Morning Worship, October 21, 2022, 9:45 AM
Berkeley, CA
Prayer of Thanksgiving
To offer the Prayer of Thanksgiving, they wanted someone who is old enough to have seen a greater part of 150 years! It’s one way to remind me of how old I am! In retrospect, I realized that I have known BST for over 50 years—One third of Sesquicentennial!
Let us pray.
O God of grace and God of glory, we are present today because of the faithfulness of many who have come before us. In the 1840s when American Baptist Home Missions proclaimed the Good News of Jesus Christ to as far west as they could go, missionaries inaugurated educational institutions and planted new churches. The seminary is today’s living testament of “having faith in the assurance of things hoped for and the conviction of things not yet seen.” O God, today we see it and we give thanks for your many years of watching over this seminary.
Over these 150 years, Berkeley School of Theology was known by as many as 7 different names and most recently as the American Baptist Seminary of the West and the Berkeley Baptist Divinity School. The school has been in Vacaville, Oakland, Los Angeles and Covina before in this place of Berkeley. Lord, throughout the many changes and locations, BST has remained ever faithful to welcoming men and women, LGBTQ people, people at the margins, near and far, theological diverse people, and all walks of life to engage in rigorous and applicable education to transform the world to become more peaceful, wholistic, inclusive and just because it is the heart of Christ.
As people of the BST community, we pray, O God, that we continue to be faithful to the Word while ready and prepared to adapt to the new and ever-changing world in which we live. We pray that as our ancestors have been faithful and therefore witnessed your blessings “from things that were not visible” that we too have faith in your grace and glory through us. Help us to see what may yet be visible to us will become seen and known by us for your sake and salvation of the world.
Lord, the faith of Abraham and Sarai led them to obey your direction even when they did not know where they were going. But by faith, their descendants are “as many as the stars of heaven and as innumerable grains of sand by the seashore.” So, we pray today that against the numerous challenges and obstacles confronting doing theological education in the world today that we stay faithful so that we too will have more descendants as many as the stars of heaven and as innumerable grains of sand by the seashore.
Thank you, O God, for being by the side of BST over these 150 years. Out of our gratefulness and faithfulness, we pray that you, O God will continue to bless us, guide us, and lead us to transform the world today and the many years to come.
In the loving name of Jesus Christ, we pray. Amen.