Category: Worship Series

OUR LENT WORSHIP SERIES 2025

This year’s Lenten worship series, “Full to the Brim” is filled with parables and promises of God’s overflowing grace, reminding us to live fully. And so, this Lent, let us trust – fully – that we belong to God. Let us increase our capacity to receive and give grace. Join us Sundays during Lent, starting March 9, as we discover the expansive life God dreams for us.

Lent is a season that invites us deeper into intentional living. This Wellness Wheel is a tool designed to help you do just that. Use this worksheet to help you reflect on where you are in your life and how you hope to grow throughout this Lenten season.

Full to the Brim Lent Bible Study: Tuesdays during Lent

Join us for a five-week Lent Bible Study as we journey through parables and passages that speak of God’s abundant and expansive grace. This study will expand upon the gospel readings from our Lent worship series, “Full to the Brim” allowing space for further reflection, conversation, and spiritual growth in a small group setting. Whether you’re new to Bible study and small groups or whether it’s your favorite part of church, all are welcome!

We will offer two sessions of the study, both starting on March 11:

Daytime Study – Tuesdays at 10:30-11:30 am

Nighttime Study – Tuesdays at 6-7 pm

Full to the Brim Lent Devotional

The St. John’s Writer’s Group has created a daily Lent devotional featuring reflections from members and friends of the church. The readings begin on Ash Wednesday, March 5, and end on Easter Sunday, April 20. A limited number of printed copies are available from the church office. If you would like to help offset the cost of printing, we are accepting a love offering with a suggested donation of $5.

Advent: An Invitation to Begin Again

Tucked into the end of the year, when it can often feel like we’ve run out of time, Advent invites us to begin again. Even in the depths of winter, Advent declares: This is not the end. Christ’s birth offers us a new beginning. As we journey through this season in preparation for Christmas, we will find words of encouragement, love, and hope woven throughout scripture and in worship – words we need to begin again. This December, during the season of Advent, we will come to find that God’s all-embracing love is with us in our endings and our beginnings. Join us as we experience the season of Advent together – an invitation to begin again.

Advent Photo-A-Day Invitation

During Advent, we invite you to a spiritual practice of noticing images of hope, peace, joy, and love in the world. Our Photo-A-Day practice invites you to notice God within the world through a guiding word. You can download the daily word prompts here or get a printed copy at church. As you notice that word coming to mind during your day, take a picture and post it on social media, using #stjohnsbr in your post. Or you can use the daily word as a journaling process of noticing God! As a community practice, it’s powerful to observe the various ways we uniquely encounter each word and God around us. Where will you see these words and reflections this Advent season as we begin again in our preparations for Christmas?

Download the Advent prompts here.

This September, join us in a campaign for kindness, as we focus on embodying The Golden Rule – “Do unto others as you would have them do unto you.” This teaching from Jesus has the power to heal relationships, bridge political chasms, and transform our community in a world so torn by division. Join us as we discover how this simple, yet profound principle of kindness can be our catalyst for positive change.

“Do Unto Others” is a grassroots movement launched by Resurrection, a United Methodist Church in the Kansas City area, led by Rev. Adam Hamilton, that encourages intentional acts of kindness and fosters civility and respect, countering the polarization in our society.

As the Olympic games take center stage this summer, we will discover how the values of the games teach us biblical values for our lives.

Join us for this brand new worship series, “Olympic Faith,” starting August 4, 2024.

Starting June 9, we will delve into some of the more bizarre passages in the Bible – the ones that make us think, “What on earth?” Along the way, we’ll see how even the strangest parts of the Bible reveal God’s nature to us and encourage and strengthen our faith.

Jesus’ followers gather in churches of many different varieties: Catholic, Baptist, Presbyterian,
Nondenominational, and so on. St. John’s identity is rooted in The United Methodist Church.
What is unique about being a United Methodist Christian and why does it matter? Beginning
April 14, join us as we explore the possibilities and practices of being United Methodist through
our “Uniquely UMC” worship series.

Join us on a Lenten journey where we will discover what it means to know that we are “good enough,” where we give ourselves grace, and we accept that life is imperfect and that’s ok. What if we stopped striving for unattainable ideals and started fertilizing, watering, and blooming right where we find ourselves? Welcome to a Lent of affirming a faith in which we are blessed, regardless, and where we can lean into embracing our “good enough” lives. The series begins on Sunday, February 18 with a message from Pastor Lane.

We will use the book Good Enough: 40’ish Devotionals for a Life of Imperfection, by Kate Bowler and Jessica Riche, as the companion for our Lent worship series. Each week we will highlight a concept from the book that ties into the scripture reading for that Sunday. If you want to go deeper, you can purchase your own copy of Good Enough: 40’ish Devotionals for a Life of Imperfection. For those who have elected to read the devotions on a daily basis, there is a copy of a suggested reading list in the Narthex, in the hallway of the Admin/Edu Building, or you may download it here.

There is a leader guide that was sent to small group leaders who may be interested in using the book during Lent in their classes.

A Note about Observing Advent in 2023:
We will begin observing Advent on Sunday, November 26 this year, which is one week earlier than the lectionary. We are doing this so that we have 4 Sundays to observe and celebrate Advent prior to Christmas Eve, which is on a Sunday in 2023. The times for worship on Christmas Eve (Sunday, 12/24) will be 10 a.m. and 5 p.m.

We know him by the name of Jesus. But he was also called other names, like Messiah, Lord, Savior, and Emmanuel. He is the Light of the World, the Prince of Peace and the Word made flesh. Each of these names reveals a little bit more of the story around who the person of Jesus was and still is today. Join us on November 26 as we celebrate the beginning of Advent with our new worship series, “The Gift of Many Names” in which we will explore some of the many names of Jesus and what they can tell us about the child whose birth we celebrate at Christmas.

We also published a companion devotional featuring reflections from St. John’s members and friends from November 26 through Epiphany, January 6.

Our 2024 Stewardship Campaign theme is “Called to Community,” which affirms the ways that we, here at St. John’s, are making a difference in our community and explore how God is calling us to invest even further in this place we call home. The prophet Jeremiah reminds us that when our prayers, presence, gifts, service, and witness enable our community to thrive, we, as a church, will thrive, too. 

Our campaign and series culminates on Sunday, October 29, Commitment Sunday, in which we will celebrate the pledges made to the St. John’s community in 2024. We will have one worship service that morning at 10 a.m. with a potluck luncheon to follow.

To accompany our series we invite you to use this daily reflection calendar. Printed calendars, along with the accompanying Increased Pledge Calculator, are available at the church or download it here.

Make a pledge to God’s work here at St. John’s in 2024 here.

You can learn more about our ministry goals and hopes for 2024 by downloading our Narrative Budget.

Inner Insights: A series about our mental health

Scripture calls us to love God with all our heart, with all our soul, with all our strength, and with all our mind. Caring for our minds, therefore, is a spiritual practice. Our mental health matters to God and is part of caring for our whole selves. Our September worship series, “Inner Insights” invites us to see mental health as part of our faith life. Each week we will talk about the different ways that mental health struggles can present themselves and will offer insights from our faith about how to support ourselves and others. This series about our mental health begins on September 3.

To accompany our series, here are some mental health resources, compiled with the support and guidance of the mental health professionals within our community.