House Church Worship Guide
House Church is designed to help you meet with the Lord, and with each other, in a very special way. This guide is designed to be flexible – move and mold the parts as suits your House Church.
Try to make your time as interactive as possible, taking the opportunity to be personal, real, and attentive to what God is doing.
How to Prepare:
1. Have a read through this Worship Guide to get the flow of it, see what parts you’ll use, and how you might do transitions. You can print a simple version of it here:
2. Get communion ready, and any kids resources you need. You can print the lyrics here:
WELCOME
Ask everyone to share one word that captures their past week. Then, lay your week down before the Lord.
We gather today in Jesus’ name. Our experiences are diverse – the hard and happy, the ups and downs. God knows it all. We don’t need to hide, pretend, or perform. We draw near to God knowing that He welcomes us in Jesus Christ.
CALL TO WORSHIP: Psalm 136
Use Psalm 136 as a responsive reading. Psalm 136 is about God’s “hesed” – His loyal, loving faithfulness. Everyone says the repeated line together.
1 Give thanks to the Lord, for he is good.
His love endures forever.
2 Give thanks to the God of gods.
His love endures forever.
3 Give thanks to the Lord of lords:
His love endures forever.
23 He remembered us in our low estate
His love endures forever.
24 and freed us from our enemies.
His love endures forever.
25 He gives food to every creature.
His love endures forever.
26 Give thanks to the God of heaven.
His love endures forever
Ask someone to pray, acknowledging Father, Son and Holy Spirit, asking for us to enter into His loyal love in our worship.
SING!
Pick one, or some, or your own to sing!
CHURCH UPDATE AND PRAYER
Stream the following church update (Length: 4 mins)
Are there any other prayer needs in your group that you can share and lift to God?
Take some time to pray for the church of the week and missionary:
Spring Grove Church of Christ
CAP and David Harris
FAMILY CONNECTION
Click on this Family video and take part (3 mins)
Retell the Story:
As a group, retell the story found in chapter 2. You can use the story script provided below or you can simply just have someone narrate the story straight from the Bible. Pick some people to be different characters and use some simple props (see below) to dress them up and help tell the story.
Download and or print off this PDF script of Ruth Chapter 2 - Story
Recommended props to gather ahead of time to help with the retelling of the story:
Grain / breakfast cereal or rice.
4 tea towels (3 for the workers, 1 for Boaz).
Men’s dress tie or small rope (For Boaz head wear).
2 ladies' scarves or wigs (Naomi and Ruth).
Shopping bag or sack (to carry grain in).
Optional Extra video
PARENTS: Click on the Family Resources button to find some colouring in activities and videos for preschool and school age children that you can use at any time:
SCRIPTURE READING: Ruth 2
Last week, we sat with a hurting family in their long grief: Naomi and Ruth. It was tough! Amidst the heart-ache, Ruth demonstrated the amazing, loyal love of God
Now, in one single day, everything can start to change…
2 Now Naomi had a relative on her husband’s side, a man of standing from the clan of Elimelek, whose name was Boaz.
2 And Ruth the Moabite said to Naomi, “Let me go to the fields and pick up the leftover grain behind anyone in whose eyes I find favor.”
Naomi said to her, “Go ahead, my daughter.” 3 So she went out, entered a field and began to glean behind the harvesters. As it turned out, she was working in a field belonging to Boaz, who was from the clan of Elimelek.
4 Just then Boaz arrived from Bethlehem and greeted the harvesters, “The Lord be with you!”
“The Lord bless you!” they answered.
5 Boaz asked the overseer of his harvesters, “Who does that young woman belong to?”
6 The overseer replied, “She is the Moabite who came back from Moab with Naomi. 7 She said, ‘Please let me glean and gather among the sheaves behind the harvesters.’ She came into the field and has remained here from morning till now, except for a short rest in the shelter.”
8 So Boaz said to Ruth, “My daughter, listen to me. Don’t go and glean in another field and don’t go away from here. Stay here with the women who work for me. 9 Watch the field where the men are harvesting, and follow along after the women. I have told the men not to lay a hand on you. And whenever you are thirsty, go and get a drink from the water jars the men have filled.”
10 At this, she bowed down with her face to the ground. She asked him, “Why have I found such favor in your eyes that you notice me—a foreigner?”
11 Boaz replied, “I’ve been told all about what you have done for your mother-in-law since the death of your husband—how you left your father and mother and your homeland and came to live with a people you did not know before. 12 May the Lord repay you for what you have done. May you be richly rewarded by the Lord, the God of Israel, under whose wings you have come to take refuge.”
13 “May I continue to find favor in your eyes, my lord,” she said. “You have put me at ease by speaking kindly to your servant—though I do not have the standing of one of your servants.”
14 At mealtime Boaz said to her, “Come over here. Have some bread and dip it in the wine vinegar.”
When she sat down with the harvesters, he offered her some roasted grain. She ate all she wanted and had some left over. 15 As she got up to glean, Boaz gave orders to his men, “Let her gather among the sheaves and don’t reprimand her. 16 Even pull out some stalks for her from the bundles and leave them for her to pick up, and don’t rebuke her.”
17 So Ruth gleaned in the field until evening. Then she threshed the barley she had gathered, and it amounted to about an ephah.[a]18 She carried it back to town, and her mother-in-law saw how much she had gathered. Ruth also brought out and gave her what she had left over after she had eaten enough.
19 Her mother-in-law asked her, “Where did you glean today? Where did you work? Blessed be the man who took notice of you!”
Then Ruth told her mother-in-law about the one at whose place she had been working. “The name of the man I worked with today is Boaz,” she said.
20 “The Lord bless him!” Naomi said to her daughter-in-law. “He has not stopped showing his kindness to the living and the dead.” She added, “That man is our close relative; he is one of our guardian-redeemers.[b]”
21 Then Ruth the Moabite said, “He even said to me, ‘Stay with my workers until they finish harvesting all my grain.’”
22 Naomi said to Ruth her daughter-in-law, “It will be good for you, my daughter, to go with the women who work for him, because in someone else’s field you might be harmed.”
23 So Ruth stayed close to the women of Boaz to glean until the barley and wheat harvests were finished. And she lived with her mother-in-law.
BIBLE MESSAGE
Stream this message on Ruth 2
(Length: 23 mins)
RESPOND
What did you sense the Holy Spirit saying to you today?
- What did Daryl’s message lead you to think about for your own life?
- Can you think of someone who has expressed loyal love to you, that helped you have a taste of God’s love? Give testimony to this
- Who is in your life and circle of care that you can show loyal love to? What form might your love take? Ask the Holy Spirit to open your eyes to who he wants to lead you to.
COMMUNION AND PRAYER
Before we can be people who show God’s loyal love, we have to first receive God’s loyal love for ourselves. God delights in those who humbly admit their need, weakness and sin.
As you receive communion, remember that our sin was so great that Jesus had to die for us. And remember that God’s love was so great that Jesus was glad to die for us.
God demonstrates his love for us in this: while we were still sinners, Christ died for us. Romans 5:8.
You could play this quietly during communion if you would like to:
BENEDICTION
Don’t forget that next Sunday (14 August) is Mission Brunch and Sales Table after our 10am gathering.
Ask someone to pronounce this benediction from Proverbs 3:3 and Romans 8
Don't let loyalty and faithfulness leave you.
Bind them on your neck;
write them on the tablet of your heart.
Be assured that nothing in all creation can separate you from the love of God that is in Jesus Christ our Lord,
In whose name we go. Amen.
The whole service will stream live at 10am if you would prefer to watch it this way. Click on LIVE CHURCH at www.hopechurch.org.nz. Or from midday on, you can find it by clicking on PAST SERVICES.