Worship Services

Although Rod has not been preaching during his sabbatical, and I have not attended an actual church service since we left Bisbee, I have had lots of opportunities to attend worship services.  In addition to the Sunday Morning Worship at General Assembly, which included the sermon “Our Greatest Challenge” by the new UUA President, Reverend Peter Morales, there were many worship services at both the ICUU Ministers’ Conference and the Theological Symposium.

The Sunday Morning Worship at GA is huge, which is probably its most stunning feature.  Hearing thousands of voices singing hymns together is a powerful and moving experience for me.  Hearing Peter Morales speak about the challenge of keeping visitors to our churches engaged and interested and coming back was motivating (and I suspect something that people in congregations everywhere will be discussing in a variety of venues over the months to come). 

I love to attend worship services at General Assembly.  In fact, when asked what I like about GA by a minister from another city, attending worship was the first thing that came to mind. This General Assembly I did not attend as many of the worship services as I usually do, so that was something of a disappointment for me.

Size is not the only thing that is interesting to me about the services at GA.  I am always fascinated by the things that various ministers focus on and emphasize in their services and just the opportunity to hear a variety of points of view makes it all very interesting.  Generally speaking, the speakers/ministers are very good.  In some of the larger venues there is a great deal of attention paid to all of the parts of a service from the lighting of the chalice to the music to the closing words.

At the ICUU Minister’s Conference and Theological Symposium, there was a worship scheduled for every morning and every evening.  The services were presented by people from all over the world.  The services were short, generally about a half an hour, and they went from the very serious to the very playful.  I attended every service and found it to be a wonderful way to start and end each day. (For those keeping score, there were a total of 13 services during the week at Rolduck.)

The first morning worship was led by an American and an Australian who both are working as Unitarian ministers in England, that evening the service was led by a sitar-playing minister from the Czech Republic.  The next morning worship was led by several ministers from Transylvania.  Later in the week we had services led by ministers from the Philippines, Uganda, South Africa and Canada.

It was fascinating to hear these ministers speak with their various accents and perspectives.  Coming from such a variety of backgrounds both personally and in terms of the churches that they serve, it was a mosaic of faces and voices and approaches. 

Most of the services that I attended had things in common; most of them had music and chalice lightings and a verbal message from the leaders of the worship.  But some included dancing, greeting and sharing things with the other people in attendance.  Some of the worship leaders sang, often engaging the rest of us.  (I was fascinated by how quickly they were able to teach us new songs.)  The services we held primarily in English, as it was the chosen language for the ICUU Ministers’ Conference and the ICUU Theological Symposium, however many people would share a blessing or a prayer in their own language as part of the worship, or as a way to open or close the worship. 

Ministers took the occasion of the worship services to move our minds, our hearts, our hands and sometimes even our dancing feet.  Each leader used his or her own ways to involve the group and some were wildly successful, others marginally so. 

No matter how tired I was at the end of each day, no matter how much I would have liked to sneak back to my room for a little post-breakfast nap, I pushed myself to attend the worships each morning and night and I was never sorry that I did.

If you attend or belong to the UUCSEA (Unitarian Universalist Church of Southeastern Arizona), I suspect you may hear echoes of some of these voices, some of these traditions, some of these messages over the year to come.  They were a powerful part of our experience.