Sunday Worship: Orders of Service
As I indicated in my Ministerial Record, planning and presenting worship is central to ministerial leadership of a congregation. Helping congregations enhance the style and content of their worship offers significant support to goals of interim and developmental ministry. I strive to present services that are both professional --- that is, reliably well-planned and well-delivered --- and spiritual --- that is, offering new insights into human connections. Additionally, because in our free faith, the lay voice in worship is important, I am committed to including a lay leader in every worship service. I also encourage the governing board to have a role, such as to invite the offering and to greet visitors. To that end, I also strive to mentor lay leaders to the same professional and spiritual standards I strive for, so to build consistency across all worship, whether or not I am in the pulpit. Twice a year hold worship workshops, which include practice in public speaking from the pulpit, to enhance this mentoring.
My primary goal for worship is transformation, for the congregation and for worship leaders alike. To that end, the service must be well-prepared. I encourage careful planning, for myself and for lay leaders, so that during that transformative hour that is the service, we can ‘let go’ of managerial details in order to be fully present to the ineffable spirit that often presents itself as grace, bringing unintended moments of awe. I also coordinate carefully with any program staff participating in worship leadership. I work with the Director of Religious Education to coordinate with the Time for All Ages, which I am available to lead from time to time. I also offer collaborative leadership with the musicians and can serve as song leader of congregational singing when a Music Director is not available. Because the congregations I have served do not have the resources of staff and lay volunteering to hold a full-blown worship planning session during the week preceding a service, not that multi-platform worship is a norm, I prepare a detailed script for all staff and tech support involved in the service and bring everyone together at least one half hour before the service for what I call the "talk-through." This review of the flow of the service has proven quite beneficial to enhancing worship.
I trust that Orders of Service included on this website illustrate what I mean by worship as an ‘integral’ event. The different elements of any given worship service should be well coordinated and planned in relation to one another. Excellent preaching is critical to effective worship, but a worship service is not only about the preacher and the sermon. Because any given congregant hears the message in her own way --- through the choir’s anthem, the Story for All Ages, the prayer or meditation --- effective worship is about the total, integral event of that hour of transformation. Below you can find examples of Orders of Service for Sunday morning corporate worship; for Holiday Services such as Thanksgiving and Christmas Eve; and for a particular type of service which I have developed based on principles I have learned from the Center for Courage and Renewal: I refer to this as my 'Courage' service. I have not included Order of Service from my current interim ministry since during the pandemic we produced a very “bare-bones” document, readily given to projection on computer screen.
“Worship is the mystery within us
reaching out to the mystery beyond.” - Jacob Trapp
reaching out to the mystery beyond.” - Jacob Trapp
Examples of Orders of Service (click on titles for full text)
Sunday Morning Corporate Worship
- Sunday, January 10, 2016: UU Reston: “Doubt and Paradox in Liberal Faith: Self and/or Community”
- Sunday, May 10, 2015: UU Reston: “Did They Step Out of Their Place?: Appreciating Universalist Women Who Came Before Us”
- Sunday, January 10, 2016: UU Reston: “Doubt and Paradox in Liberal Faith: Self and/or Community”
- Sunday, May 10, 2015: UU Reston: “Did They Step Out of Their Place?: Appreciating Universalist Women Who Came Before Us”