WORSHIP & DEVOTIONALS
Opening Worship | Sunday, October 4, 2020
DEVOTIONAL • Monday, October 5, 2020
Join in this prayer cycle throughout 2022 and 2023 as we pray
for and with each church that makes up the Hawai‘i Conference UCC.
Our vision reminds us that we are one ‘ohana: a unified, radiant, and transforming expression of the body of Christ. We might be 116 different congregations; dozens of ministries, committees, and teams; spread out across six islands; members of five different associations; urban and rural; Hawaiian, local, and haole; but our Strategic Initiative 6 calls us all to live aloha by strengthening our relationships as members of local churches, Associations, and the Conference as the body of Christ.
There is a longing for connection and healthy relationships throughout these Islands. People want to get to know others to learn, to nurture trust and promote healing and mutual understanding. Binding the Conference together across the water, across ethnicity and language, across our understandings of Christian theology is at the core of this initiative. Living aloha will move us toward our vision of one ʻohana. And as part of this spirit of aloha, we pray for each other. We hold each other up to our God with prayers of gratitude, prayers for support, and prayers of aloha nui.
Our still speaking God continuously calls us to renewal and transformation through the power of prayer. This prayer schedule challenges us to be in prayer for each other, and over the year, calls upon each of us to live aloha by pouring out our hearts to our God in prayer for each individual part of this body here in Hawai‘i.
WHAT TO DO
In the schedule here, you will find particular congregations of the Hawai‘i Conference listed for each week of the month. We encourage congregations to include as notes in their programs or as part of their community announcements a list of the particular congregations and groups we are emphasizing in our prayers in the week to come. In addition, we encourage our kahu to lift these congregations and ministries up in their pastoral prayers during each worship service that week. We also encourage Sunday School teachers and kupuna to gather the keiki and help them find the location of these congregations and ministries on a map of our Islands before leading prayers. And we encourage each member of our wider Conference community, to hold these congregations in their personal prayers each day of their assigned week.
As your spirit of aloha grows deeper during this cycle of prayer, we encourage you to learn about that congregation or affiliated ministry, to find their website or social media accounts, to learn about them, to learn the names of their kahu and leadership, and call out their names in your prayers. Or consider a hands-on project to build a prayer chain and add one or two new links each week or a create a collage of their images or another expression of artistic sacred prayer. As you travel these islands, you might stop and visit a congregation that you have prayed for, take a picture and post in or tag our Conference’s social media so we can visualize prayers of aloha with each other.
Watch the Coconut Wireless each week and this webpage for names of congregations to pray for, and as you hear of transitions, problems, building projects, new ministries launching, add that congregation or ministry into your special prayers that week. Each of us will engage this prayer cycle differently, but never forget our God is still listening and we are a people who pray aloha for our ‘ohana.