First Fruits and Fig Trees: To Hope and Act with Creation
A 5-week series, complete with prayers, calls, benedictions, a communion liturgy, sermon notes, worship planning ideas, a devotional guide, children’s moment resources, music suggestions, an invitation to participate in a chant with the whole connection, and much more.
The Worship Team is excited to announce that there is a new worship series for Season of Creation 2024 available in the Resource Library! “First Fruits and Fig Trees: To Hope and Act with Creation” is a 5-week series, complete with prayers, calls, benedictions, a communion liturgy, sermon notes, worship planning ideas, a devotional guide, children’s moment resources, music suggestions, an invitation to participate in a chant with the whole connection, and much more. Designed to be used in September 2024, the series picks up on the ecumenical theme for this year, and helps United Methodists join the global movement to bring creation justice into worship. However, since the series is not lectionary-based, it can be used at any time.
The central image and metaphor for the series is the fig tree and each week features readings from Scripture that feature fig trees. The imagery and meaning of the fig tree from the Hebrew Scriptures is explored and engaged as we encounter Jesus also interacting with fig trees in each of the gospel readings throughout the series. The first two weeks of the series introduce common understandings of the fig tree and the third through fifth weeks explore the same story, told in three different ways by three different gospel writers.
The contributors to the series include some of our seasoned worship team members who have brought the Season of Creation materials to the community in 2022 and 2023, and also some new voices who share their gifts and talents for the first time this season. This season is only available through the United Methodist Creation Justice Movement webpage for right now, but our team continues to work with other partners and to develop resources that you may see at Discipleship Ministries in the future.
These worship materials were shared and sampled in the July Movement Café
Threshold Video
Full Series Worship Elements Arranged By Week
Download the Files
The images used in the worship materials are available for download here.