Updated March, 2025
We built this Thanksgiving service around the contemporary confession Our World Belongs to God and the poetry of Gerhard Frost. The Thanksgiving tree idea came from Reformed Worship 24, June 1992. We used slides with the first poem, “We Live on Glimpses”—a very effective way of bringing to life the poem and the idea of a bountiful earth. The service was led by Sharon and the praise team, and it did not include a sermon (a first for our congregation).
—Alisa Siebenga
Editor’s Note: The service copy set in square brackets indicates what could be spoken by the worship leader.
THE SERVICE
Call to Worship
This is a day of thanksgiving. Our God has been very good to us. It is a day for harvest celebration.
Let us rejoice and be glad in it!
“When you have eaten and are satisfied, praise the Lord your God for the good land he has given you” (Deut. 8:10).
Welcome
[This is a day of thanksgiving, a day we set aside to give thanks, expressing our gratitude for God’s many blessings. As you walked in this morning, many of you were handed colored leaves. These are leaves of thanksgiving. While we go through this service, we will touch on many collective and personal things we have to be thankful for. Near the end of the service, we will ask you to quietly reflect on and choose one thing you are especially thankful for. Please write that item on your leaf. We will collect them and place them on the tree.
But first, let us offer our praise and thanksgiving to God in song, for this is the day that the Lord has made. Let us rejoice and be glad in it.]
Gathering Songs
“Our God Is an Awesome God”Maranatha!
“Blessed Be the Name of the Lord” Maranatha!
“I Will Enter His Gates”Von Brethorst
“As the Deer”Nystrom
Words of Reconciliation
We come to be reconciled to our God.
[reading of 1 Peter 3:18-22]
Song of Reconciliation
“Freely, Freely” Maranatha!
Words of Assurance
[Thanks be to God! Because we have so freely received, let us now freely give thanks for God’s forgiveness and love in word and song. Please follow along in your bulletin, as the rest of the service will be unannounced.]
GIVE THANKS FOR THE BOUNTIFUL EARTH
Scripture Reading: Psalm 33:1-11
Confession
In the beginning, God—Father, Word, and Spirit—called this world into being out of nothing and gave it shape and order. God formed the land, the sky, and the seas, making the earth a fitting home for the plants, animals, and humans he created. The world was filled with color, beauty, and variety; it provided room for work and play, worship and service, love and laughter. God rested—and gave us rest. In the beginning everything was very good.
—Our World Belongs to God, sections 8-9
Poetry and Slides: “We Live on Glimpses” (see below)
Song of Thanksgiving: “Let All Things Now Living”Davis
GIVE THANKS FOR ORGANIZED INSTITUTIONS
In education we seek to acknowledge the Lord by promoting schools
where the light of God’s Word shines in all learning, where students are treated as people who bear God’s image and have a place in his plan. Thank you, Lord, for learning.
In our work, even in dull routine, we hear the call to serve our Lord.
We must work for more than wages and manage for more than profit, so that mutual respect and the just use of goods and skills may shape the workplace and so that, while we earn or profit, useful products and services may result. Thank you, Lord, for work.
Rest and leisure are gifts of God to relax us and set us free to discover and explore.
Believing that he provides for us, we can rest and entertain ourselves more simply. Thank you, Lord, for rest.
Since God establishes the powers that rule, we are called to respect them, unless they trample God’s Word.
We are to obey God in politics, pray for our rulers, and help governments to know God’s will for our public lives.
We are thankful for the freedoms enjoyed by citizens of many lands.
We grieve with those who live under oppression and work for their liberty to live without fear.
We call on government to do public justice and to protect the freedoms and rights of individuals, groups, and institutions, so that each may freely do the tasks God gives.
Thank you, Lord, for governments.
—Our World Belongs to God, sections 50-51, 53, 54, 55
Song: “Earth and All Stars” (stanzas 3, 4, 5, 6)Brokering
GIVE THANKS FOR HUMAN RELATIONSHIPS
Meditation
[God calls us into communion with other people: communion in family, between friends, as colleagues and peers, and as people who humbly serve the same God. Frederick Buechner describes family as a web so delicately woven that it takes almost nothing to set the whole thing shuddering or even to tear it to pieces. Yet the thread it’s woven of is as strong as anything on earth. It is within this human family that we begin to know love, and there is probably no stronger love than that of a parent for a child. Gerhard Frost describes it this way:]
[Read “Soggy Cereal and Tepid Tea”; see below]
[Relationships occur in many other settings as well, and as fallen people in these relationships, we often distort and hurt those around us. We carry personal burdens behind smiling masks. God asks us in Psalm 68:19 to lay these burdens before him and give thanks. “Praise be to the Lord, to God our Savior, who daily bears our burdens. Our God is a God who saves; from the Sovereign Lord comes escape from death.” In light of this command, let us remove our masks and ask for forgiveness, let us lay our burdens, our shattered dreams, our private pain at God’s feet and give thanks for relationships that challenge and stretch. Let us praise our God.]
[The next two songs ask you to lay your burdens down and give praise.]
Songs
“If You But Trust in God to Guide You”Neumark
“For the Beauty of the Earth”Monk
GIVE THANKS FOR GOD'S REDEEMING WORK IN JESUS CHRIST AND GOD'S SUSTAINING HAND
Scripture Reading: 2 Timothy 3:14-17
Reading
God has not left this world without ways of knowing him.
He shows his power and majesty in the creation; he has mercifully spoken through prophets, history writers, poets, gospel writers, and apostles—and most clearly through his Son. The Spirit who moved humans to write the Word of God speaks to us in the Bible.
The Bible is the Word of God, record and tool of his redeeming work.
It is the Word of Truth, fully reliable in leading us to know God and have life in Jesus Christ.
As God’s people hear the Word and do it, they are equipped for discipleship, to witness to the good news:
Our world belongs to God and he loves it deeply.
—Our World Belongs to God, sections 34, 35, 36
Doxology (see below)
Songs
“Blessed Be the Lord God Almighty”Fitts
“We Praise You, O God”Cory
Offering: The Tree of Thanksgiving
[It is our prayer that the words spoken and the songs sung have reminded you of God’s many blessings. Please spend a few minutes reflecting and writing down your items of thanksgiving on your leaves. When you are finished, please pass them toward the aisle. Members of the congregation will collect them and tape them to our tree. Then our offerings of money will be received.]
Songs
“Seek Ye First”Lafferty
“All Heaven Declares”Richards
[Sung by soloists, congregation joins in for the next two songs.]
“We Bow Down”Paris
“I Will Call upon the Lord”O'Shields
Prayer of Thanksgiving
Parting Blessing
Parting Songs
“Praise and Thanksgiving”Post, Thomas
“Hosanna!”Kamp