Worship Services
- Worship Schedule
- Description of Worship Services
- Lay-Led Worship Services
- Worship Themes for 2024-25
Worship Schedule
Worship plans for each month appear here. On our Home Page you will find details about the worship service for the coming Sunday.
Jan. 5, 2025 – “Care for Bodies” – Rev. Dr. Molly Housh Gordon
From gender affirming care bans and abortion bans to wider cultures of fatphobia and ableism, our very own bodies are the first and most intimate site of struggle against the control of empire. What if the most radical way we can pursue our collective liberation is care for bodies — our own and those of others — in all their glorious difference?
Jan. 12, 2025 – “Loving What Is Mortal” – Rev. Dr. Molly Housh Gordon
Due to a Covid infection, the originally scheduled Jan. 12 service on Disability Justice will be rescheduled Feb. 2. Instead, this Sunday Rev. Molly will be sharing further thoughts on caring for bodies while accepting their vulnerability. Join us!
Jan. 19, 2025 – Martin Luther King Jr. Sunday – “Abolition is Care”- Rev. Dr. Molly Housh Gordon
Join us on this Martin Luther King Jr. Sunday to reflect on some contemporary voices in liberation organizing, particularly those that envision a future of collective care where needs are met fully, harms are addressed humanely, and carceral systems whither from disuse.
Jan. 26, 2024 – “Founders Day” – Rev. Dr. Molly Housh Gordon
Join us to celebrate our history as a congregation, with storytelling and reflections on legacy and ancestors.
The Zoom address for our 10:30 a.m. Sunday worship is:
https://zoom.us/j/380411489
You can also join by phone: 312-626 6799
Webinar ID: 380 411 489
Services are also streamed live to Facebook
Description of Worship Services
We offer a worship service every Sunday at 10:30 a.m.. The current month’s schedule appears above. Services last about one hour.
Children are present for about the first 15 minutes, which includes a stones of joy and sorrow ritual. The children then leave for their religious education classes. Nursery care and our full religious education program for preschool through junior high school are offered at this time.
Although each of our services is unique, services usually begin with a welcome from a member of our Board of Trustees and occasional special announcements.
Interspersed with a variety of music and hymn singing, the typical service also includes the lighting of the chalice, one or more inspirational readings, a sermon or homily, an offertory, an opportunity to express joys and sorrows, and a closing benediction.
After the service we gather for fellowship, conversation and coffee.
Members of a group called the Worship Associates assist in planning worship services and also participate in conducting services.
Lay-Led Worship Services
Our lay-led services honor our commitment to lay involvement in church leadership and our church’s history. We began in 1951 as a lay-led fellowship, and thus all services were lay led until we called our first minister in 1980.
From September through May, we have occasional lay-led services, and many of the services are lay led during the summer. The Worship Associates organize the lay-led services. These services are often non-traditional and unique and allow individuals to speak to a topic of interest or lead the congregation in exploring a variety of activities related to the many facets of worship and spirituality.
Worship Themes for 2024-25
In 2023-24, we spent the September-May program year talking about how to move together well through precarious times. For 2024-25, we’ve zeroed in on “Care” as one of our most powerful responses to all that is uncertain and unsettled and still possible and emerging all around us. Care is an active and responsive kind of love. It is attentive and and nurturing. Care is gentle and rigorously committed to thriving. Wherever we are headed together, “Creating a Culture of Care” will be one of the things that sustains us.
In so many conversations about the future we are co-creating, we are being offered a choice between care and control. Care for or control over our bodies, our spirits, our neighbors, the land, the creatures around us, the collective, and the very future we all share. As Unitarian Universalists we strive to choose care. Yet, we know this is not always the simple choice we make it out to be. It bears deep examination and continual re-commitment.
This year we’ll thinking about care together, talking about care together, and also building and re-building real, embodied relationships of care and mutuality in our community. What does a culture of care look like and feel like and act like in our life together, and how does it then extend beyond our walls? Let’s figure it out together!
– Rev. Dr. Molly Housh Gordon
Our themes for 2024-25:
| MONTH | THEME | UU VALUE |
| September | Culture of Care | Love |
| October | Care for Difference | Pluralism |
| November | Care for Possibility | Justice |
| December | Care for Spirits | Transformation |
| January | Care for Bodies | Equity |
| February | Care for Each Other | Generosity |
| March | Care for Collective | Covenant |
| April | Care for Earth | Interdependence |
| May | Culture of Care | Love |