Our church has a partnership with a community in Kpenoe, Ghana. This partnership has been in existence since 2008. To learn more about the partnership, visit https://www.wolfeboroucc.org/ghana.
Each year we renew our covenant with them and celebrate our friendship. This liturgy comes from that service in 2025.
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Call to Worship Based on Psalm 33 –
Pastor: Rejoice in the Lord
People: Praise the Lord with instrument and voice.
Pastor: Sing to God a new song.
People: Play with vigor and joy.
Pastor: The Earth reverberates with the steadfast love of the Lord.
People: Let us tremble and stand in awe of God.
Pastor: Our soul shimmers in response to the creator.
People: our souls wait for God and are glad.
Invocation –
Holy and awesome God, we celebrate your presence amongst and between us. We honor all of your creation. Open our eyes to see you in all the ways you make yourself known to us. Let us learn more about you as we learn about each other. Amen
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Prayer of Transformation
Lord,
I open my heart to you.
Soften it where it has hardened.
Move it toward compassion.
When I seek to protect it, keep me open and attentive to what it says.
Remind me of the courage and strength it contains so that I may support spiritual siblings.
Keep me aware of its inner yearnings.
Remind me that a heart is not divisible, but exponentially expandable.
Open my heart, O Lord.
Open my heart, O Lord.
Let me be crafted by your hand and be as you need me in this world. AMEN
Pastoral Prayer
Holy parent of all,
As we pray today, we cannot forget the wider world: not only those places that we are familiar with, but the points and places we may never see, the people who look and speak differently than us. People of different cultures, histories, and faiths. We bring before you, O God, the whole of the world and the world itself.
We pray for the planet
and for the people of every nation who inhabit it.
We pray for the soil under our feet, the air in the sky, the water that flows through the land and sits in aquifers underground.
We pray for the swallow and the orca, for the spider and the sea cucumber.
We pray for the iris and the prairie grass,
for peat moss and the giant sequoia,
for all that lives and breathes.
We pray for the interaction and the interchange that each has with the other.
Let us all remember that each is connected to you and a reflection of you.
We also pray for those specifically known to us that need your love and care this day . . . (Lift up your arms and let the congregation fill it with the names of their loved ones in need)
And all those we don’t know to name or don’t know how to name.
We pray this all in the name of Jesus. Our brother, your son. Who taught us to pray together saying:
Lord’s Prayer . . .
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To be mindful of the reciprocity of this relationship – this will be our words to invite giving:
Invitation to share
Generosity is a very important concept in Ghana. One of their precepts is that we share because we are blessed with things to share. Unlike our tendency to assure that we have “enough” first, people in Ghana say, “Because I have something. I need to share.” So let us with joy consider what we have and therefore, what we need to share. As you decide what that is, whether dollars or actions; talents or treasurers; may you dance up your gift. Letting the joy of gift carry you into the act of giving.
We will also be interspersing the idea of hand washing within the worship to remind us that it is not only us doing the giving and they the receiving, but that we both learn and grow by through our relationship. At multiple times during the worship will will enact a symbolic hand washing, remembering that one hand washes the other. And thus our Prayer of Dedication following the collection of the offering will be:
Prayer of Dedication
Holy One, you have given and we have received. We are blessed and so we pass on that blessing. We send out our blessings into the world so that others too may be blessed. Let us continue the washing of one another’s hands as we celebrate the many gifts that you have poured upon us all. AMEN
Here is the link to last year’s Ghana Sunday worship: https://youtu.be/UYfCHU4yU68?si=DtF65pIp8ANU7bUE
Wandering and Wondering 