Back in June, I gathered for a mini-retreat with the worship and music team at St. John’s to look ahead over the coming year (Aug-Jul) and dream up creative and innovative ways to deepen and diversify our worship life together. Especially after the practically apocalyptic challenges of the last few years, people are just exhausted — weary of historic world changes, worn out by constant worrying, carrying burdens of grief and disappointment and frustration and stress in their hearts with nowhere to set them down.
I wanted to find a way to offer people an opportunity to name and begin to process some of these burdens, some of the trauma of the last few years, and to open up their wounded hearts to God for healing. In previous years, this congregation had a history of doing some kind of special service — usually a service of healing — on the fifth Sunday in months with five Sundays; so we decided to resurrect that tradition to start periodically doing a ritual we have called “A Service of Letting Go and Letting God.”
Below, you can find the link to the live stream of worship, as well as the embedded video (if it decides to work 😜); I also copied the bulletin so you can follow along if you so desire. If you’re looking for a way to unburden your heart and open up your pain to God in prayer, I hope this service may be useful to you — that it may help you to name your burdens, let them go, and let God take care of the rest.
Watch the service here or embedded below.
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