Faith Curriculum Library: Curricula and Resources for Co-creating Lifespan Faith Engagement

Workshop 5: Inviting Engagement through Congregational Worship

Part of Military Ministry Toolkit for Congregations

Introduction

This workshop provides a framework for planning a worship service to engage the congregation in ministry to active duty military personnel, veterans, and their families. Participants revisit insights from the first four workshops and choose some to share through congregational worship. They plan a worship service and assign roles and responsibilities.

Two books published by Skinner House and available from the UUA Bookstore can serve as a source of readings for your worship service:

War Zone Faith An Army Chaplain's Reflections from Afghanistan

By Captain George Tyger

From Skinner House Books

Determined to find meaning in the midst of war, Captain George Tyger reflects on his faith, his prejudices, and his privilege, and shares the unique perspective he has gained while serving and ministering in a war zone.

Buy This Book

Well in advance, with your congregation’s worship committee and/or minister, set a date for a military ministry worship service. Obtain any instructions regarding lay-led worship. Invite a minister, religious educator, or worship committee chair to attend this planning workshop to help resolve logistical questions that may arise. Communicate the worship service date to program participants.

About a week ahead, remind participants by email, social media, phone call, or other means that they will plan a worship service at this workshop meeting. Share the questions you will use in Activity 1 (see “Preparation”) to help them review their insights and discoveries from earlier meetings. Ask them to reflect on their hopes for the congregation’s ministry to military personnel, veterans, and families.

Opening (10 minutes)

Materials

  • Chalice, candle, and lighter or LED/battery-operated candle
  • Covenant from Workshop 1

Description

Light the chalice and invite participants to listen to these words of 17-year-old Erika, whose father was serving in Afghanistan:

My dad’s away a lot, on training, in lots of places. He’s in Afghanistan now. He’ll be there for another year.
He was supposed to be coming home on leave in October, but they’ve moved it back to December or maybe even February. One thing I know for sure is that we’ll be without him for Christmas. It will be our first Christmas ever without him. I don’t even want to celebrate. I don’t even want a Christmas tree.

The reason is, it’s hard to have fun when at the same moment he might be in the middle of a battle. I could be laughing and singing and right at that moment, he could be getting shot or bombed, or maybe he’s hurt and scared. Why should I have fun when he’s not?

I don’t tell him how I feel because I don’t want him to feel bad and start crying. Once he called when we were having dinner. Mom had cooked all this great Hispanic food and we were stuffing our faces. Dad called and said all he’d had to eat that day was a hot dog. I worry that he’s going to starve to death! We send him Hispanic food that he can cook for himself over there. He has to eat!

Invite participants into a moment of silence, asking them to call to mind and to honor the very real challenges, fears, hope, love, and resilience of children of soldiers. Say that Erika’s complete story and that of her eight-year-old brother Edwin can be found in a 2008 book, Off to War: Voices of Soldiers’ Children by Deborah Ellis.

Review the group covenant.

Activity 1: What Have We Learned and Discovered? (20 minutes)

Materials

  • Newsprint, markers, and tape

Preparation

Write on three separate sheets of newsprint, and post:

  • What does Unitarian Universalism have to offer to military personnel, veterans, and their families? What does our congregation have to offer to those already in our congregation and those who have yet to discover us?
  • What gifts might military personnel, veterans, and their families offer to our congregation and to our faith?
  • What words or stories would you use to invite others in the congregation to join you in actively welcoming military personnel, veterans, and their families and in engaging in military ministry in the wider world?

Description

Invite participants to go around the circle and share briefly their responses to the posted questions, responding to each question one at a time. Record responses on newsprint. Post additional newsprint, as needed.

Activity 2: Planning Worship (25 minutes)

Materials

  • Handout 1, Sample Order of Worship (pdf)
  • Unitarian Universalist Association hymnbooks, Singing the Living Tradition and Singing the Journey
  • Newsprint reflections from “What Have We Learned and Discovered?”
  • Optional: 
    • Written instructions for leading worship in your congregation
    • Additional resource books such as Bless All Who Serve: Stories of Hope, Courage, and Faith for Military Personnel and their Families and War Zone Faith: An Army Chaplain’s Reflections for Afghanistan
    • A computer with Internet access (UUA Worship Web)

Preparation

  • Invite your minister, religious educator, or worship committee chair to join you for this workshop.
  • Make two or three copies of instructions for leading worship in your congregation and set them out.
  • Copy handout for all participants.
  • Set out hymnbooks and additional resources for worship planning. The UUA Worship Web provides a searchable database of worship resources of all kinds.

Description

Distribute Handout 1, Sample Order of Worship. Explain that it offers a starting point—suggestions your group can follow or adapt in planning a worship service. Say that the group is also free to design its own order of service. Point out the resources you have set out to help with the planning.

Build on the reflections shared in the previous activity to plan a worship service together. Use the expertise of your invited guest(s) to help with the process. Decide who will offer reflections and who will lead other parts of the service. Write your order of worship on newsprint as you create it. On a separate piece of newsprint, write assigned tasks and deadlines. Here are some sample tasks and deadlines, although your group will, of course, create its own:

  • Draft of reflection submitted to at least one other person for comment and suggestions by __________. Comments and suggestions returned by__________.
  • Readings chosen by _____________
  • Conversation with music director or music committee regarding music and hymns for the service by____________
  • Order of service elements finalized by ________________
  • Rehearsal with microphone for the service, including a run-through of all logistics on _____________________

In addition, consider offering in your printed Order of Service and on your congregation’s webpage or social network sites some links for worship attendees to find out more. These include:

  • UUA Military Ministry, which provides support and information to those interested in becoming Unitarian Universalist military chaplains.
  • The Church of the Larger Fellowship’s Military Ministry, which offers resources and support.
  • Soldier’s Heart, which provides a model for addressing the emotional, moral, and spiritual wounds of veterans, their families, and communities

Closing (5 minutes)

Materials

  • Chalice and candle or LED/battery-operated candle

Description

Share this Veterans Day prayer by Karen Bellavance-Grace:

"If the only prayer you ever say in your entire life is 'Thank You,' it will be enough" —Meister Eckhart

Today we have set aside time to publicly say thank you to our siblings who have served in the Air Force, Army, Coast Guard, Navy and Marines; to say 'Thank You' to all who served, whatever their role, wherever their service took them.

We say 'Thank You' to those whose service was brief, and to those who made a career of their service.
We say 'Thank You' to those who remember their service with fondness, and to those whose time in service still haunts them.
We say 'Thank You' to those who returned to us largely intact, who found jobs, started families, and who continue to find ways to serve their communities.
We say 'Thank You' to veterans who returned with brokenness so deep that they continue to struggle to find a role or even a home in our communities.

God of many names, Source of all Love, in the face of all this, sometimes the only prayer we have is 'Thank You.' We pray it will be enough.

Extinguish the chalice.