Here's the prayer of invocation:
Incarnate God, we gather in this place in the faith that you also are here. You have blessed this patch of ground with your presence, have filled this room with your promise. You have chosen this site for your manifestation and realization. In the particulars of here, then, help us to recognize your potential, the building blocks for your reign in our midst.
It’s so easy to go instead with the common narratives of our day—that the church is shrinking, that your word is silent, that you are dead, that all is lost. It’d be so easy to resign ourselves to managing as best we can, getting while the getting’s good, the best sort of life one that is palliative. Sedate us, life. Numb us. We confess this as our anodyne.
Silence.
No. No, says your Word, say also our longing hearts. No, says your Spirit that fills and fulfills, that electrifies and quickens us back awake. No—for you are yet building in our midst, and you also urge our taking part in that up-building, for the fun of it, for the joy of it.
The end will come; your glory will be ours as well. Meanwhile, we yet live and move and have our being in such a way as is embodying of your universal claim but made specific here and now.
Bless us to be your church, that the whole universe of your making, sustaining, and redeeming, might be manifest in even the briefest moments and smallest acts that we submit to and commit.
In Christ, who lives and reigns, we pray. Amen.
