The United Reformed Church produces materials each year to assist those who are involved in leading worship to encourage reflection, discovery and recognition of God’s call. Traditionally this is on Vocations Sunday (this year Sunday 21st April). However the material can be used whenever it is felt most appropriate, such as another Sunday or a different occasion. This year’s material has been prepared by members of the Mersey Synod.

		pdf downloads for A4 printing
Call to Worship		download
All age address		download
Thinking about vocation		download
Sermon sound bites		download
Stages on the way — a personal story		download
Prayers of Intercession 1		download
Prayers of Intercession 2		download
Resources		download
Hymn		download
Vocations fair address		download
Index		download
		download all pages

Calls to Worship

1

Lord we gather to worship you this day.
Open our ears to hear you speaking.
Guide us as we seek to follow your call on our lives.
By the power of your Spirit help us to recognise you at the centre of all we are.
Give us courage, strength and integrity to be your faithful disciples.
Amen

2

Lord we gather now to worship you.
In the stillness, the singing, the reading of scripture and our prayers.
May we recognise your love amongst us – new every morning, changing, transforming and calling us.

Through the power of your Spirit may our hearts rejoice at your presence and wonder at your love which binds us together as one people,
We gather now in the name of Jesus.
Amen

3

Loving God, in the sacredness of this time and space we meet to worship you.
Your love compels us to come in.
You call us gently, urgently, strongly.
You call us quietly, slowly sometimes unrecognisably.
In your calling may we hear your voice.
In our journeying may your Spirit encourage our faithfulness.
Amen

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All age address

We know that there are rules of the road — cars have to drive on a certain side to avoid crashing into each other.
There are also rules when you travel by boat!
One rule used to be “sail over steam”, where a little sailing boat had priority over a bigger boat that went by steam power.
So a big steam ship should give way to a little yacht, but try telling that to a huge ocean liner that takes 10 miles to stop!
It’s good to travel on the big powerful ships sometimes — you get less sea sick because when you’re on a big ship you don’t feel the waves so much.
The Queen Mary 2 is huge, a magnificent ship, as big as a village! She has all the latest technology on board, up to date navigation systems, and if you accidentally ran into her, you’d lose.
So you’d think that she can do everything, and more, than the little boats can do. But there are some things she can’t do.
She can’t navigate in shallower waters. Her keel (underside) is too big, so her engines can’t be used to direct her.
That means that when this huge ship wants to move in certain places, she has to rely on little tug boats, which are about a hundredth of her size, to pull her and get her through the channels. So, even though the big ship looks mighty and powerful, sometimes it’s the smaller boats that are actually of more use.
It’s the same with people. Some people seem to be really strong and clever, and to know lots of things. But Jesus said that when it comes to understanding what God wants us to do for him, the people who seem to be the big, pushy ones, are not always the ones that see things best. Jesus said to God, “Father, you have hidden these things from the people who are wise and clever. But you have shown them to those who are like little children.”
So we shouldn’t presume that it’s only to the people we think of as clever that God reveals himself. He may prefer to show himself and what he needs more to those who are not what we may think of as the obvious choice.
So if you think God has a message for you, don’t think, “I’m just a little tug boat, I don’t know enough. He can’t be speaking to me.” Listen to him and act on what he is telling you, because he is speaking to you.
Like the little boats, some people may seem weak and not much good, but they may well know the way through much better than the big posh ship!

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Thinking about vocation

In thinking about vocation there are at least three strands. The first has to do with the call that can come to any person “Come and follow me”. This is the primary calling of any Christian — the initial call to become a disciple. The second strand is the call to a holy life, to Christlikeness which will mean different things to different people. It will be different for a man as opposed to a woman, different for someone prone to mental illness than for one who is not, different for all of us at different stages of our lives. The third strand of vocation is the call to specific roles in our lives that are often concerned with specific contexts or need or personal circumstances.

Moreover, we usually think of vocation in personal terms and we can point to all sorts of individuals in our Scriptures who responded to God’s call to
do something, to take risks, to change direction and to make a difference.
But there is also a more communal call to God’s people to be a particular type of community. Bishop John Austin Baker once said that an agenda item on every church meeting or PCC ought to be “What is God calling us to be and do in this community to help it become more like the family that God longs it to be?”

Although these resources are primarily focused on helping individuals hear and respond to God’s call to them, there is also a sense in which we hope they might be used to help churches address the question of what God is calling them to be and do at the moment.

Probably the most critical point in Jewish history was the Exile in Babylon. This was a period of deep searching for the soul of a community that felt bereft, estranged from God, confused in their own theological understanding of what was happening to them, and in many cases despairing and desperate (Psalm 137 — How can we sing the Lord’s song in a strange land?).

Yet this became the most creative period in Jewish history as prophets like Ezekiel, Jeremiah and Deutero-Isaiah (Isaiah 40-55) were active in helping people reassess not only what was happening to them but also their understanding of God. Many scholars today believe Western Christianity
has entered a period of exile. Christendom is dying, if not dead. All our old presuppositions about the position and role of the church in society are being challenged by science and secular materialism and sometimes the world can feel like alien territory to a Christian and to those for whom church is still important.

So we are suggesting texts from that exilic period as the basis for our Vocations Sunday material this year. These might provide challenge and /or comfort to both individuals and churches to listen again to God’s call on their lives, both personal and communal.

In periods of exile, alienation and apparent hopelessness, people need a word of hope, even if it is only a glimmer. When God spoke to Ezekiel and showed him a vision of dry bones, Ezekiel was faced with a question, “Can these dry bones live?” (Ezekiel 37:3) He couldn’t answer it.

Hope had not yet been kindled in his heart. But there was a glimmer — “You know” was his reply to God. He had enough trust in God to do what God asked of him. “Prophesy, and hear the word of the Lord.”

Hope is engendered by vision and the true prophet paints such a picture of the kingdom of God that it inspires men and women to work towards it and in such working, to bring the vision that much closer to realisation.

As we think of vocation and the need in our churches for individual men and women to lead our churches and hear God’s call to such spiritual leadership, we also need to reflect on the call to each church community to be the kind of community in which Christlikeness is found. Can these dry bones live?

This material is written in the belief that God’s Spirit can equip, empower and renew God’s people to respond to his call, to make a difference, for Christ’s sake, in the church and in the world.

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Sermon sound bites

These suggestions are not meant to provide the basis for a sermon/address but might just set the worship leader/preacher off in a direction that can be developed.

The prophets of the exile have the task of both challenging the people of Israel in Babylon and also offering them hope — a task needed today in so many of our churches. What Ezekiel, Jeremiah and Deutero-Isaiah did, in their different ways was to offer visions of hope towards which people could aspire and work towards, thus moving them in the direction of the vision outlined.

Reinhold Niebuhr wrote in ‘Nations and Empires’
“It is man’s ineluctable (inescapable) fate to work on tasks which he cannot complete in his brief span of years, to accept responsibilities the true ends of which he cannot fulfil, and to build communities which cannot realise the perfection of his visions”

On the same theme Jonathan Sacks wrote in ‘The dignity of Difference’
“Optimism is the belief that things will get better. Hope is the faith that together, we can make things better. Optimism is a passive virtue. Hope is an active one. It takes no courage to be an optimist, but it takes a great deal of courage to have hope.”

Jean Vanier, founder of “L’Arche” in his book ‘Community and growth’ said
“We shouldn’t seek the ideal community. It is a question of loving those whom God has set beside us today. They are signs of God. We might have chosen different people, people who were more cheerful and intelligent. But they are the ones God has given us, the ones he has chosen for us. It is with them that we are called to create unity and live in covenant.”

There are a number of examples in the Bible of God’s reluctant agents, Jeremiah felt he was too young, Isaiah too sinful, Moses too tongue-tied, Jacob too conniving and many others. Here are words from Dietrich Bonhoeffer from his ‘Letters from prison’
“I believe that God can and will bring good out of evil, even out of the greatest evil. For that purpose he needs people who make the best use of everything. I believe that God will give us all the strength we need to resist in all times of distress. But he never gives it in advance, lest we rely on ourselves and not on him alone.”

God’s call often comes through a “still small voice.”

Timothy Ratcliffe in ‘What’s the point of being a Christian’ writes,
“It is through attentiveness to meaning and not brute force that we share in God speaking a word that brings in the kingdom… Jesus taught that small signs were part of God speaking a word that creates and recreates.”

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Stages on the way

(A reflection on training for ministry)

You can run but you can’t hide. This has been the hallmark of my journey into ministry. I began my training at Northern College in Manchester in September 2010, following a thirty year career in social work.

Beginning my training was a relief, for as I look back over the years, I recall the many occasions I argued with God, believing I knew best, that I was in control and on the right path, feeling a sense of vocation in my “social work ministry,” and not wanting to be diverted from this.

God had other ideas, I chose to argue. The persistence of God calling me, took me on a long journey, changing my job when the call became more urgent, busying myself with what I thought was important, but God pressed on with his quest. In the end I found doors closing in the social work world that forced me to listen to the God I was trying to ignore.

Sometimes God takes us on longer journeys to help us discover and prepare for the ministry he calls us to in his name.

Through prayer and reflection, training and college life is taking me into a deeper and more personal relationship with the God I seek to serve. My training is structured to encourage a sense of reflection through placement opportunities and academic study, and through developing relationships with fellow students, placement supervisors and college tutors.

God has taken me firmly by the hand and is leading me where he wants me to go. I have surrendered my life to his will and rather than resisting I
am letting God “call the tune.” I feel a sense of peace and fulfilment, mixed with some self-doubt and nervousness at the enormity of what God is calling me to.

The challenge is exhilarating, demanding and humbling. I am running the marathon race for God; I am relying on his strength and his direction. I am no longer seeking to do things in my own strength, but according to the will of God.

As for my arguing with God…. I have no regrets, the journey and the wrestling with my sense of call have all been a significant part of my journey. I would not be the person I am at this point in my life without the experiences and the people I have encountered in my life. God is patient and faithful to me, walking a longer journey that has equipped me for the task of ministry to which I feel honoured and humbled to be called.

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Prayers of Intercession 1

You may like to have a response after each paragraph along the lines of:
Lord in your mercy
Hear our prayer

We thank you for the possibilities of life,
help us to embrace the adventure of life you call us to,
as creation breaks forth we pray that we may respond to your presence,
your beckoning call and serve you

We pray for places experiencing drought, flooding and disaster,
the results of which bring sickness, suffering, disease and death.
We pray for all for whom another day is a struggle.

For those living in darkness, longing to hear words of love,
for those in slavery, held captive longing to be set free.
for those suffering abuse, desperate for liberation.
May they all look to you to uphold them, even to lift them up,
may they know the rest you give to the weary.

We thank you for your love and compassion to all,
we pray for those who are grieving today,
especially we remember...

We pray that people may hear God’s comforting voice
and know his presence closer than the air they breathe.

May we make you and your ways known and build your kingdom in our
daily lives. Keep us always open to your voice, calling us to serve you

We thank you for the challenges and encouragement you give us to identify
our gifts and the gifts of others that we might better serve you.

Help us to choose to do those things to which you call us.
Encourage those who feel they have no gifts, no value,
reveal to them your love, mercy and compassion
and may they sense your call on their lives as they respond to you

We pray for the church across the world,
where it is complacent stir it up,
where it is weak and under attack, strengthen it,
where it is lost and needing direction, gently encourage and inspire it,
where it is faithfully witnessing to you, continue to fan into flame its gifts
and may it find its hope renewed.

Help us to discern you in our midst, at work in our world.
Call and challenge us to work with you,
to be part of your good news to this world.
Make us alive to the needs of our community.

Help us as we seek to demonstrate love and compassion in action.

We praise you for your great kindness
and ask that we would mirror that kindness in loving acts for our neighbours.

For those who are rejoicing today we give thanks,
we rejoice in the many good things in the world,
for the signs of hope and light shining in dark places,
for the glimpses of your presence we see,
for the acts of kindness that abound,
for Christians making a difference to lives and communities across the world.

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Prayers of intercession 2

Gracious God, who calls us all to work with you for the sake of your kingdom, open our ears to the sound of your voice through the needs of your world,
your church,
and the communities in which you have placed us.

Help us to listen to the gentle calling of your Spirit as we open our lives to your call upon us. In the midst of the many voices which clamour for our attention help us to look for and listen for the leading of your Holy Spirit.