- Worship Schedule
- 2023-24 Worship Arc: “Let It Be a Dance”
- Description of Worship Services
- Lay-Led Worship Services
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 2023 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. 3, 2023 – “Creating Sanctuary” – Intern Minister George Grimm-Howell
We celebrate pride month this September in Mid-Missouri! We are called to celebrate and recommit to the creation of sanctuary for members of the LGBTQ+ community. But holding ourselves out as a refuge of spiritual safety means we must be willing to embrace the deep work of welcoming.
Sept. 10, 2023 – “Moving Through Precarious Times” – Rev. Molly Housh Gordon
As the climate changes, more and more of us are aware of a truth human cultures have sought to avoid: Everything depends. How do we move well through these precarious times?
Sept. 17, 2023 – “Showing Up” – Rev. Molly Housh Gordon
The work of community is showing up for and with one another. In precarious times, the kind of community that shows up is more essential than ever.
Sept. 24, 2023 – “Making Up” – Jamila Batchelder & Rev. Molly Housh Gordon
As our Jewish friends and neighbors observe Yom Kippur, the Day of Atonement, join us for an All Ages Service to explore repentance and repair. How do we show up for each other even amid hurt, and how can we begin again in love?
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.
2023-24 Worship Arc – “Let It Be a Dance”
I’ve been feeling lately that we have entered some kind of new era. Covid-19, increasing natural disasters, and consciousness-raising movements for justice have brought more and more of our society into touch with a deep spiritual truth: Human life is precarious. Everything depends.
This has always been true, and yet it seems to become ever more true as the impacts of climate change become more deeply felt. We are entering an era of precarity, when more of us than ever feel the ways we all are tangled up with one another and the earth, and when we recognize how much hangs in the balance of that entanglement. Precarity can be frightening, but it is also full of potential. Everything we know could end; and everything unjust could change.
The trick to precarity is moving with it, rather than against it. Like a stream, it will carry us along, whether we wish it or not. But when we move with its currents, there is so much richness to be found, even now. This year, we’ll be thinking together about these times as a dance. How do we move amid all that is changing and uncertain, amid all that depends? Starting in September, each month we’ll explore a quality of movement that we can bring to these times.
How do we move through precarious times? Willingly. Joyfully. Collectively. Tenderly. Bravely.
Curiously. Meanderingly. Adaptively.
Join us this year to move together through it all, and let it be a dance!
In Faith,
Rev. Molly Housh-Gordon
August 2023
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.