Leader Resource 3: Engaging as Religious Professionals
This is a 30-minute activity. You may wish to write reflection questions on newsprint, and post.
Invite participants to reflect on the place of Chauncy's theology in contemporary Unitarian Universalism. Provide these questions to guide their reflection:
- How can Chauncy's analysis help you understand your own spiritual experiences?
- How might it help you design worship that aims to deepen spiritual experiences for adults? For children? For youth? For mutigenerational groups?
- Chauncy said the intense emotional experiences offered by Great Awakening preachers stopped at the second step of his analysis. In his understanding, an experience of the Holy Spirit engages both reason and emotion, and leads one to act differently in the world. How can we be intentional about helping people link their spiritual experiences, whether in a congregation or elsewhere, with the ways they act in the world?
- Do you consider the physical, emotional, and mental experiences that are linked together in a worship service an active and ongoing source of renewal for individuals? For your congregation? For Unitarian Universalism?