VERDUGO COMMUNITY CHURCH WORSHIP SERVICE MARCH 24, 2024

We open our service with song. Pastor Gail welcomes all to worship and to participate in the life of our church family and with Louisa Fernandez leads a responsive call to worship. Albert Ramseyer centers us with an opening prayer. Nick Baltazar, Marvin Juan, and Ed Manacop lead us in our praise singing. Greg Hart takes up the praises and concerns of the church and our world in the Prayers of the People.

 

In his sermon, “Beauty in the Mundane,” Andrew Mumm looks at tension presented by Holy Week, where the crowd hails Jesus as King on Palm Sunday and a few days later calls for his crucifixion. This is a tension we experience today, where our joy at a new child is clouded by the news of wars and terrorist events targeting children. We are like the like the crowd at the original Palm Sunday, full of beauty and ugliness. Andrew looks at this tension using Psalm 31, which first is a lament to God about being abandoned and condemned, then as an acceptance of God’s plan and an affirmation of faith in God. If we consider Jesus’s path to the cross we encounter those moments of doubt and failure, but also those moments when he was affirmed by his mother, his cross was carried and his brow was wiped by strangers. We too can reach out to others in distress, affirming them and helping lighten burdens. These are mundane actions, but have a beauty and power to heal and help.

 

Pastor Gail then leads us in the sacrament of communion, and you are invited to participate as well.

 

Verdugo makes its Sunday sermons available to you on Facebook and posts audio copies of the service and sermon at https://verdugochurch.podbean.com.

 

Prayers of the People have been edited to respect the privacy and confidentiality of those participating or mentioned. All CCLI songs are performed under Verdugo Community Church’s CCLI license # 2486815.

 

Verdugo Community Church is a Free Methodist congregation serving the Glassell Park, Eagle Rock, and Glendale areas in Los Angeles. It is located at 4300 Verdugo Road, Los Angeles, CA 90065. Our email address is verdugofmc@gmail.com. Contact Pastor Gail at (323) 500-3343.

 

Worship service copyright 2024 by Verdugo Community Church. Sermon copyright 2024 by Andrew Mumm and Verdugo Community Church.