Today’s service will be offered in 2 formats – video and text.
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• Thank you to Scripture Reader: Eva Harrison and Soloist: Alyssa Di Marco
• Upcoming Bible Study “Christian Community” will be starting Thursday, September 22nd, at 10:00 a.m. to 11:30 a.m. in Bronte Hall. The Study will run for 10 weeks, on consecutive Thursday mornings.
We all yearn for a sense of community. The topic of community seems to be even more relevant in the world and in each of our lives, as we look back over the last two and a half years. You are invited to take part in this Bible based study, looking at ‘Christian Community’. What does the Bible say about Christian community? What does Christian community mean to you today? A time to gather, discuss, question, listen, share, laugh, ponder, as we explore the meaning of Christian community together. Everyone is welcome. Please sign up through the church office to ensure everyone has a copy of the book. Cost of the book is $10.00 and available through the church office. Any questions, please speak to Cathy Winn.
• Choir is starting up again!!! Junior, Youth and Chancel Choirs are starting up again on Thursday, September 8th, here at Walton. Mark it on your calendar and start warming up those vocal cords! Jillian will meet with the Junior Choir at 7:00pm – 7:45pm in the Gathering Room. Linda will meet with the Youth Choir in the Sanctuary 7:00-7:45pm.
The Chancel Choir will meet at 8:00pm in the Sanctuary.
Masks will be required while you are in the building. Stay tuned for more information and updates as we get closer to start up.
• Upcoming Prayer Shawl Ministrygathering on Thursday, September 22, 1:30 to 3:00 p.m. in Bronte Hall. The Prayer Shawl Ministry knits and crochets Prayer Shawls which are given out to Walton Community and beyond. Each child baptized at Walton receives a Prayer Blanket, made by the members of this ministry. The Prayer Shawls and Prayer Blankets are made with love and prayers, a reminder of God’s presence in our lives and in the world.Do you like to knit or crochet? Why not join us for a time of laughter, sharing, creating, prayer, supporting others in this special ministry. New members are always welcome. Some supplies provided. Please speak with Cathy Winn through the church office. October meeting will be Thursday, October 20th, at 1:30 to 3:00 p.m.
• Art & Treasures sale – VIP preview: Walton is holding an Art & Treasures sale in Bronte Hall on Saturday, September 10 from 10am-4pm. We have lots of beautiful artwork, household items and attic treasures available for purchase. The sale will be open to the public, in conjunction with the Bronte Arts Market happening in our parking lot that day. As a Walton member or friend, you get VIP early access to view and purchase items during coffee time following the service on Sunday, August 28th and Sunday, September 4th before we open up the sale to the wider community. Come check out the wonderful and unique sale items, which were generously donated to the Walton Auction Committee from the pre-covid auction.
• Weeding Team – We need a few people who will help some others weed the south and new east gardens. If you can help out, let the office know. Thank you.
• Are you wanting to spread God’s love and help the wider community? The Outreach Committee is inviting you to join them! If you are interested in hearing about their current projects and suggesting future ongoing projects, please join them at Walton on the third Wednesday of every month at 7pm. Please call the office for information or just join us!
• Bronte Coat Drive is back this year! Tentatively, on the third Saturday in October. This has become a co-operative effort between, Church of the Epiphany, St. Dominic’s Church and Walton Memorial primarily; all of us having the betterment of people of our area as our goal. So, sew on that button, empty those pockets, sponge out that stain …… and, please give us your coats that you will not plan to wear next year or ever again! Donations will be accepted soon. Stay tuned!
• Calling all knitters! The Bronte COAT DRIVE Committee has a need for knitted scarves for our Annual Coat Distribution Event. If you could knit a scarf 5’ – 6’ long in black, grey or navy, we would be most happy to include it as a giveaway on October 15 th , 2022. As you may know, there are many people in our community who are grateful to receive a coat from this event, and they are delighted to also receive a warm scarf (or hat or gloves)!
• FOOD BANK…the need is real! Every summer the food bank deals with reduced food and money donations because of families going on vacation and leaving town. Unfortunately, the families that depend on the food bank year-round still need that support. Please help by donating through your Walton envelopes, electronically through the website, or by bringing food items to put in our donation box outside Bronte Hall. It was mentioned that canned fruit and cereal are items needed right now. Go to the Fare Share website to find a complete list – www.oakvillefoodbank.com
• Children and youth are invited to view this week’s virtual Sunday School lesson online. Our Happy Campers curriculum continues and we’re sharing stories around the campfire!
• Walton’s prayer chain is open. Confidential prayers requests can be sent to office@waltonmemorial.com
• If you need Rev. Jim for a pastoral emergency, please email him directly at jamescgillwuc@gmail.com.
As we gather today on these treaty lands, we are in solidarity with Indigenous brothers and sisters to honour and respect the four directions, lands, waters, plants, animals and ancestors that walked before us, and all of the wonderful elements of creation that exist. We acknowledge and thank the Mississaugas of the Credit First Nation for being stewards of this traditional territory.
Good morning and welcome to Walton’s summer worship service. What a wonderful morning to gather together to praise and worship God today.
All: This is the day the Lord has made, let us rejoice and be glad in it.
Let us be in God’s presence, ready to be filled with God’s spirit of love and hope in all we do and say in worship today.
One: Creator God we thank you for the beauty and warmth of summer.
All: The incredible gift of colour and light that fills our hearts and being.
One: The fragrance of flowers and fresh produce that comes from our gardens or the farmers’ markets.
All: The incredible crispness and flavours of freshly picked zucchinis and beans.
One: Help us, Lord, to continue to see and feel and taste the gift of your creation and be thankful.
All: We offer our gratefulness for the bountiful harvests we get to experience and share this summer, through your grace and mercy. We pray all this in Jesus’ name. Amen
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, and lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil. For thine is the kingdom, the power and the glory, forever and ever. Amen.
A: All summer our Sunday School lessons have focused on camping, and how many of our favourite camping activities can teach us about Jesus. Fishing reminds us of how Jesus taught his disciples to fish for men. Hiking reminds us to get out of our comfort zone and to share Jesus’ Word everywhere, not just while sitting in our pews. Sleeping in tents and sleeping bags helped us learn that following Jesus means doing uncomfortable things sometimes. Singing campfire songs reminds us how God not only wants us to sing – he commands us to!
V: But what about the campfire itself? You can’t have a good backwoods camping experience without a roaring fire. It gives you light and keeps you warm. Fire provides a way to cook your food if you don’t have a Coleman stove or a fancy schmancy trailer with a full kitchen. A campfire can even help keep you safe by keeping wild animals away, so it’s very important.
A: I know you build campfires at your trailer all the time, Val. How did you get so good at it? Every time I try, I struggle with getting the fire to stay lit. I can get it to start, but before long the flames die down and sputter out, and I’m alone in the woods in the dark.
V: Well, when it starts to die down, what are you doing to make it burn brightly again?
A: What do you mean? I thought once you light the fire it will just keep going until all the wood is burned.
V: Sometimes that works, but not always. Maybe it’s windy, or rainy, or your wood is damp. There are lots of things that try to put out your fire. You have to fan the flames to keep them burning brightly.
A: Fan the flames? With a fan? (dramatically waves a fan)
V: Sort of! When a grown-up gently blows air on a fire, or waves something in front of it like a fan, it makes the flames grow higher and burn better. They may also poke at the firewire with a stick to let more air in, which feeds the fire. That’s what fanning the flames means – feeding the fire.
A: That reminds me of Pentecost when Jesus sent the fire of the Holy Spirit to live inside of us. We learned in Sunday School that the Holy Spirit is always in us, but it doesn’t always burn brightly unless we feed it by coming to church, praising God, praying, and loving our neighbours.
V: Exactly! We have to keep fanning the flames of our faith like a campfire to keep it burning brightly.
A: Wow! I guess we know now what campfires can teach us about Jesus! Let’s say a prayer:
Loving God, thank you for the Holy Spirit that burns inside us. Help remember to feed that fire and keep
our faith in you burning brightly. We ask this in Jesus’ name. AAAAAAAAA-men!
Psalm 82:1-4
A Plea for Justice
A Psalm of Asaph.
God has taken his place in the divine council; in the midst of the gods he holds judgment:
“How long will you judge unjustly and show partiality to the wicked? Selah
Give justice to the weak and the orphan; maintain the right of the lowly and the destitute.
Rescue the weak and the needy; deliver them from the hand of the wicked.”
Ephesians 4:25-32
Rules for the New Life
So then, putting away falsehood, let each of you speak the truth with your neighbour, for we are members of one another.
Be angry but do not sin; do not let the sun go down on your anger, and do not make room for the devil.
Those who steal must give up stealing; rather, let them labour, doing good work with their own hands, so as to have something to share with the needy.
Let no evil talk come out of your mouths but only what is good for building up, as there is need, so that your words may give grace to those who hear.
And do not grieve the Holy Spirit of God, with which you were marked with a seal for the day of redemption.
Put away from you all bitterness and wrath and anger and wrangling and slander, together with all malice. Be kind to one another, tenderhearted, forgiving one another, as God in Christ has forgiven you.
“Be kind and compassionate to one another.” Those are the words from the Letter to the Church at Ephesus. Paul is saying them to those who are part of that worshipping family of faith, the local congregation in what is now southwestern Turkey on the Aegean Sea.
There are 59 “one another” statements in the New Testament talking about how we are to be towards one another as a family of faith. My summer theme in 2022 is “one another.” We are considering just some of these 59 passages about being “one another” to one another. Andy Stanley, the best-selling Christian writer, says, “The primary activity of the church was one anothering one another.” What a pivotal phrase “one anothering one another.”
Do you remember Robert Fulghum? He wrote “All I Really Need To Know” about how to live and what to do and how to be, based on what he learned in kindergarten. I borrow from this Fulghum’s message in seeking to further understand those words from Ephesians I shared earlier: “Be kind and compassionate to one another.” Robert Fulghum writes, “Wisdom was not at the top of the graduate-school mountain, but there in the sand pile at Sunday School.” These are the things Robert learned:
First: “Share everything.” Except for the designated accessible parking spaces, there are no reserved spots in our Walton Church parking lot. Well we do have a parking area to the north of Bronte Hall where we prefer Corolla and Civics be parked rather than big F- 150’s. That smaller sedan preference is only because we do not want to block the fire or ambulance route if we needed to call 911. The point is “to share everything.” There is no reserved staff parking, only reserved accessible parking in our parking. We are to “be kind and considerate to one another.”
Second: “Play fair,” Fulgham says. Often when making a decision around here as a congregation we ask: Will this set a precedent? What have we done in the past? Can we do this for everyone? While everyone is different with different needs and situations, we do try where possible to be fair to all in the moment and over time. We try not to play favourites. Fairness in how we treat others is a way of being one another to one another.
Third: “Don’t hit people” is another Fulgham point about playing in the sandbox. At a wedding rehearsal at my former church up in Algoma, the best man and father of the groom got into a fistfight. It ended up with the OPP paying a visit to that wedding rehearsal. Fortunately, such violence rarely happens in church life. However, we can “hit” one another in non-physical ways which can leave lasting emotional bruises and black eyes, as the rehearsal fistfight did.
Church “bullies” existed even back in the early Church. They still exist today in most congregations. These are people who want things their way or the highway. Differences of opinion are expected, but this is more. The bullies feel their preferences in everything from music to decorations, order of worship to the scheduling of events is the God-given right way to do things. In our church life at Walton, we work on more of a Holy Spirit, consensus-driven model.
It might surprise you that not everything that happens around here is my preference, or Val, Linda, or Alison’s preference, or the preference of that person along the pew from you today. It is not. We are a family of faith where there is give and take based on diverse feedback. One person’s insistence on what they want should never eclipse the larger mission of a healthy congregation. As Ephesians says, “Be kind and compassionate to one another.”
Fourth: Fulgham listed a trio of Kindergarten advice about the day-to-day basics of life. Let me ask you: what is that often causes stress in partner relationships, family households and families of faith? The answer is often housekeeping matters or what you might call domestic responsibilities about making a home or church home function day to day. Back when we had 20 student minister interns in a row over nearly two decades, I would teach them about the concept of “taking out the garbage.”
Fulgham’s trio of advice is, “Put things back where you found them. Clean up your own mess. Don’t take things that aren’t yours.” Often those student interns just loved standing up here preaching and praying, leading worship, but they were less thrilled about the rest. They wanted Sunday morning without the work of the other 6 1/2 days of the week. But it is the other 6 1/2 days of the week that make Sundays possible.
Walton has a great new commercial kitchen. It is so wonderful to use it again for coffee hour, our successful Knights of North Castle VBS in July, all types of after-service receptions from baptisms to funerals, and the Cooksmart summer camp who are renting from us Monday to Friday over the rest of the summer. Every day one of our custodians takes our garbage, recycling and green bins out to the shed area for pick up. If they didn’t, very soon the kitchen would be unusable and it would be shut down by Halton’s Health Department.
I would tell the interns to take the garbage out. Do the basics. For example, meet all your deadlines, return your calls and emails promptly, and show up when you promised. In short, do what you said you would do. In Kindergarten we learn to put the ball back in the playground where it is stored for the next child to use it, clean up after craft time, and do not take our classmate’s snack. The tasks may change as we get older but these truths remain. Do those “take out the garbage” tasks. Do the basics. There would be no coffee hour today after service if someone had not taken out all the garbage since last Sunday’s coffee hour.
It is my hope this Fulgham reading will help you better comprehend and apply the message of Ephesians to your life: “Be kind and compassionate to one another.”
Fifth: “Say you’re sorry when you hurt somebody.” Confessing and seeking forgiveness is central to not only Christian worship but Christian life itself, both personally and as a church. In fact, we saw the Pope come to Canada in July to apologise for the residential schools’ tragedy. The United Church Moderator did that back in 1998 for a similar reason. But saying sorry is also about the daily interactions between people following Jesus.
It is important, for example, to take responsibility, to admit mistakes and to apologize rather than pretending it did not happen or worse, blaming others. Saying sorry rebuilds and often it makes relationships better than before. Prayers of confession and repentance are part of our personal and corporate prayer life. Remember too, through Jesus there is that assurance of pardon. This way we can “be kind and compassionate to one another,” as Ephesians directs us to be.
Sixth: In Fulgham’s words is some wise health advice. For example, long before Covid, he wrote,” Wash your hands before you eat.” Plus that important word: “flush.” When things are not going well whether we are 3 or 33 or 93, “warm cookies and cold milk are good for you.”
Seventh in the Kindergarten lesson is: “Live a balanced life —learn some and think some and draw and paint and sing and dance and play and work every day some.” It reminds me of the book of Ecclesiastes in our Hebrew Scriptures where it says, “There is a time or season for every matter under heaven.” A balanced life in all the seasons of life is a way to “one another one another.”
Well, Fulgham has more advice from the Kindergarten sandbox. I will not elaborate on them all but I will share them. As I read them aloud, I think of one another.
“Take a nap every afternoon.
When you go out into the world, watch out for traffic, hold hands, and stick together.
Wonder. Remember the little seed in the Styrofoam cup: The roots go down and the plant goes up and nobody really knows how or why, but we are all like that.
Goldfish and hamsters and white mice and even the little seed in the Styrofoam cup — they all die. So do we.
And then remember the Dick-and-Jane books and the first word you learned — the biggest word of all — LOOK.”
Friends look out for one another. “Be kind and compassionate to one another.” Amen.
In the lives of neighbours who suffer brokenness and pain:
We confess you are still speaking!
In the struggle of the poor whose rights are not honoured:
We confess you are still speaking!
In a world crying out for wisdom, love and mercy:
We confess you are still speaking!
In a world calling for the blessing of truth:
We confess you are still speaking! Bless us to hear!
Let us confess together:
We confess that in our lives we often hide behind our work and play, schools and jobs, fun and fashion.
We let ourselves get so busy that we forget the cause of the poor and the suffering. We confess we allow the powers of this world to seduce us into selfishness and silence our witnesses. Teach us to champion the cause for justice for all, strengthen us to love our neighbour and speak truth no matter the penalty. Amen.
The Word of God assures us that we are able to love through the Spirit of Christ. Let us go from this place with authority, knowing that God’s Word gives us strength to love our neighbours near and far and power to speak up for those who are broken.
Thanks to the Word of God!
(adapted Empowered to Love and Speak Truth, written by LT Leticia Rouser, Posted on the United Church of Christ’s Worship Ways)
You hear the stories of people paying it forward in the Tim’s drive-through line, what a blessing it is to help someone else, and what a gift it is to be gifted. You know both of those feelings…. Let us give of our offering this morning knowing God will work in and through it to help someone today.
♥ by secure online payment from your debit or credit card. Click here to go to our donation page to make a single or recurring donation. Multiple funds can be included in one donation by using the “Add Donation” button
♥ by cheque through the mail slot at the Church office entrance or by Canada Post
♥ by monthly PAR payments. To sign up contact stuart@waltonmemorial.com
All: Gracious and merciful God, we ask you to use these gifts to answer the prayers of those who are struggling to keep food on the table or to pay the ever-increasing bills for the basics of water and heat. We lift each person with needs to you and your grace and love. Amen.
As you leave today may you be filled with the love of God, the hope of Jesus and the comfort of the Holy Spirit. Amen.
Cathy Winn will make a Presentation on Naloxone Kits at Walton
Here is Rev. Jim’s mid-week update for Wednesday, August 10th
