Sunday 4 January 2026
2nd Sunday After Christmas
Welcome!
Welcome to excerpts from the worship held within the newly formed Westhills Church of Scotland Congregation. We know that not all members of the congregation are able to be in church on Sunday morning; offering these excerpts from the Sunday morning service might help you feel included. Where we can, we offer parts of the service in text and audio, whichever works best for you.
If this post helps you explore what happens within an act of worship then please read on…
Your Weekly Church Notices
Scripture
1 Peter 2: 2 – 9
John 1: 1 – 18
Praise – Let us build a house
Prayers
Most Holy God, as we gather on this day, we seek not only to remember Your great Gift of Love, but to experience it afresh. With the newness of a day and the newness of a year comes the newness of the life of this congregation.
May this be a time of laying down the burdens of the past, finding new joy in faith, fresh joy in each other and being reinvigorated in service to You our God and Your Church. May Your great Light, the Word made flesh, shine upon us. May we be like living stones built together into a living temple.
Father in Heaven, spare us the foolishness of human ambition and impatience; what we pray for and hope for at this time, takes time. Today will plant seeds to be nurtured across the weeks and months and years. Christ who is the Way, lead us on the journey You have prepared for us.
Guard us from that which steals away the joy of faith. Where mercy should be our hallmark, where gentleness should be our way, where hope should be our watch word and love the everlasting way; touch our hearts with your forgiveness for every time we’ve strayed, heal the broken hearted and calm the troubled soul.
Such gifts of love we cannot measure; You Lord make us whole; and our gifts to You do not compare though given in fullest measure. Still, our gifts in worship, service, song, are precious in your sight because you see the loving heart illumined by Your light. As we reflect the life of Christ in everything we do, our words, our thoughts, our actions too, give Glory to Our Lord and God. Receive then what we bring.
Hear us as we join in the words of the Lord’s Prayer saying…
Our Father who art in Heaven Hallowed be thy name. Thy Kingdom come, thy will be done on earth as it is in Heaven. Give us this day our daily bread and forgive us our debts as we forgive our debtors and lead us not into temptation but deliver us from evil, for thine is the Kingdom, the Power and the Glory forever. Amen.
Address
We chose, Westwood and Greenhills, to share a common journey at the end of December; by moving our communion services to the end of the month and deliberately parallel each other’s actions. To that extent the journeys of Greenhills and Westwood have been similar but not the same.
The folks gathered in Westwood last Sunday had a subdued mood. Nothing was said, no words expressed it, no action portrayed it yet, we felt it. And I cannot help but wonder what it felt like in Greenhills; Subdued? Emotional? Difficult? All the way through our Working Group conversations we were aware that things were never going to be entirely equal as two congregations prepared to become one. Sensitivity needed to be exercised, and still does.
And yet, we have been courageous enough to look forward with some positivity. Starting over is not easy. Just where do we begin? How do we begin? What are the important things? And how do we get them right?
And then I think on the heritage of both Greenhills and Westwood. What Westwood did in the 1960’s Greenhills did in the 1970’s. What did we do? We met for the very first time on a Sunday morning as a congregation ready to worship God together. It’s in our common DNA, the starting from nothing, and building it up. People who came from different congregations, traditions, Church of Scotland, Roman Catholic, Methodist perhaps, and each brought their own insights and values, and each was prepared to blend with the others to create something new where all were welcome, and all were loved and respected.
It is the living nature of church communities that makes them special, our adaptability; living stones; our focus not on traditions or ways or patterns or aye been, but a focus on Christ and his love for us and others, love that overcomes barriers and crosses boundaries. A timeless, eternal and unchanging God who reaches out to us, and we to others, in ever changing, living, ways.
It seems entirely right that as each of our legacy congregations expressed that sense of unity with each other and with Christ by celebrating the Lord’s Supper last Sunday that we should express that sense of unity in Christ again today through the Lord’s Supper. We are one in Christ, bound together in faith and yet still getting to know each other. We are followers of the Way and yet still finding our way. We look to the perfect love of Christ and see the imperfection of our love for him and for each other; but love will grow, love will become stronger.
I said this last Sunday and I’ll say it again today… we don’t have a plan for Westhills. It is not possible to have a plan, not until a foundation is laid upon which that plan can be built. The foundation will be our relationship with God, our common worship, our relationships with each other. And that takes time to form. So, we afford ourselves time, time to be, time to laugh, time to cry, time to form a church community that is joyous to be part of and that we are proud to belong to. All that church meant to us in either Greenhills or Westwood is not lost to us. It is our heritage; we bring it with us; we allow heritage to blend together reshaping the living foundations upon which this church is built.
John opens his gospel with themes of creation; “Before the world was created” he says; and foundational to that act of creation is the Word; the Word which is the source of life, the Word which brought light to all humankind, light which cannot be extinguished, cannot be put out, cannot be dimmed or diminished. Through Christ that light exits in us. God himself is our Father.
As we partake of the bread and wine this day we express our unity in Christ, we receive his grace and truth, we begin to form bonds of love one with another and rejoice in God our Father.
Praise – When I survey the wondrous cross
Prayers for Others
Living God, we come to you looking forward in faith. We offer prayers from grateful hearts knowing how you have watched over us in the past and assured us through faith that you will watch over us in the future. Through good and bad, hope and disappointment, joy and sorrow your love for us has been a constant.
You have led us as individuals; you have led us as church communities and sustained us on the bread of life. Now we come as one still sustained by the bread of life, still inspired by your life and death and resurrection. For the constancy of your love that has yet to be revealed to us, we thank you.
Father in Heaven, Lord Jesus Christ, we place ourselves into Your hands. We are a blank page, we are uncharted waters, we can be anything you need us to be if only You reveal Your will to us. Help us then to listen for the still small voice that whispers in our soul; help us to see and grasp the opportunities we are presented with, help us to be wise in our words and actions. May all we do from this day forward be a witness to your love amongst us and to your love for all people.
Allow us to bring our heritage to bear upon our future. The creativity that is in our life blood, the creativity that has allowed us to overcome must continue into the future as we face the challenges of new beginnings. The past is not lost to us. The past shapes our future; for our God is a God of the past, the present, the future. Our God is eternal, before time, beyond time.
With gratitude we thank you for the blessings of the past and seek now the blessings of the future. We desire to serve You, trust You, work for You and witness to You. We desire to see the plan you have for us unfold. We desire to prosper at Your hand and see the Kingdom of God flourish within this community of faith.
Lord as we take these moments of quietness, we offer our prayers for the future. Build us into a house where love can dwell…
Lord Jesus, may these quiet words of prayer and rest upon our spirits and remain in our hearts in the days to come. AMEN
Praise – Look forward in faith
The Grace
And now… May the Grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Love of God and the Fellowship of the Holy Spirit be with you and all whom you love, now and for evermore. AMEN.