Collects and Prayers - October 25, 2009

Greeting
Leader: The Lord God has directed us to love him and only him.
All: We will love the Lord, God with all our heart, soul and strength.
Leader: The Lord God decreed that we should teach our children to love him and only him.
All: We will use our gifts of the spirit to impress on our children’s hearts that God is the one and only.

Collect
God, Father of all creation, as wanderers in the desert of this modern world, we your children come to you today, asking to be continuously enlightened by your Holy Spirit so that we may remain faithful and true witnesses to your world through Christ our Lord and Savior. Amen.

Prayers of the People
Let us offer prayers this day, to offer God our praise and petitions regarding our full engagement in our faith, to serve God with our head, hearts and hands. After each petition, I will say "Thy Kingdom Come." Your response is "Thy will be done."

Almighty God, we are overcome with a feeling of gratefulness as we consider the undeserved mercy and grace you have offered to us, asking only for us to love you completely. We are thankful for this gift and ask for counsel of the Holy Spirit as we examine our lives more closely to serve and worship you more fully.
Thy Kingdom Come. Thy will be done.

We come to you in praise and thanksgiving for those who organize and imagine opportunities to serve the hungry and those in need. We are grateful for the community partnerships team and their gifts of ministry, and we are thankful for the response of those who engage in this work. We thank you for the faithfulness of those who offered their time, money, and talents to feed your hungry children in this world.
Thy Kingdom Come. Thy will be done.

We offer our gratitude for those who serve through the congregational care team, offering your love through their ministry to nurture and support those in need. It is through these saints among us that we each learn how to love you more and how to respond to our neighbor. We thank you for providing our community with people who respond to your call through offering loving and faithful relationships to those in need.
Thy Kingdom Come. Thy will be done.

We pray for the church, for the upcoming ministry action plans, and for what lies ahead for the coming year. We pray that each of us seek you earnestly and faithfully, to consider how as individuals, as families, and as a community, we can be fully engaged to serve you more completely.
Thy Kingdom Come. Thy will be done.

We pray for our faithfulness in this call to action. Help us to keep your commands in our hearts: by reciting them to our children, binding them to our hands, and writing them on our doorposts, so that we may have living reminders of our call to serve and worship only you. May this command mark us to be different in this world.
Thy Kingdom Come. Thy will be done.

We pray for those in the community not served by the church and who are strangers to your love. We pray that within All Saints' we will each seek and respond to your call to make disciples for the transformation of the world. Help us to know this begins with our neighbors.
Thy Kingdom Come. Thy will be done.

We pray for those in the world who are sick in mind, body, or spirit. May your spirit and love comfort them, and may we, your people, offer signs of your love to those who are hurting throughout the world.
Thy Kingdom Come. Thy will be done.

We offer these prayers and petitions through the name of your Son, Jesus Christ, Amen.