SERMON
This Sunday: The Rev. Dr. Greg Ogden

“Giving with Cheerful Abandon”

Bible Passages:

2 Samuel 24:18-25; Psalm 112:1-9; 2 Corinthians 8:1-5; 9:6-12; Luke 18:9-14 

Lector: Annie Slautterback

Crucifer: Maureen Sanders
Ushers: Marilynn Gustafson and Carle Mowell
Fellowship: Debbie and Scott Downs

Flowers: Lloyd Nattkemper, “Dedicated to and in thanks for our U.S. veterans.”

Prelude

Jubal Joslyn, tenor

Cathryn Wilkinson, piano

Offertory

Thanks Be To God……….Dennis and Nanette Allen

Organ Postlude

“Autumn” from The Seasons……….Antonio Vivaldi, arr. S. Drummond Wolff

“You Servants of God” was written by the great English poet and Methodist preacher Charles Wesley (1707-1788). Quoting Dr. James Townsend, “Wesley is credited with writing 8,989 hymns, at least three times the output of poet William Wordsworth. Charles Wesley wrote an average of 10 lines of verse every day for 50 years! He completed an extant poem every other day.”

While Charles and his brother John published 56 collections of original Methodist hymns, their methods were considered inflammatory by some. His brother John was once “arraigned before a grand jury for altering authorized psalms and for introducing unauthorized compositions into church services.”

Charles even faced rock-throwing mobs at the site of Methodist church meetings, which threatened the prevailing Anglican Church of the day. His well-known hymn “Ye Servants of God, Your Master Proclaim” was written “to be sung in a tumult.”

John and Charles Wesley’s hymns were first published in America in 1737, in an Anglican hymnal, A Collection of Psalms and Hymns, in Charleston, South Carolina. John compiled the songbook for missionary work in Georgia.

Some of this material is used by permission from “The Golden Age of Hymns: Did You Know?” by Dr. James Townsend, published in Christian History, 1991.