This is the plan for our Advent and Christmas season, shared as a template. If your congregation follows the Narrative Lectionary, you are welcome to use it and adapt it for your own context. Scripture, sermon focus, and music may still change as the series develops.

Dates: November 29 through December 27, 2026 · Texts: Habakkuk, Esther, Isaiah, Matthew, Luke, the Advent arc (Narrative Lectionary 113 through 117)

The Narrative Lectionary’s Advent texts this year hand us a cast of unlikely people God worked through: a prophet with a complaint, a queen who almost stayed quiet, a servant nobody expected, a carpenter who had every reason to walk away. The thread runs to the most unlikely King of all, born in a manger. That is what this series says out loud. God’s coming does not wait for ideal conditions or qualified people. God shows up in the mess and works through people like us.

The Look and Feel

Our altar carries the Advent wreath with its four candles plus the Christ candle, lit progressively week by week. Christmas Eve is candlelight. Beside the wreath sit a plain wooden manger with straw, a shepherd’s staff, and burlap under one warm light, with a simple gold crown resting in the straw through Advent and Christmas Eve.

The title pattern does the visual work alongside the altar. “An Unlikely ___” runs as a refrain across the four Advent Sundays, then breaks on Christmas Eve to mark the arrival. The series graphics carry that refrain so the congregation sees the pattern before anyone explains it.

How the Season Fits Together

The preaching series is four Advent Sundays plus Christmas Eve. Two more services can share the same look: Blue Christmas, a quiet service the week before Christmas for anyone who finds the holidays hard, and the first Sunday of Christmas, on the family tree in Matthew 1:1-17, full of unlikely names.

Week 1, November 29: An Unlikely Prophet

Scripture: Habakkuk 1:1-7; 2:1-4; 3:17-19 · 1st Advent, Thanksgiving weekend

Advent opens with a complaint. Habakkuk asks how long, and God does not answer the question so much as tell him to write the vision down and wait for it. This is faith as a way of life in the middle of unanswered questions, watching for God in the dark. Starting the season here rather than with a lit candle and a carol says something about who Advent is for. The Sunday after Thanksgiving is a gentle place to say it.

Hymns / Organ

• Come, Thou Long-Expected Jesus (UMH 196)

• People, Look East (UMH 202)

• Toda la Tierra / All Earth Is Waiting (UMH 210)

• Great Is Thy Faithfulness (UMH 140)

• Be Still, My Soul (UMH 534)

Contemporary / Praise Team

• Waiting Here for You by Chris Tomlin

• Promises by Maverick City Music

• Even So Come by Passion

• Weary Traveler by Jordan St. Cyr

• Evidence by Josh Baldwin

Week 2, December 6: An Unlikely Queen

Scripture: Esther 4:10-17 · 2nd Advent

Mordecai’s question to Esther is the line the whole series is named for, which the Common English Bible renders: “But who knows? Maybe it was for a moment like this that you came to be part of the royal family.” Esther has a place, and the question is whether she will spend it on people who do not have one. Courage here is not fearlessness. It is using the standing you happen to hold on behalf of someone else. If you share Communion this Sunday, it sits well beside the text, since the table is where we are fed for exactly that kind of work.

Hymns / Organ

• O Come, O Come, Emmanuel (UMH 211)

• Lord, Speak to Me (UMH 463)

• Stand Up, Stand Up for Jesus (UMH 514)

• Come, Sinners, to the Gospel Feast (UMH 616)

• Become to Us the Living Bread (UMH 630)

Contemporary / Praise Team

• Here I Am to Worship by Tim Hughes

• Oceans (Where Feet May Fail) by Hillsong UNITED

• Christ Our Hope in Life and Death by Keith & Kristyn Getty

• Come to the Table by Sidewalk Prophets

• Living Hope by Phil Wickham

Week 3, December 13: An Unlikely Servant

Scripture: Isaiah 42:1-9 · 3rd Advent

Isaiah’s servant brings justice to the nations without shouting in the street, and does not break the bruised reed or snuff out the dim wick. That is a strange kind of power, and it is the kind God chooses. A light to the nations turns out to look like gentleness. If you hold a Blue Christmas service, this is a natural week for it, and the two speak to each other: the bruised reed is not a metaphor to the people who come to that service.

Hymns / Organ

• Lift Up Your Heads, Ye Mighty Gates (UMH 213)

• I Want to Walk as a Child of the Light (UMH 206)

• Wild and Lone the Prophet’s Voice (UMH 209)

• Hope of the World (UMH 178)

• Emmanuel, Emmanuel (UMH 204)

Contemporary / Praise Team

• Light of the World by Lauren Daigle

• Hope Has a Name by River Valley Worship

• Behold Our God by Sovereign Grace Music

• He Shall Reign Forevermore by Chris Tomlin

• Shine, Jesus, Shine by Graham Kendrick

Week 4, December 20: An Unlikely Father

Scripture: Matthew 1:18-25 · 4th Advent

Joseph has decided to end it quietly, which under the circumstances is the decent thing to do. Then he is asked to stay, and to name a child who is not his. Immanuel means God with us, and Joseph is the first person who has to make room for that. Saying yes to God-with-us has always meant rearranging your own plans. A combined service with children’s music fits this Sunday well, with the whole church in one room.

Hymns / Organ

• To a Maid Engaged to Joseph (UMH 215)

• Savior of the Nations, Come (UMH 214)

• Lo, How a Rose E’er Blooming (UMH 216)

• Infant Holy, Infant Lowly (UMH 229)

• Away in a Manger (UMH 217)

Contemporary / Praise Team

• Emmanuel (Hallowed Manger Ground) by Chris Tomlin

• Adore by Chris Tomlin

• God With Us by MercyMe

• Mary, Did You Know?

• Christmas Offering by Casting Crowns

Christmas Eve, December 24: The Most Unlikely King of All

Scripture: Luke 2:1-20 · Candlelight

The refrain breaks here. Four Sundays of unlikely people culminate in the least likely thing of all: God arriving as an infant, announced to shepherds, laid in a feed trough because there was no room. The cast has been preparing us to believe that God works this way. Pairing the offering with the invitation to give makes generosity part of the service rather than an announcement inside it. Write the closing invitation for guests, because on Christmas Eve many of the people hearing it are.

Hymns / Organ

• O Come, All Ye Faithful (UMH 234)

• O Little Town of Bethlehem (UMH 230)

• Hark! the Herald Angels Sing (UMH 240)

• Silent Night, Holy Night (UMH 239, candlelight)

• Joy to the World (UMH 246)

Contemporary / Praise Team

• O Holy Night

• Joy to the World (Unspeakable Joy) by Chris Tomlin

• Noel by Chris Tomlin and Lauren Daigle

• Born Is the King (It’s Christmas) by Hillsong Worship

• Go, Tell It on the Mountain

About the Music

Each week lists five hymns for an organ service and five songs for a praise team. Check them against what your congregation has sung recently, and treat the lists above as a starting point rather than a final set. Advent has the added constraint that the carols people came for are not optional, which is why Silent Night, Joy to the World, and Hark! the Herald Angels Sing stay on the Christmas Eve list. Hymn numbers refer to The United Methodist Hymnal (UMH).

Using This Series

Reading the Narrative Lectionary texts as a cast of characters rather than a set of themes gives the season its shape, turning Advent from a series about waiting into a series about who God uses. Another congregation can take the same five texts and the “An Unlikely ___” refrain and make them its own: your altar, your music, and whatever special services your church holds around Christmas.

The series opens the Sunday after Christ the King, and the handoff is deliberate. If the season before it ends on the promised end of the story, Habakkuk asking how long moves the congregation straight back into the waiting, which is what Advent is.

“So now, revere the Lord. Serve him honestly and faithfully. Put aside the gods that your ancestors served beyond the Euphrates and in Egypt and serve the Lord.” – Joshua 24:14 (CEB)

All week we’ve walked through Joshua’s long retelling of everything God has already done: an ordinary family chosen, a cry answered at the sea, curses turned to blessings, cities nobody in the room had built. And now, finally, Joshua turns the history into a decision. So now, he says. Revere the Lord. Serve him honestly and faithfully.

Notice the order. The history comes first. The decision comes second. Joshua doesn’t ask Israel to choose God out of nowhere. He asks them to choose God after reminding them, at length, what God has already done for them.

Faithful God, after everything you have already done for me, help me choose you honestly in worship tomorrow, and again on every ordinary day after it. Amen.

“Then you crossed over the Jordan. You came to Jericho, and the citizens of Jericho attacked you. They were Amorites, Perizzites, Canaanites, Hittites, Girgashites, Hivites, and Jebusites. But I gave them into your power. I sent the hornet before you. It drove them out before you and did the same to the two kings of the Amorites. It wasn’t your sword or bow that did this. I gave you land on which you hadn’t toiled and cities that you hadn’t built. You settled in them and are enjoying produce from vineyards and olive groves that you didn’t plant.” – Joshua 24:11-13 (CEB)

It wasn’t your sword or bow that did this. Of all the lines in Joshua’s long recital, this might be the one Israel most needed to hear and least wanted to. They had fought real battles. They had real scars. And God still insists on saying plainly that the victory wasn’t theirs to claim.

Then comes the harder gift: cities you didn’t build, vineyards you didn’t plant, a life handed to a whole generation that had done none of the original work. Someone else’s labor became their inheritance, the same way someone else’s faith usually becomes ours.

What are you living in right now that you didn’t build? Somebody did build it. Name them if you can, and give thanks for them today.

God who gives what we didn’t earn, thank you for every gift I didn’t build myself. Keep me grateful instead of proud, and generous with what I was handed. Amen.

It was World Communion Sunday, the first Sunday after Leadership Institute at Church of the Resurrection in Kansas City. Pastor Chantel Makarawa preached at 8:30.

In her sermon I heard a word from God meant for me: God does God’s part, we do our part, and we don’t need to try to do more than our part.

Read more

“Then I brought you into the land of the Amorites who lived on the other side of the Jordan. They attacked you, but I gave them into your power, and you took over their land. I wiped them out before you. Then Moab’s King Balak, Zippor’s son, set out to attack Israel. He summoned Balaam, Beor’s son, to curse you. But I wasn’t willing to listen to Balaam, so he actually blessed you. I rescued you from his power.” – Joshua 24:8-10 (CEB)

King Balak wanted Israel cursed. He paid good money for it. He hired a prophet named Balaam and pointed him at God’s people and asked for a curse strong enough to stop them. And Balaam opened his mouth to curse Israel, and blessing came out instead, because God simply wasn’t willing to listen to the request.

This is a strange kind of protection, the kind you never see happening. Israel didn’t know a king wanted them cursed. They didn’t watch the negotiation or feel the moment it failed. They just kept walking, protected by a decision made entirely without them.

How much of your own life has been quietly protected in ways you never got to see, and never got to thank anyone for?

God who turns curses into blessings, thank you for the protection I never asked for and rarely notice. Keep me trusting even in what I cannot see. Amen.

I invite you to connect with the voices of the Bible, and today that voice belongs to Joshua, standing before the whole nation of Israel with one final challenge. He is old. The years of leading Israel into the promised land are behind him. And before he dies, he calls everyone together one more time, not to celebrate what they have won, but to ask a question that still lands hard today: whom will you actually serve?

This scene comes from the very end of the book of Joshua, chapter 24, and the setting matters as much as the speech. Joshua gathers the people at Shechem, a place already thick with covenant history. This is where Abraham first built an altar when he arrived in the land generations earlier. It is where Jacob later buried the foreign household gods his family had been carrying, under an oak tree. Joshua is not picking a random field for a farewell address. He is standing his people on ground that already remembers what it means to choose God over every other loyalty.

What follows is a covenant renewal, a form the ancient world would have recognized immediately. A great king would remind a smaller nation of everything he had done for them before asking for their loyalty in return. Joshua uses exactly that pattern, but the great king in this speech is God. Watch how the whole middle section of the passage is God speaking in the first person, through Joshua, retelling the story: I took Abraham. I gave you this land. I brought you out of Egypt. I rescued you from Balaam’s curse. I gave you cities you didn’t build and vineyards you didn’t plant. Verse after verse, the subject of nearly every sentence is God, acting on Israel’s behalf, long before Israel had done anything to earn it.

That recital is not incidental. It is the whole argument. Before Joshua ever asks Israel to choose, he spends most of the speech reminding them that the choosing they are about to do is a response, not an initiative. They are not being asked to decide whether some new God deserves a chance. They are being asked whether they will keep serving the God who has already carried them this far, through slavery, through the wilderness, through wars they did not win by their own strength.

Only then, in verse fourteen, does Joshua turn the history into a decision. Revere the Lord, he says. Serve him honestly and faithfully. Put aside the other gods your ancestors carried with them, the ones from beyond the Euphrates and the ones from Egypt. And if serving the Lord seems wrong to you, then choose today whom you will serve. He names the alternatives plainly: the old household gods, or the gods of the people whose land Israel now lives in. There is no pretending the choice isn’t real. And then Joshua makes his own answer public, in front of everyone: as for me and my house, we will serve the Lord.

Notice what Joshua does not do. He does not force the decision or hide the cost of it. He lays out the whole history, names the real alternatives, and then simply declares where he and his household stand. The choice stays theirs. That is worth sitting with, because most of us are not choosing between God and some obviously foreign idol. We are choosing, the way Israel was, among loyalties that have quietly moved in over time: comfort, achievement, the good opinion of people who do not actually know us well. Those loyalties rarely announce themselves as competition for God. They just slowly take up the time and trust that used to belong somewhere else. Joshua’s question is not really about whether we believe God exists. It is about who gets our actual loyalty on an ordinary Tuesday, when nobody is watching and no speech is being made.

There is also something in the word household worth noticing. Joshua does not answer only for himself. He answers for everyone under his roof, because he understands that the choice he makes shapes the choices available to the people watching him make it. Children learn what their parents actually trust long before they can put it into words. Neighbors notice what steadies a household when things get hard. That is still true now. Whatever we choose to serve, the people closest to us are the first ones to find out, whether we say it out loud or not.

So return to that ground at Shechem, thick with memory, and hear the question again: choose today whom you will serve. The history behind the question is not a burden. It is the reason there is even a choice worth making. Go back to Joshua chapter twenty-four, sit with the whole speech, and let it ask you the same thing it asked Israel.

This is part of the Voices of the Bible series from Andrew Conard. Each week we explore the scripture passage for the upcoming sermon, helping you encounter the text before Sunday morning.

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“Then I sent Moses and Aaron. I plagued Egypt with what I did to them. After that I brought you out. I brought your ancestors out of Egypt, and you came to the sea. The Egyptians chased your ancestors with chariots and horses to the Reed Sea. Then they cried for help to the Lord. So he set darkness between you and the Egyptians. He brought the sea down on them, and it covered them. With your own eyes you saw what I did to the Egyptians.” – Joshua 24:5-7 (CEB)

By the time we reach the sea in this story, the people have nothing left but a cry for help. Chariots behind them, water in front of them, no plan of their own that could possibly work. Then they cried for help to the Lord. That’s the whole strategy: crying out, because there is nothing else left to do.

God doesn’t send a clever escape route. God sends darkness between them and the danger, and a sea that opens and closes on command. With your own eyes you saw what I did, God says later, through Joshua. Not what you did. What I did.

Where in your life right now is the only honest move left a cry for help?

God who parts seas, meet me in the place where I have run out of my own plans. I cry out to you now. Amen.

These worship elements are an early draft being shared as a preview for the upcoming service. The final version used in worship may be adapted or revised. Pastors and worship leaders are welcome to use and adapt these for your own context.

Welcome

Welcome to worship at McPherson First United Methodist Church. Whether you’ve worshiped here for years or you’re walking through these doors for the first time, in person or online, you belong here.

Today we begin a new six-week series, As For Me and My House, tracing God’s covenant people from Joshua’s bold choice to a promised kingdom of peace. The promise we lean on most today is witness, the choices we make that others end up watching and learning from.

If you’re looking for your next step, visit mcphersonfirst.org/next or open the Church Center app.

(8:30 only, transition to the Call to Worship) I invite you to join in our responsive call to worship as you see the words on display.

Call to Worship (8:30 only)

Leader: Long ago, Joshua gathered God’s people and asked them to choose.

People: We still stand at that same crossroads today.

Leader: The Lord has been faithful through every generation before us.

People: We choose to trust the God who has carried our family this far.

Leader: Other voices call for our loyalty, our time, our worship.

People: As for us and our house, we will serve the Lord.

Leader: Come and worship the God who chooses us first.

People: We gather to renew our covenant and give God our praise.

Welcome Your Neighbor

Joshua chose out loud, so his family knew exactly where he stood. That’s what witness looks like, a choice someone else can see.

Think of someone whose faith has gone quiet, worn down or drifted. What would it take for them to feel the door here is still open?

Watching from home this morning? Consider yourself greeted right along with everyone else. Please stand, welcome your neighbor, and remain standing as we sing together.

Opening Prayer

We’ve lifted our voices in song. Now settle your heart and pray with me, using the words on screen, as we ask God to search us the way Joshua searched Israel’s heart.

All: God of our ancestors, you have carried us farther than we could have imagined. Search our hearts today, and show us where our loyalties truly lie. Give us courage to choose you again, and to keep choosing you tomorrow. Amen.

Scripture Reading: Joshua 24:1-15 (CEB)

(Read by a lay reader. The reader introduces themselves and offers one brief sentence of personal connection to the congregation before reading.)

Today we hear from Joshua, the book that follows Israel into the land God promised them. It picks up after Moses has died and forty years in the wilderness are over. By the end, Joshua is an old man who has seen the whole journey, and he gathers the nation one last time.

Listen for how many times God says “I” before Joshua ever asks the people to choose anything.

Hear now Joshua, chapter 24, verses 1 through 15.

Joshua gathered all the tribes of Israel at Shechem. He summoned the elders of Israel, its leaders, judges, and officers. They presented themselves before God. Then Joshua said to the entire people, “This is what the Lord, the God of Israel, says: Long ago your ancestors lived on the other side of the Euphrates. They served other gods. Among them was Terah the father of Abraham and Nahor. I took Abraham your ancestor from the other side of the Euphrates. I led him around through the whole land of Canaan. I added to his descendants and gave him Isaac. To Isaac I gave Jacob and Esau. I gave Mount Seir to Esau to take over. But Jacob and his sons went down to Egypt. Then I sent Moses and Aaron. I plagued Egypt with what I did to them. After that I brought you out. I brought your ancestors out of Egypt, and you came to the sea. The Egyptians chased your ancestors with chariots and horses to the Reed Sea. Then they cried for help to the Lord. So he set darkness between you and the Egyptians. He brought the sea down on them, and it covered them. With your own eyes you saw what I did to the Egyptians. You lived in the desert for a long time.

Then I brought you into the land of the Amorites who lived on the other side of the Jordan. They attacked you, but I gave them into your power, and you took over their land. I wiped them out before you. Then Moab’s King Balak, Zippor’s son, set out to attack Israel. He summoned Balaam, Beor’s son, to curse you. But I wasn’t willing to listen to Balaam, so he actually blessed you. I rescued you from his power. Then you crossed over the Jordan. You came to Jericho, and the citizens of Jericho attacked you. They were Amorites, Perizzites, Canaanites, Hittites, Girgashites, Hivites, and Jebusites. But I gave them into your power. I sent the hornet before you. It drove them out before you and did the same to the two kings of the Amorites. It wasn’t your sword or bow that did this. I gave you land on which you hadn’t toiled and cities that you hadn’t built. You settled in them and are enjoying produce from vineyards and olive groves that you didn’t plant.

So now, revere the Lord. Serve him honestly and faithfully. Put aside the gods that your ancestors served beyond the Euphrates and in Egypt and serve the Lord. But if it seems wrong in your opinion to serve the Lord, then choose today whom you will serve. Choose the gods whom your ancestors served beyond the Euphrates or the gods of the Amorites in whose land you live. But my family and I will serve the Lord.”

Leader: This is the Word of God for the people of God.

People: Thanks be to God!

Pastoral and Lord’s Prayer

We’re about to pray together. Whether you’re here or joining online, God hears every prayer, spoken aloud or held quietly in your heart. I’ll leave a couple of moments of silence along the way, so use them however you need, to listen, to pray, or simply to rest in God’s presence.

Prayers is one of the promises we make here. To share a prayer request, use the Church Center app anytime, or fill out a prayer request card from the pew back and drop it in the offering plate.

Will you pray with me?

God who has led your people since Abraham first left everything he knew, we come before you as your household still.

(pause)

We praise you for every generation of faith that brought us here: parents who prayed for us before we could pray for ourselves, teachers who first spoke your name over us, a church that has kept choosing you for more than a century.

But we confess that other gods still compete for our loyalty. We serve comfort when it asks less of us than you do. We serve busyness and call it faithfulness. We serve the opinions of people who barely know us, and forget the God who knows us completely. Forgive the ways we have quietly chosen something smaller than you.

We offer these confessions to you now in the quiet.

(pause)

We lift up this congregation as we launch a new season: give us the courage of Joshua, willing to choose you out loud. We pray for those here carrying grief, illness, or a fear no one else can see; steady them. We pray for our community, that it would find in this church a people who still choose you. We pray for a world worn thin by conflict, that your peace would take root where it is least expected.

We give you thanks for this church and its long line of faithful laypeople, serving in ways large and small.

We pray in Jesus’ name, joining our voices in the prayer he taught us:

All: Our Father, who art in heaven, hallowed be thy name. Thy kingdom come, thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven. Give us this day our daily bread. And forgive us our trespasses, as we forgive those who trespass against us. Lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil. For thine is the kingdom, and the power, and the glory, forever. Amen.

Invitation to Give and Check-In

Joshua reminded the people that everything they had, the land, the harvest, the homes they hadn’t built, came from God’s hand before it was ever theirs. Our gifts answer a generosity that was already there.

Thank you to those who give month after month, quietly and steadily. And if today is your first time giving, thank you for taking that step with us.

You can give through the offering plate, online at mcphersonfirst.org/give, or through the Church Center app, the easiest way to give from your phone.

I also invite you to check in through the Church Center app or the attendance pad next to the center aisle, passed down the row so others can sign in too. Checking in is a small act of presence, marking that you were part of the body this morning.

Ushers, please come forward to receive this morning’s offering.

Prayer of Thanksgiving

We’ve given our gifts and offered our prayers. Now we’re sent to practice service, to be God’s hands and feet in a place that needs to see what faithful people still look like. Will you pray with me?

Generous God, thank you for every gift shared here today. Use them to carry your love into McPherson and beyond. Send us out to serve as Joshua’s household served, with our whole hearts. Amen.

Will you please stand as we sing together?

Benediction

Go now, choosing whom you will serve. Love boldly, serve joyfully, lead courageously.

God calls you, Christ leads you, the Spirit strengthens you today. And all God’s people said, Amen.

“To Isaac I gave Jacob and Esau. I gave Mount Seir to Esau to take over. But Jacob and his sons went down to Egypt.” – Joshua 24:4 (CEB)

One sentence, and an entire family history moves through it. Isaac has two sons. One settles into the hill country of Seir. The other, Jacob, ends up leading his whole family down into Egypt, the beginning of four hundred years away from the land God promised them.

Joshua doesn’t explain why. He doesn’t need to. Every family history has a sentence like this one, a move nobody fully planned, a detour that turned into a chapter nobody expected to write. Jacob’s sons went down to Egypt looking for grain during a famine. They didn’t know they were walking into centuries of slavery.

What looked like a detour in your family’s story turned out, later, to matter more than anyone realized at the time. Can you see it yet, or only look back and find it?

God of Jacob’s long road, you were present in the detours my family never planned. Help me trust you in the parts of my story I don’t understand yet. Amen.

“Long ago your ancestors lived on the other side of the Euphrates. They served other gods. Among them was Terah the father of Abraham and Nahor. I took Abraham your ancestor from the other side of the Euphrates. I led him around through the whole land of Canaan. I added to his descendants and gave him Isaac.” – Joshua 24:2-3 (CEB)

Before Abraham became the father of faith, he was just a man in a family that served other gods, the same as everyone around them. Joshua doesn’t soften that part of the story to make the family look better than it was. Long ago your ancestors served other gods, he says, plainly.

What changes everything isn’t that Abraham was different from his neighbors. It’s that God took him. I took Abraham, God says, not Abraham decided to follow me. This whole six-week story starts here, with God reaching into an ordinary, god-serving family and choosing to make something new out of it.

Most of us didn’t start out choosing God either. Somewhere back in your story, before you ever chose anything, who reached in first?

God who chooses ordinary families, thank you for reaching into my story before I knew to look for you. Help me trust you are still leading me somewhere good. Amen.

“God gave first. Everything we offer is an answer.”

This is Five Promises, week five of five, the series finale, on Exodus 19:3-6 and 20:1-11. At Mount Sinai God speaks about what has already been done before asking Israel for anything, and the promise this week is gifts. It’s a sermon about money, and it starts with a rescue.

In the manuscript below:

• A first lavender harvest, and why the plant needed every stem cut.

• What the order at Sinai, rescue first and commandments second, means for where giving sits in a month.

• The May evening on Aldersgate Street, ten years into John Wesley’s ordained ministry.

• A three-step practice for giving that starts wherever you are right now.

Read more

A Methodist Way of Making Disciples

Grace Groups recover one of the oldest Methodist practices. Almost three hundred years ago, John Wesley gathered Methodists into small weekly groups that asked one another, “How is it with your soul?” and watched over one another in love. A Grace Group is that same way of making disciples, brought back for today.

The Five Promises

Our five membership promises are also a simple way to talk about our faith journey:

• Prayers: connecting with God through prayer, scripture, and listening

• Presence: showing up for worship and the life of the church

• Gifts: giving to support the church’s mission

• Service: finding where you are called to serve

• Witness: sharing your faith in word and action

Your Hour Together

Everything for your hour together. The times are a guide, not a rule.

Our Covenant (0 min)

Each time we meet, we say yes to these together.

• Show up. Be here in body and attention. God is already here.

• Be honest. People of faith have long asked: how is your soul?

• Keep it private. What’s said here is held in trust before God.

• Give everyone space. Leave room for every voice. We need each other’s wisdom.

We Begin (2 min)

We’ll begin with a moment of quiet, and then we’ll pray together.

Gracious God, your Spirit is already in this room. Give us the honesty this hour deserves and the patience each person needs. We pray in the name of Jesus Christ. Amen.

Getting to Know One Another (5 min)

We’ll go around the circle. Share your name, then pick one of these to answer.

• What is something you are looking forward to this month?

• What is a smell or sound that takes you back?

The Three Questions

These three questions are the heart of our time. We’ll move through them in order, and everyone gets a turn. The smaller questions underneath are just to help, and there are no wrong answers.

Soul Tending. How is your faith journey going? (10 min)

• Where have you felt God’s patience with you?

• What is God teaching you to let go of?

Now we’ll notice where God has been showing up.

God Sightings. Where do you see God at work in your life? (25 min)

• Who did you see God use this week?

• What did God do this week that you nearly missed?

Now we’ll name what we want to hand to God.

Growing in Grace. What challenge are you giving to God? (40 min)

• What weight could this group help you carry in prayer?

• What is God inviting you toward?

Connect Back (optional, only if time allows): anyone may briefly name something they heard today that stayed with them. Keep it short, for connection, not advice.

We Close (55 min)

We’ll keep a few moments of quiet now, space to allow what you shared and heard, and how God has been speaking, to settle in your soul, so you can carry it into the days ahead.

. . . a few moments of silence . . .

Faithful God, we came with full hands and we leave a little freer. Thank you. Go with us into the week. We pray in the name of Jesus Christ. Amen.

McPherson First United Methodist Church · mcphersonfirst.org/gracegroups

“how I lifted you up on eagles’ wings and brought you to me” – Exodus 19:4 (CEB)

Whatever you carry into worship this morning, you did not get here on your own. Israel stood at Sinai as people who had been carried, and God opened the whole covenant by saying so. Come and hear what comes after that. Everything we offer is an answer to something already given.

God who carried us here, meet us in worship and teach us to give first. In Jesus’ name, Amen.

“Remember the Sabbath day and treat it as holy. Six days you may work and do all your tasks, but the seventh day is a Sabbath to the Lord your God. Do not do any work on it—not you, your sons or daughters, your male or female servants, your animals, or the immigrant who is living with you.” – Exodus 20:8-10 (CEB)

The Sabbath command does not stop with you. Read the list. God legislates rest for the people least able to claim it on their own. Somebody who works for you cannot declare their own day off, so God declares it for them. Generosity is written into the law that early, and here it looks like handing over something you had every legal right to take.

[Make the next paragraph a Callout Block, then delete this line.]

Tomorrow we close Five Promises with the promise of gifts, and with the sentence at Sinai that puts the giving in the right order. Come and be part of it. We worship at 8:30 and 10:15, and there is room for you.

God, you built rest for everybody into your own law. Make me generous with what I have the power to withhold. Through Christ our Lord, Amen.

I did not get to the grass until late in the day, but once I did, I got right to it. By the time the edging was done and most of the yard was behind me, the mower’s batteries would not take a charge. They had run too hot, worn down by a job that started in the heat of the afternoon instead of the cool of the morning. The backyard was half cut, and the front yard sat there unfinished, waiting.

Not enough time, not enough energy left, one more thing carried over to tomorrow’s list.

The next morning I got up and went straight out before the day had a chance to get too hot. Cut the front grass, pulled the weeds, blew off the sidewalk and the driveway. The whole job that had beaten me the afternoon before took less than an hour, and it went easily.

Nothing about the work had changed. Same mower, same grass, same effort. The only thing different was the time of day.

I have started to wonder how many things in my life, and in the life of this church, get filed as failures of resolve. A practice that keeps lapsing. A conversation that keeps not happening. A discipline that looks abandoned because it was tried three times on the same worn-out day and never once on a fresh one. Most of the time, none of that is really about resolve. It is about the hour we keep trying it. It is easy to conclude the will is missing. More often, no one has tried it at the right time yet.

I do not think this lets anyone off the hook, including me. The yard still needed cutting, and I was the one who had to get up early to do it. But it changes the question. Instead of asking why something is not working, it is worth asking when it keeps getting tried.

The grass never cared what time I mowed it. It only needed the right hour.

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“You must have no other gods before me.” – Exodus 20:3 (CEB)

We hear that and picture statues, which lets us off easy. The older test is simpler. What gets your first response? Not your best intentions, your first response. What do you check before you are fully awake, protect before you will protect anything else, reach for when a day goes sideways? Whatever moves first is what you are actually serving. Money sits on that list for most of us, and it does not look like a god at all, which is exactly what makes it effective. Nobody builds a shrine to it. They just check the balance first. The first commandment is not asking about your beliefs. It is asking about your order.

What gets your first response, honestly?

God, you asked to be first, and I have put other things there. Reorder me, starting with what I reach for tomorrow morning. In Jesus’ name, Amen.

“I am the Lord your God who brought you out of Egypt, out of the house of slavery.” – Exodus 20:2 (CEB)

Read the Ten Commandments and look at verse two, before the first thou shalt. The commandments open with a rescue. Everything after that sentence is addressed to freed people, about how freed people live. That is a different document than the one most of us think we are holding. We tend to hear the commandments as a test we are quietly failing. Israel heard them as the house rules of a life that had just been handed back. Same words, and a completely different room. A rule handed to a slave is one more thing being done to you. The same rule handed to a free person is a description of what the freedom is for.

What changes if the commands you resent were written for someone already free?

God, you rescued first and instructed second. Let me hear your commands as a free person and not as a defendant. Through Christ our Lord, Amen.

For five months, our Leadership Board read Patrick Lencioni’s The Advantage together, one section per monthly meeting. This post is for anyone who wants to do the same work in their own church. We made a guide for you.

It’s called Reading Together: A Faith-Grounded Companion for The Advantage. It’s free, and you can download it at the bottom of this post.

What’s Inside

The guide walks alongside Lencioni’s book, so you’ll still want your own copies of The Advantage. Inside, you’ll find:

• A case for organizational health as faithful work. The church has done this work for a long time, from Jethro’s advice to Moses to the apostles in Acts 6.

• Five chapters that follow the book. Each one has theological framing, suggested scripture to open a meeting, five questions for a board or staff, and notes on leading the conversation.

• A reflection for the leader. Each chapter ends with one question for the person leading to sit with before the next meeting.

• Help compiling your own playbook. Three tests for your answers to Lencioni’s six questions, and a simple one-page format.

Who It’s For

Pastors leading a board or council through The Advantage can drop the questions and scripture straight into an agenda. Staff teams can take one question a month in 10 to 15 minutes. Lay leaders and board chairs can read it on their own and bring something useful back to the rooms where they serve. It’s written for congregations of any size or tradition, so adapt anything that doesn’t fit.

How to Use It

Read it through once before you plan anything. It’s short enough for one sitting, and you’ll see the whole shape first. Then start with your board, one section a month. Change the questions for your context, replace examples that don’t fit, and add scripture that speaks more clearly in your tradition.

The Story Behind the Guide

When our Leadership Board affirmed this work in April 2026, a guide was only a possibility. As the reading began in May and these Reading Together posts appeared, its shape came into view. The material built up all summer: theological framing for each part of the book, questions written for Board agendas, and what we learned at each meeting. The guide gathers that material and shapes it for use in any church.

One Last Invitation

If you use this guide, we’d love to hear about it. Leave a comment on this post or send a note. Hearing how it travels to other churches helps shape what comes next here: more resources for church leaders, including the next book we read together. If there’s a book you’d want to read alongside us, mention it in the comments.

Thank you for reading with us across these five months.

Click below to download the companion guide.

Reading Together A Faith Grounded Companion For The Advantage

383KB ∙ PDF file

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“You will be a kingdom of priests for me and a holy nation.” – Exodus 19:6 (CEB)

God says this to a crowd of former slaves who own almost nothing. Not a nation with priests in it. A nation of them. A priest’s work is to stand between God and somebody else, holding the one toward the other, and God hands that work to everybody in earshot, including people who walked out of a brickyard carrying whatever fit in their arms. Which means the qualification was never what you have. It was what you were given, and everyone in that crowd had been given the same thing: a way out, and a God who stayed. If you have been waiting until you are further along to be useful to God, Sinai answers before you finish the sentence.

Who is God asking you to stand between right now?

God, you called people with nothing a kingdom of priests. Use what I have. Put me between you and someone who needs you today. In Jesus’ name, Amen.

These worship elements are an early draft being shared as a preview for the upcoming service. The final version used in worship may be adapted or revised. Pastors and worship leaders are welcome to use and adapt these for your own context.

Welcome

Welcome to worship at McPherson First United Methodist Church, in this room and online. Whether this is your first Sunday here or your five-hundredth, you belong here.

Today we close our Five Promises series with the promise of gifts. We’ll go to Mount Sinai, where God opens a covenant not with a demand but with a reminder: I lifted you up on eagles’ wings, and I brought you to me. Everything after that is a response to something already given.

Today we also launch Go and Grow, our annual invitation to invest in the children and youth of this church.

If you’re looking for a next step, you can find one anytime at mcphersonfirst.org/next or on the Church Center app.

(8:30 only, transition to the Call to Worship) I invite you to join in our responsive call to worship as you see the words on display.

Call to Worship (8:30 only)

Leader: Before God asked anything of Israel, God reminded them who carried them out.

People: You lifted us up on eagles’ wings and brought us to yourself.

Leader: Only then came the covenant, and the words to live by.

People: We answer a God who gave first.

Leader: You call us a holy nation, a people who belong to you.

People: We come to give ourselves back to you.

Leader: So come, people carried and claimed.

People: We worship the God who loved us first. Amen.

Welcome Your Neighbor

God told Israel they would be a kingdom of priests, a whole people standing between God and their neighbors. That is witness, and it was never a job for the professionals.

Who is already in your life that you have never once mentioned church to? You don’t have to make a case. Just tell them what this place is to you sometime before next Sunday.

If you’re worshiping online, you’re part of this greeting too.

Please stand, welcome your neighbor, and then remain standing as we join together in song.

Opening Prayer

As our singing comes to rest, turn toward God with me and pray the words on the screen.

All: God who carried us out, you gave before you asked, and you give still. Open our hands and loosen our grip. Teach us to answer your generosity with our own, starting today. In Jesus’ name, Amen.

Scripture Reading: Exodus 19:3-6; 20:1-11 (CEB)

(Read by a lay reader, seated. The reader introduces themselves and offers one brief sentence of personal connection to the congregation before reading.)

Today’s scripture comes from the book of Exodus, chapter 19, verses 3 through 6, and chapter 20, verses 1 through 11. I invite you to open your hearts and minds as we hear God’s word for us today.

Moses went up to God. The Lord called to him from the mountain, “This is what you should say to Jacob’s household and declare to the Israelites: You saw what I did to the Egyptians, and how I lifted you up on eagles’ wings and brought you to me. So now, if you faithfully obey me and stay true to my covenant, you will be my most precious possession out of all the peoples, since the whole earth belongs to me. You will be a kingdom of priests for me and a holy nation. These are the words you should say to the Israelites.”

Then God spoke all these words:

I am the Lord your God who brought you out of Egypt, out of the house of slavery.

You must have no other gods before me.

Do not make an idol for yourself—no form whatsoever—of anything in the sky above or on the earth below or in the waters under the earth. Do not bow down to them or worship them, because I, the Lord your God, am a passionate God. I punish children for their parents’ sins even to the third and fourth generations of those who hate me. But I am loyal and gracious to the thousandth generation of those who love me and keep my commandments.

Do not use the Lord your God’s name as if it were of no significance; the Lord won’t forgive anyone who uses his name that way.

Remember the Sabbath day and treat it as holy. Six days you may work and do all your tasks, but the seventh day is a Sabbath to the Lord your God. Do not do any work on it—not you, your sons or daughters, your male or female servants, your animals, or the immigrant who is living with you. Because the Lord made the heavens and the earth, the sea, and everything that is in them in six days, but rested on the seventh day. That is why the Lord blessed the Sabbath day and made it holy.

Leader: This is the Word of God for the people of God.

People: Thanks be to God!

Pastoral and Lord’s Prayer

We’re about to pray together. Whether you’re here or joining online, God hears every prayer, spoken aloud or held quietly in your heart. I’ll leave a couple of moments of silence along the way, so use them however you need, to listen, to pray, or simply to rest in God’s presence.

Prayers is one of the promises we make here. To share a prayer request, use the Church Center app anytime, or fill out a prayer request card from the pew back and drop it in the offering plate.

Will you pray with me?

God who gave first, you did not wait for us to deserve you. We pause in your presence.

(pause)

We praise you for carrying your people out before you ever asked them for anything. You freed them, then you gave them a way to live, and the order has never changed. Every good thing we hold came from your hand before it was ours.

We confess that we reverse it. We treat what we have as earned and what we give as loss. We keep the best for ourselves and call the leftovers generosity. We say we will give when there is more, and there is never more. We offer our prayers of confession to God in this time of quiet.

(pause)

We pray for the children and youth of this congregation, and for every adult who shows up for them. We pray for people carrying more than they can afford this month, and for those with plenty who cannot rest. We pray for the sick, the grieving, and the lonely. We pray for this church as we take up the work ahead of us.

We give thanks for the people who gave to this church long before we arrived, and who will never know our names.

Hear all we have brought you, spoken and unspoken.

We pray in Jesus’ name, joining our voices in the prayer he taught us:

All: Our Father, who art in heaven, hallowed be thy name. Thy kingdom come, thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven. Give us this day our daily bread. And forgive us our trespasses, as we forgive those who trespass against us. Lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil. For thine is the kingdom, and the power, and the glory, forever. Amen.

Invitation to Give and Check-In

God gave before God asked. That is the whole shape of Sinai, and it is the shape of our giving too. We practice gifts as an answer, never as a payment.

Today we launch Go and Grow, our one annual invitation to invest in the children and youth of this church, one campaign a year instead of a year of fundraisers. It funds camp scholarships to Camp Horizon and sends our youth to Youth 2027 in Dallas next July, and it keeps those experiences affordable for every family. This is a gift above and beyond your regular giving. Mark it Go and Grow in the plate, or give at mcphersonfirst.org/give. The campaign closes November 8.

Thank you to those who give month after month, quietly and steadily; you carry this ministry through every season. And if today is your first time giving, thank you, and welcome.

You can give in the offering plate, online at mcphersonfirst.org/give, or through the Church Center app, which is the easiest way to give right from your phone.

As the offering is received, check in through the Church Center app, at mcphersonfirst.org/next, or by signing the attendance pad next to the center aisle and passing it down the row so others have a chance to sign in as well. Checking in is how we live out presence, telling the church, in person or online, that you were here.

Ushers, please come forward to receive this morning’s offering.

Prayer of Thanksgiving

We’ve brought our gifts and offered our prayers. Now we’re sent out to practice service, answering God’s generosity with our hands. Will you pray with me?

Generous God, receive these gifts and the lives behind them. You gave first and you give still. Send us out to give first too, in the name of Jesus Christ, Amen.

Will you please stand as we sing together?

Benediction

Go now and give first. Love boldly, serve joyfully, lead courageously.

God carried you out, Christ gave himself for you, the Spirit opens your hands. And all God’s people said, Amen.