From the Central East Region’s Better Together Blog

Is your worship team in need of resources to help with planning your worship services? Crafting meaningful worship takes time and energy, and often much of that time is spent finding that right hymn or reading or story. Here are websites your congregation can use to help with planning worship services and finding those resources more quickly.

First, we highly recommend you become familiar with WorshipWeb. WorshipWeb is a part of the UUA website and has a collection of readings, stories, sermons and even entire services for worship committees to use in their worship services. You can search by topic, keyword, part of the service (i.e., chalice lighting, benediction, opening words), holiday or author. It even has images you can use on a variety of topics.

WorshipWeb includes recommendations about copyright and music use, links to recorded music you can use for a small fee or for free if streaming your service, a full list of all the songs in the hymnal and the copyright restrictions for each song. The WorshipLab is an area where you can watch videos and learn about the art of creating worship. If you really want to hone your worship skills, the UU Institute class Worship for Transformation can be helpful.

So, you now have resources, and you have a class, but what about that Sunday when you just need something to fill in? Or you don't have a sermon to build the service around?

We have help with that too!

If you need a sermon and want to add your own readings, etc., or use those recommended by the person providing the sermon, consider subscribing to our Sermon Series. This series provides you with one sermon per month for 12 months along with recommended hymns and readings for the cost of one speaker coming in to do a service. You can use the sermons whenever you want, you don't need to use them in a particular month or date. Not sure if that's something you want to do? Check out the archive from last year, which is now available for free.

There are some full services available on the UUA website as well. The services include topics on re-imaging Thanksgiving, stewardship, Side With Love Sunday, and covenant. General Assembly Sunday services are linked on this page and are available to be used by congregations. We hope that these resources allow you to create deep, meaningful worship. If you find you need more assistance finding things, or just want to ask some questions, please reach out to your primary contact.