- 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.
September 2024 Sunday Worship Schedule
Sunday worship is at 10:30 a.m. – both in-person and online. If you have trouble accessing the technology to join us online, please send an email to our Tech Team.
Sept. 1, 2024 – “Unshakable” – Guest Preacher – Rev. Dr. C.W. Dawson
So much confronts us in everyday life that shakes us at our very core of being. Global issues, climate events, and life can rob us of our resolve and strength. Is it possible to be unshakable?
Sept. 8, 2024 – “Care or Control?” – Rev. Dr. Molly Housh Gordon
Join us for the beginning of our program year as we introduce the year’s thematic arc: Creating a Culture of Care. In this moment of global precarity, we are being offered a stark choice: Will we respond with care or control? As Unitarian Universalists, the choice is clear, but that doesn’t always make it easy.
Sept. 15, 2024 – “Giving Love Flesh” – Rev. Dr. Molly Housh Gordon
UUs proclaim that “love is at the center” of our tradition, but it matters how we love, and it matters that our love be made tangible in the life of our community. How can we turn love into growing networks of real, embodied care?
Sept. 22, 2024 – “Blessing of the Animals” – Rev. Dr. Molly Housh Gordon and DRE Jamila Batchelder
There is nothing the like the care between a human and an animal companion. Join us for a very special all-ages service to celebrate and bless the non-human companions that care for us so well. We will gather outdoors in the back of the church if weather allows. Well-behaved, vaccinated animal companions are welcome on-leash or in appropriate carriers, or you can bring a photo or item to represent your animal friend. Stuffed animals count too! We will also share a time of memorializing animal friends we have lost and invite you to bring an item for our memorial altar.
Sept. 29, 2024 – “Bearing Witness” – Rev. Dr. Molly Housh Gordon
As compassionate people living in a big, wide world, there are many to whom we would extend our care and concern but whom we may never meet. How do we care about those we cannot care for? And how do we do so carefully, so as to not project our gaze upon the lived experiences of others? Join us to explore care and accountability.
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 |