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Thank you for agreeing to help present a Sunday service for our Fellowship. Our weekly gatherings are the occasion for us to come together as a community, to nurture our spirits and be reminded together of our highest values. The time and energy you spend in preparation make it all possible.

Our worship program Many Ways to Sundays makes extensive use of published materials as resources for content.  It is structured as a collection of “Worship Series”, each centering around a different type of resource material. 

 Worship Series currently created include:

• CUC sermons – We extend our connection to the broader Canadian Unitarian community by hearing some of the high-quality sermons which the ministers of some congregations have shared on-line.

• Small group conversations – sharing from our personal spiritual journeys in small-group conversations.  These may be structured based on a variety of resources such as the Evensong collection or the Small Group Ministry program.

• Creative Writing – a format for service first developed for our use by Tammy McLeod.

• Pondering Poetry – a meditative approach to worship based on a carefully selected poem.

• Storytelling – a participatory experience sharing the power of stories in our lives.

• Our Seven Principles – an exploration of the seven principles by which Unitarians Universalists express our values.

• Guest speakers – an opportunity to hear speakers from outside the Fellowship, whether from the local community or from the wider Canadian Unitarian community.

 These resources are offered as an aid to designing your service, either for use on its own, or as a base for your own creation. Published resources provide a steady background of quality against which individual presenters have the freedom to create materials when inspired.  Over time, we hope that this structure will provide a framework from which more Worship Series can be created.

Resources available

The Worship Committee has sets of  “Resource Bundles” which it makes available for service facilitators to have at home for preparation.  Each bundle contains a template order of service, a copy of the hymnal “Singing the Living Tradition” and some additional printed music, and a collection of CDs from UU sources that can be used in the service. 

Other resources are specific to the series you have chosen to present from.  Some series are based on book resources, which are included in the Bundles.  The template order of service and other electronic resources for each series are available by clicking the links in the list above.

Finally, here are some beginner-friendly suggestions for novice service leaders:
The Pick-and-Plonk School of Worship Design.