At the beginning of the year, we introduced a new resource to help you prepare for the time of giving and taking communion in your Hope Avenue. These are meaningful formational practices that we can plan with care and intentionality.
How to Use This Resource
An outline is provided for you to use as a guide, followed by a sample script. Both the offering moment and communion can be presented as a short reflection before the congregation participates. Here’s how to use it effectively:
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- Scripture Reflection: Include the relevant scripture to root the offering and communion in biblical teaching.
- Key Point and Invitation: Briefly highlight the theme’s key point and offer an invitation that connects the theme to the practice.
- Prayer: Include a short prayer that aligns with the theme. Invite God to bless the gifts and the givers. Ask God to bless the bread and the wine and the partakers.
- Logistics: Explain the process; this helps everyone know how they can participate. For giving, indicate whether baskets will be passed, if there are designated offering boxes, or if digital options like text-to-give or web giving are available. Clearly explain how the communion elements will be shared and that participation is voluntary.
- Encouragement: For the giving moment, invite congregants to reflect on their role in supporting the church’s mission, reminding them that their gifts impact both local and global ministry. For communion, encourage congregants to express gratitude for Jesus’ love poured out for us and the unity present in the body of Christ.
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For more information, see Church Hack: Offering and Church Hack: Communion.
Offering
May Theme: Grace as the Foundation of Generosity
Scripture Focus: Ephesians 2:8–10
Key Point: This offering moment centers on God’s grace as the ultimate gift, freely given in Jesus. Our giving flows from this grace and is a response to the unearned love we’ve received. We give not to earn favor but to reflect God’s generosity and participate in the good works he has prepared for us.
Invitation: Let’s give today as a response to God’s amazing grace. May our offerings reflect the love and blessing we’ve received in Jesus and be a source of blessing to others.
Sample Script (time: 2 minutes, not including giving instructions)
Often, we’re encouraged to count our blessings. We may think of family and friends, health, the shelter over our heads, and the security we have. These are all gifts, and it’s right to be grateful for them. As Christians, though, our reflection on blessings starts with Jesus.
In Ephesians 2, we find a reminder of the greatest gift of all:
For by grace you have been saved through faith, and this is not your own doing; it is the gift of God—not the result of works, so that no one may boast. For we are what he has made us, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand to be our way of life. Ephesians 2:8–10 NRSVUE
This grace — this unearned pardon and relationship with the triune God — is a gift we can never earn. It is freely given to us in Jesus. Our part is to joyfully receive this gift, live into it, and let it shape us.
As we walk in this grace, we walk with Jesus in the good works he has prepared for us. We become people who serve, love, and give generously. And in this part of our service, we have a chance to respond by bringing a financial offering — not as an obligation, but as a joyful response to God’s goodness.
Through Jesus and his boundless grace, we are blessed so that we may bless others. Let us give today with grateful hearts, honoring God with a portion of what he has entrusted to us.
Communion
May Theme: The Fulfilled Promise: Belonging to the Father, Son, and Spirit
Scripture Focus: Revelation 21:3
Key Point: The resurrection of Jesus reminds us of God’s fulfilled promises. Through Christ, we belong to the Father, Son, and Spirit, and we are promised eternal life with him. Communion celebrates this truth and looks forward to the day when God will dwell fully with us in a new creation.
Invitation: As we take the bread, let us remember the new life we have in Christ. As we take the cup, let us rejoice in the fulfilled promise of God’s eternal presence with us. His sacrifice was sufficient for all time. Let us give thanks for the resurrection and the promise of life with him.
Sample Script (time: 2.5 minutes, not including giving instructions)
During the season of Easter, we focus on what resurrection is. We remind ourselves that if Jesus is called “the firstfruit” there will be other fruit to follow – he is the beginning of the great spiritual harvest. We are told we are alive in him, and he is alive in us. We are reminded every creature in heaven, on earth, under the earth, and in the sea will bring honor and glory and praise to God. (Revelation 5:11–14). We are reminded that God will bring all who have suffered and gone through tribulations before him and wipe away their tears (Revelation 7:9–17).
Resurrection reminds us that not only are we made new in Christ, but he will bring about a new heaven and a new earth as part of his total healing of all creation. And the greatest part of this new heaven? God will dwell with us in a new city and remove all tears, pain, death, mourning or crying. He said, “I am making everything new” (Revelation 21).
The resurrection reminds us that God’s promises are true. Because Jesus rose from the dead, we know that we too will rise from our graves. All the promises will be fulfilled — we not only will live with Father, Son, and Spirit for eternity, but we will be in communion because we belong to God and because he gives himself to us.
The bread reminds us of our new life in him — a life that will last for eternity. The cup reminds us that the former things are done away — there will be no more need for sacrifices or shed blood because Jesus’ gift of himself was sufficient for all for all time.
