Seeking the Welfare of the City - Worship at Five

How do we seek the welfare of the city? How do we seek the welfare of our whole city, not just the neighborhoods we inhabit? These questions (posed to us by Jeremiah 29: 5-12) are both difficult and important, and as a community of faith, we spent the last three weeks wrestling with them together. It can be challenging to break out of the bubbles we inhabit, challenging to see and respond to the poverty and inequality of our broader community.

In the Worship at Five space, we brought the city of Dallas into Founders Hall. Each week, as a response to the sermon, we invited worshipers to write a prayer using the following prompts:

-  I pray that God will help me belong to...
- ____, come, teach me. (fill in the blank with a community or person you would like to learn from)
- As we seek the welfare of our city, I see hope in...

As worshipers came forward for communion, they brought their prayers and laid them on the table. After the service, all of the prayers were pinned to the cityscape, where these prayers intermingled with pictures from our mission partners, ACT for Justice.

Even as this sermon series comes to a close, the work of building relationships and seeking the welfare of our city continues. As each of us continues to discern how we can break out of our bubbles and respond to the inequality of our city, you are invited to respond to the prompts above, to offer prayers of your own. You are invited to pray for a deeper sense of belonging with your neighbors, to seek new opportunities to learn and grow in understanding, and to look for signs of hope. Let us seek together!

From our PHPC Kids...

For the last three weeks, our PHPC Kids at Worship at Five Kids Education have talked about what it means to seek the welfare of the city. When discussing how we show our love and care to everyone in the city of Dallas, even the ones we don’t know – the kids had two main suggestions: find houses for everyone and grow fruit trees so people will have food. The kids wrote a prayer for the city and on the final week of the series we prayed the pray with water colors.