Making Sunday Special - Our Sunday Celebration

Last week I shared about the struggles we had on having our hearts pulled together on Sunday to worship without being totally hypocritical. This week I’m going to share an overview of what we came up with to help our family prepare for worship.

I would like to start by saying we are not a liturgical family. BUT through prayer and searching the scriptures and the young ages of our children at the time, Kevin came up with a liturgical program that worked for our family for a number of years.

Below is the overall schedule and the elements of our Sunday Celebration. Each week, we picked a Theme for the week-end and our celebration liturgy revolved around that theme. Some of our themes were:

• God the Law-giver – watch The 10 Commandments and Kevin will teach about being under grace for Donuts & Doctrine
• God the Worker – do a nature hunt and Kevin will teach about Christ’s work for us for Donuts & Doctrine
• God as Father – Father’s Day, make a giant Father’s Day card for God and Kevin will teach about providing, caring and training for Donuts & Doctrine
• God’s forgiveness – watch Treasures of the Snow and Kevin will teach on forgivenss for Donuts & Doctrine and we’ll burn papers with sins on them

Sunday Celebration Schedule

Theme: ______________________

Saturday evening:

• Are we all ready for church tomorrow?
• Supper
• Rejoice! litany
• Special thematic activity (video, craft, etc)

Sunday morning

• Donuts & Doctrine
• Sunday Worship (and Sunday Search)

Sunday afternoon

• Lunch
• Relax! for the afternoon
• Family game/activity

Sunday evening

• Blessing litany

The Sunday Search (see chapter 10 of Making Sunday Special, by Karen Burton Mains)

• How will Christ speak to me this morning?
• How will Christ speak through me this morning?
• Talk about it.

Rejoice! litany
(this is a responsorial piece)

Rejoice! Our day of worship has begun.
Rejoice in the Lord always, Again I say rejoice.

• All: We rejoice in you Lord.

Rejoice!
We will remember that our sins are forgiven.
We will learn about you, God, and that you are _________.

• child: Tonight, we will celebrate you with the family you’ve given us.
• child: Tomorrow morning, we will celebrate you with the whole congregation.
• child: Tomorrow night, we will ask your blessing for each other.

All: We rejoice in you, Lord.

Rejoice!
For Jesus is a wonderful savior.
Lord Jesus, this is our prayer…

• child: Help us know you better.
• child: Help us love you more.
• child: Help us be more like you.

All: We rejoice in you, Lord Jesus.

This is the day that the Lord has made — let us rejoice and be glad in it!

All: We rejoice in you, Lord.

Blessing litany

For the house [with outstretched hands]

• Lord, we give you our house. We give you our possessions.
  We want to arrange them for you. We want to use them for your glory.
• Bless this house and help us keep it orderly.
• Bless all that is in it, and help us not to be selfish.
• Use what we have for your kingdom.

All: Amen.

For the week: [with hands on a calendar]

• Lord, we give you our week, our plans and responsibilities.
• We want to organize our week for you.
• We want to use it wisely, for your glory.
• Bless our week and help us keep our responsibilities in order.
• Bless our plans and help us to live for you all week.
• Use what we do for your kingdom.

All: Amen.

For the family: [with hands on each member individually, one at a time]

• Lord, thank you for creating ___, for saving him and for putting him in our family.
• We give him to you.
• We want you to
• serve through him and speak through him,
• to live through him and love through him.
• Bless ___ and make him more like you.
• Purify his heart to love you completely.
• Help him walk in integrity.
• Anoint his service and multiply its effect.
• Make him mighty in your word,
• And mighty in your Spirit.

All: Amen.

Now, this is not something we’ve done for a long time. Part of it changed when we moved to a town and church that had a Sunday evening service. Part of it changed as our family started to grow and get more involved in different things on the week-ends. But during the years when our children were young, this was a very good and healthy growing thing for our family.