UUCB Worship

More About UUCB Worship

Worship is at the heart of our community. Worship refreshes us and we take a deep breath and rest from our daily lives. Worship refreshes when it comforts us in difficult times, when it celebrates with us our joys, and when it challenges us and names what has been avoided. Worship reminds us of who we are, what we can become, how we want to live, what we hope to give to the community and the world.

In our worship services, we laugh and cry and are reminded of what is deepest and dearest. Worship engages our minds and hearts and bodies with the wisdom from the world.s religions, the words and deeds of prophetic and poetic women and men, experiences of life’s twists and turns and transcending mystery and wonder. Together we reverence living and dying, mark joy and pain and promise. We celebrate hope and liberation, recovery and possibility.

Worship strengthens us to live out our Unitarian Universalist principles in our families, neighborhoods, work lives, church, and world. Worship inspires us to create the Beloved Community and live lives of integrity, joy, and service.

Our Sunday Services, held at 9:00 a.m. and 11:00 a.m., are joyous gatherings of the community and our Thursday evening services provide a mid-week worship service for fifty or so people. Tuesday mornings a smaller circle gathers for a service of simple songs, a reading, and spoken prayers of joys and concerns.

Most Sunday Services include a spoken and sung call to worship; a chalice lighting; a story for all ages; a member’s sharing of his or her religious journey; a reading that is sometimes spoken, sometimes enacted, sometimes danced; singing by the Chancel Choir and/or Children.s Choir, music, congregational singing, a sermon, a meditation and prayer that incorporates the joys and sorrows that people write during the prelude in the Remembering Book, a blessing spoken as the community joins hands, a sung response, and a postlude. Our worship weaves together each thread to create a beautiful tapestry.

The congregation is blessed to have many talented musicians and wonderful musical instruments. We are also blessed with professional dancers and actors who work and worship with other members to create liturgical dance and dramatizations.

We have an annual Water and Earth Ceremony where each person brings water or a shell or rock from a significant place as we build our common altar in gratitude for the gifts each person brings to community.

Throughout the year, we offer a rite of Child Blessing where babies are welcomed into the community. We tell the story of the child.s arrival into the family, the significance of the name, and wishes for the child. The child is blessed with a rose and by the water from our Water and Earth Ceremony.

Three times a year we share a New Member Welcome Ritual formally welcoming new members and their families into the community.

We have a Blessing of the Animals service in early October; we honor our members who are 80, 85, 90, 95 or 100 years old on Doctors of Durability Sunday in November; and we celebrate the beauty and diversity of families in our Wholly Family Celebration in December.

We celebrate the winter holidays with pageant and have two beautiful Christmas Eve Candlelight Services. In January, we welcome the new year with a Decades Service where a speaker from each decade of life 1-10 year olds through 90-100 year olds answer the question from the poet Mary Oliver–What will you do with your one wild and precious life?

In February we have our annual Celebration Sunday to celebrate our church and our annual canvass. In the spring, we have a UU Passover Seder and two Easter Sunday Services.

Every other year we hold a Coming of Age Celebration, sometimes a Bridging Ceremony marking the transition of our graduating high school seniors. We welcome spring sometimes with a Spring Pageant and also celebrate the beautiful music which deepens our worship life with a Music Sunday. In June we celebrate Community Ministry, lifting up our affiliated community ministers and the congregation.s work of social service and justice making in our larger community.

For seven of the last eight years, our congregational life has been enriched by the ministry of intern ministers. A strength of this congregation is welcoming and appreciating interns for their unique gifts, feeling proud as we wish them on their way into ministry, and warmly welcoming the next intern.

Our worship life is enhanced too by the presence some years of the Transylvanian Scholar who the church hosts during the scholar’s year at Starr King School for the Ministry. Our two affiliated community ministers sometimes lead worship as well as members who are seminarians, and lay leaders. Our church’s Minister Emeritus occasionally preaches. Summer services are led both by lay leaders and ministers.

Thursday Night Worship September – May has had rotating leadership by one of the three ministers or lay leadership. This year on third Thursdays a member of the Board of Trustees shares their religious journey as the core of the service. Members who are musicians offer music and accompanying our singing.

We are a UUA Welcoming Congregation, intentionally welcoming diversity. We welcome young and old, families and singles, all the colors and cultures of the human race, gay, lesbian, bisexual, transgender, and straight people. We believe each person has a share of the truth and we need one another to grow whole.

Worship strengthens this community through times of change and is a power in our lives both individually and communally.

Our differing gifts and strengths join together to make a vibrant, loving community.

Worship extends beyond the church walls as we enact our beliefs. Worship compels us to be active in local and global communities, affirming the worth and dignity of every person, challenging us to make a difference, reminding us to live justly with compassion and love.

We affirm the words of Kennon L.Callahan, “Worship gives power to our life. We discover who we are. Worship builds community. We find a sense of roots, place, and belonging as we worship together. Worship gives meaning to our live. We discover what is genuinely important. Our values center. We develop a sense of purpose. We know our life counts. Worship gives hope to our life.”