Tasting the Water
Planning Small Group Devotions
By Rev. Janet Stobie

 

This sample will whet your appetite
for the sequel to Dipping Your Toes,
Tasting the Water.
Intended publishing date
Spring of 2025

Introduction to Tasting the Waters

       Need help with preparing and leading devotions in your small group?
Tasting the Waters, like it’s predecessor, Dipping Your Toes, brings you 44 complete services all in one place. Whether your group is a Bible study, a women’s group, men’s group, a small Sunday worship gathering, a nursing home service, Tasting the Waters will give you inspiration, practical resources, leadership tips, everything you need to lead worship.

     There are scripture readings with short reflections, discussion questions, prayers, hymn choices and more. Tasting the Waters brings the message of God’s love and acceptance in a manner that is relevant in today’s world.
Organized by month, September through June, the services reflect the seasons of the church year and include, where appropriate, references to special holidays.
As the worship leader you may choose to use the complete service or bring your own
touch through picking your own hymns, sharing a personal story, praying extemporaneously and more. The tweet and the picture are useful for advertising. This is your powerful resource.
Don’t forget to use the chart at the end of each service to record your experience, especially if you pass Tasting the Waters around your group.
In the rush and pressure of today, the temptation to reduce worship at our committee meetings to a short prayer is very real. Using the Tasting the Waters resource will make leading and experiencing worship an important part of every meeting.
This Booklet contains two sample services, information about “Land Acknowledgements”, a list of hymn resources used and an introduction by the author as well as her contact information. At this point the material has not received it’s final editing by a professional editor.

Goal of Tasting the Waters
The message of all of the material in Tasting the Waters is finding God in the midst of life. The emphasis is on acceptance with respect and love for all of God’s creation
– land, water, air, creatures and people. We are all God’s precious children.
The goal of this worship resource is to help us walk daily with God through everything that happens in our lives. There are meditations that bring joy and challenge. Simple prayers lead you in creating your own, to extemporaneous prayer.
You can use this book for your own personal reflection time. Spend a whole week with each scripture reading. Each day, read the scripture and write down your thoughts in a daily journal. Connect the scripture with something that happened either yesterday or today.

     There are loads of hymn choices from many denominational hymn books. Incorporating music and singing into your devotions adds another very effective dimension to your devotions.
Tasting the Waters builds confidence in the beginner leader, and can be a wonderful aid for those more seasoned in worship leadership. Remember, God walks within and among us each and every day.

                                                      About the Author
I am a retired ordained minister with the United Church of Canada. Nineteen years in
parish ministry, plus an undergraduate degree in Psychology, a M.Ed. in Educational Counselling, and a M.Div. in Theology along with numerous continuing education courses, have prepared me to write this resource.
I have written and published ten books – two fiction novels, 3 biblically-based short
story collections, 4 children’s picture books and a worship resource (Dipping Your Toes which has sold 2500 copies across Canadian United Churches). For the last six years I have written the “Today’s Faith” Column in the Millbrook Times.
My short stories have been published on-line, in four anthologies, in the Canadian Nursing Home Magazine, and the United Church Observer (now called Broadview magazine.) At www.janetstobie.com you can learn more about me, sample my books and check out my blog.

                                               Note From Janet Stobie
First of all, this booklet is intended to be a taste of my new worship resource, “Tasting
the Water”. At the moment it is more than half completed. I am considering changing the size of this new resource. Dipping Your Toes is six inches by nine inches and coil bound. Tasting the Waters can be the same, or it can be the same size as this booklet (8 ½ by 11) with regular binding or coil. Please let me know which you would prefer.
In this tiny pretaste, I have included two devotional services as well as the write up about “Land Acknowledgements”. With Dipping Your Toes, I have received
many, many emails, and personal thank you’s for creating such a useful book. At the moment, Dipping Your Toes is being used by the Women’s Coffee Hour in my church home church. For me, it is an honour to be a part of a group using my book. I get to see, first hand, that the reflections speak to individuals and that group discussion is lively. The leader of this group, Sandi DesLauriers, along with Pat Gilmore of Grand River Books, and many small group leaders across the country, all keep asking me when the second edition will be ready.

If you don’t own a copy of “Dipping Your Toes”, I recommend you purchase one today.
If you do and are waiting for “Tasting the Waters”, I will be glad to take your pre-order today.
May God continue to bless you and your leadership in the church.

                                                                                   

 

                                                 Land Acknowledgements

     Why do we begin our devotions each month with a Land Acknowledgement?
As we travel the road to reconciliation with our First Nations, Metis and Inuit Peoples, the United Church of Canada has chosen to make sincere and knowledge-based Land Acknowledgements to be part of our journey. These acknowledgements are one step in reconciliation.
According to Anishinaabe-kwe, Wanda Nanibush, the first Curator of Indigenous Art at the Art Gallery of Ontario (AGO), “Land Acknowledgements are a starting place to a change in how the land is seen and talked about. We need to grapple with the idea of the inherent right to land that First Peoples actually hold. If it isn’t stated everywhere, all the time, people can continue to ignore its existence.”
Inspired by the Ninety-four Recommended Calls to Action contained in the Canadian Truth and Reconciliation Commission Report, Land Acknowledgements are a necessary step toward honouring the original occupants of Turtle Island (North America). They are not about placing blame. Their role is to help Canadians recognize and respect Indigenous peoples’ inherent kinship to the land. Land Acknowledgements are not about ownership, ratherthey are about relationship.
Land Acknowledgements provide a solid framework for reconciliation for the injustices that have been carried out against Indigenous communities: broken treaty relationships, residential schools, the Sixties Scoop and the continued prejudice they experience today from individuals, from society, from all three levels of our government. It is more than a historical problem. This lack of respect, acceptance, and oppression is still with us today.
If possible, meet with and learn from a group of First Nations elders from your local area. Together, craft your “Land Acknowledgement.” It will be a learning experience for all who are involved.

 

Template f or Creating a “Land Acknowledgement” for your small group.

     Begin by acknowledging where you live and work, i.e., “Tonight we acknowledge that we are meeting on the traditional territories of ________(name the First Nation, Metis, or Inuit people who lived in your area first, and the treaty or treaties that were made with the first settlers.
Speak to what has happened in the past: the history of oppression across TurtleIsland that we call North America, and the oppression, discrimination, and prejudice that remain today.
Speak to the stewardship and relationship to the land of the First People of your area’s treaties. Speak of what they have to teach us.

      Connect the territorial acknowledgement with your event or to what is happening today.
Connect the territorial acknowledgment with an action (actions)

 

  Example of a Territorial Acknowledgement built on the above template:

We have come together as a Christian community of faith called by God to gather here in this place to______(purpose for meeting tonight) ______________________. We begin by giving God, our Creator thanks for creating the sun that warms the earth, the moon that lights our nighttime paths, the trees that filter and purify our air, the inhabitants of water and land that give their lives for our sustenance. We are grateful for humanity that is one part of this web of life.
We acknowledge that the lands upon which we gather are the traditional territories of the__________________________________. We offer thanks to the First People who have walked on this land and cared for her for centuries and will continue to do so. They know the plants as friends and the creatures as relatives. We give thanks that they cared for this land well and continue to care for her. As settlers and immigrants, we realize that over the years, wrongs have been committed that tell a story of humanity who used power to oppress and discriminate. We regret that this lack of respect and valuing still happens today.
May we, who have come to this meeting today, work with and learn from the First
Peoples of Turtle Island, that we call North America, so that we can journey in right relations with them and with all of creation.

(Information for some of the details above was gleaned from the United Way website, and the Trent University website.

(I have not yet met with the elders of my closest First Nations community, nor have they had the opportunity to see this sample Land Acknowledgement.)