altar. Have a poster size picture of the student(s) displayed or as a part of a slide presentation. It need not be a graduation photo(s), but might be one of them doing some sort of service in the church. Look through the Additional Activities at the end of this liturgy and decide which of these you will do. Make plans to do them and gather materials as needed. You will also need to publicize and recruit people to help you with them so leave plenty of time to do so. Call to Worship Each line of this call to worship is to be a body prayer—a prayer acted out with motions. You may want to ask several children to lead this call and have them “rehearse” it with the congregation before the worship service begins. They may also want to lead the Prayer of Confession body prayer. Leader: With all my heart I praise you Lord, Women: and with all that I am I praise your holy name!