Quality Worship in Less Time?

The Quandary and Why It Matters

​In earlier posts in this series, I have applied innovation schema to UU worship, considering what makes for good worship, and why innovation in this arena matters; described and evaluated experiments in more participatory and sensory-rich approaches to worship; and reviewed forays into new worship formats centered on singing and meal-sharing.
 
It should be clear that I place a high priority on quality worship. Yet I have also briefly considered how efficiently any mode of worship, once introduced, can be sustained. In this piece I turn more squarely to the question of the time required to prepare worship - and why I'm looking for ways to not only sustain quality worship, but free up capacity, to serve other vital needs.

​The Quandary:  Worship in the Unitarian Universalist tradition is particularly intensive to prepare – at the same time that other needs press in.

Let's look at what good UU worship asks of its creators, before considering competing needs.

The Demands of UU Worship
 
Freedom, Reason, and Tolerance in Worship. As a tradition emerging from the radical wing of the Protestant Reformation, Unitarian Universalist worship culture shares with a large part of Protestantism a focus on The Word. It is the sermon, not the “smells and bells” prominent in some traditions, that has long been at the center of our worship.
 
Yet, without a strong liturgical framework or lectionary driving sermon planning – such as grounds worship in many mainline Protestant churches – Unitarian Universalist ministers are positioned for One Hit Wonder syndrome. Many a Sunday is a blank slate. That means it takes considerable discernment and creative energy to set the direction for worship.

This is exacerbated by the open-endedness that welcomes engagement with not only the Jesus tradition, but with any of the Six Sources of wisdom that Unitarian Universalists have long affirmed and promoted. For the most part, I would not want to change this – I love that personal experience, science, the arts, and earth-centered wisdom have equal pride of place in UU worship, alongside the Jesus tradition. The situation is a bit more complex with regard to “world” religions; we are becoming more astute about honoring and sometimes engaging with such sources – without misappropriating or turning our Sunday services into sites of spiritual voyeurism.

Parameters?  As the saying goes, creativity thrives on constraints. Since we don’t have the limits imposed by a lectionary in UU worship, how else can we introduce some degree of direction?
 
Theme-based ministry programs, when adopted, can put a broad framework in place for each month. However, in my experience with one such program popular in our tradition, the themes are SO broad that this didn’t do much to improve the efficiency of worship preparation. An abundance of shared resources on the themes can even do the opposite – creating rabbit holes of research, postponing the setting of one’s own direction and the tapping into of one’s own authentic experience and preaching voice. Theme-based ministry has many up sides – and I for one am psyched about the new UUA Woven Faith program – but meaningfully constraining worship prep is not something themed resources have done, for me.
 
Developing holistic worship series (a la Marcia McFee, described in Experiment 1) in essence means planning a set of Sundays in tandem. I did find that brought a bit of efficiency on the back end, when sermonizing and pulling the Order of Service together for a particular Sunday. However, it takes more planning at the front end, during the stages of “metaphoraging,” selecting elements that will provide continuity across a series (songs, visual installations, etc.), and engaging others in series development. So it’s a win for depth and meaning, but a wash at best in terms of efficiency.
 
A strategy that appeals to me is one I periodically hear colleagues wishing for:  a set of core stories that UU ministers and congregations come back to over and over, somewhat like a lectionary.   Such a collection might draw from our roots in the Biblical tradition; Unitarian, Universalist and UU history; as well as folk tales and secular stories that are approaching canon status in UU culture. Stone Soup comes to mind as an example of the latter.
 
If / when anyone completes such a project – and assuming we cross the hurdle of reaching relative agreement on what belongs in the collection – this could provide a double win:  lending depth to UU worship and ongoing faith formation, over cycles of engagement with those stories… while reining in the open-endedness of inspirational sources that adds an extra, amorphous step to worship planning for UU religious professionals and lay worship leaders.

Ritual & Liturgy   The focus on reason and the word have been tempered, to a greater or lesser extent – with variability across congregations – with liturgy and ritual. These help to balance head with heart and reason / words with experience.

Chalice-lighting is the near-universal ritual observed week after week. (Some trace that practice back to religious education classrooms in the 70s; however, it began earlier as a worship practice, in the 50s, by Kenneth Patton and the Charles Street Meeting House, and may have spread from there.) Many UU churches have some type of participatory ritual available as part of Joys & Concerns as well.

The celebration of Christian communion has faded considerably over the two centuries of Unitarianism/Universalism/UUism in north America – which is not to say that it has disappeared. Meanwhile, other rituals have emerged and spread organically, often given the “communion” label. The two that have become bookends to a malleable UU liturgical year are water in-gathering in late summer / early fall, and flower festival in spring / early summer – both drawing symbolic inspiration from nature, as well as from our history.
 
In-between, a variety of other themes and observances may recur from year to year, with variation across churches in which ones are observed. Christmas and Easter are near-universal, observed in ways consistent with our theologies. Jewish High Holy Days may be brought in, notably in areas with significant Jewish UU participation. Samhain / All Souls services honoring ancestors, and other earth-sensitive celebrations, like winter solstice; fire ceremony around the New Year; thematic attention to MLK Day, Earth Day, and LGBTQ Pride Sunday; kick-off services for the start of the religious education year and for stewardship; music services; and youth/Coming of Age services, are among those I hear mentioned most frequently among colleagues.
 
These traditions ground congregational worship with life-giving roots. While some of these involve repeating particular rituals or stories from year to year, others are much broader in their implications for worship. Having some themes automatically map onto the worship calendar provides helpful constraints to creativity, where it occurs. Yet, there is still a tremendous amount of from-scratch worship design required of UU worship leaders. Out of 52 Sundays in a year, in the congregation I serve, a substantial majority are open-ended.

Sermon Prep  There's no one right way to approach sermon preparation. For me, the process begins with mapping out worship topics. I like to do this during Study Leave weeks, which I spread out to once per quarter for this purpose.

Many considerations come into play when setting topics and drafting blurbs, among them:

• varying the types/tones of sermons and services (pastoral, prophetic, tending the institution, perennial spiritual / theological questions, teaching our history/tradition, etc.)
• sharing of myself enough (and appropriately) to be authentic and nurture my relationship with the congregation – while also bringing in a diversity of voices and life experiences, not just mine
• drawing from diverse Sources of inspiration – including arts and culture, science and nature, the Jesus tradition, and “world” religions, as well as direct experience
• responding to needs witnessed in the congregation, including those that press in from the wider world

Between the time I set a topic, and when that week arrives, stories and materials have often begun to accumulate that can be drawn upon in developing the service and sermon. Still, writing an effective sermon takes dedicated time, in which the artist can enter the messy process of creation. Hence the practice many UU ministers follow of setting aside one day a week as a Writing Day.

** 1 hour of preparation for every 1 minute of sermon. **

The rule of thumb I learned in seminary is that it takes about an hour of preparation for every minute of sermon length. I believe that includes time in study / reflection / spiritual practice / life experience, not just the time writing a sermon the week of – though I suspect the actual writing takes more time than your average person on the street (or in the pew) would guess.

Many Roles  I’ve come to think of worship creation as akin to putting on a new play every week. Similarly, Marcia McFee puts it in terms of filmmaking.

 
Either way, it’s more art than science, and it takes the kind of headspace that creatives need. If you are a solo minister, when you’re in the pulpit, you are the

• writer
• curator
• director
• producer
• set designer
• casting director
• lead actor

If you’re lucky, you are also working with a music director and instrumentalist(s), may sometimes partner with a religious educator in worship, may have a paid tech person handling AV and streaming, and have a bench of volunteer talent to draw upon in the congregation.

The Upshot:  Preparation of quality worship requires more time, skill and care than many may realize. This is especially true for UUs, whose inspiration is wide open, and whose creativity is largely unaided by an annual cycle of texts/stories that anchor worship preparation.

---

​All the (Other) Things
 
Other Needs. Parish ministers face many other needs that compete with worship preparation for our time and attention:  pastoral care, leadership of the staff team, working with the board and various teams, teaching, developing volunteers, social action, and more. The demands for ministry have only grown in the past several decades.
 
Still, maintaining a vibrant worship program is usually considered a high priority for ministers. Worship is how newcomers most often check out a church (well, the church’s online presence and then in person worship). It is the most visible way the minister serves the whole congregation, too. And in midsize congregations, worship is expected to be the “flagship program” of the church.
 
Growing pressure. The demands on ministers’ time and energy are especially great for solo ministers in mid-size congregations (squeezed in the pastoral-to-program shift/plateau), or in any church that is understaffed. Note that under-staffing can be a shortage of either paid staff and/or committed volunteers, relative to the congregation’s programming & aspirations.

(Image: Mohamed_hassan / Pixabay)

In the pandemic and post-pandemic era, many congregations face an increase in the needs for ministry, plus new demands. These include transitioning to and maintaining multi-platform worship, (re)building community to address increased isolation, re-imagining religious education, and responding pastorally and prophetically to societal crises and assaults on our values, with very real repercussions for our members and our neighbors.

At the same time, many churches are experiencing a decrease in the human resources available to meet the needs. Many congregations have cut staff hours / positions to balance budgets. Concurrently, volunteer engagement, already long shifting, fell off in many congregations during the pandemic and in its aftermath. We are rebuilding our volunteer infrastructure and adapting there, too.

Where might that math leave us?

More needs + less human resources = CRUNCH

(or missed opportunity)

Radical transformation. Changing needs are not just driven by pandemic-related trends. From a balcony view of spirituality, the ministry needed to meet the spiritual present and future was already expanding beyond the usual staples of congregational life like Sunday worship and volunteer-driven religious education classes.
 
Though it lagged mainline Protestant traditions somewhat, Unitarian Universalism too has slowly shrunk in net numbers. Still, I believe our tradition holds significant potential to meet this need voiced by the Fetzer Institute:  “to address the needs of the next generation of seekers in their spiritual formation by building a bridge between the wisdom and practices of traditional religion and spiritual seekers both within and outside the traditions.” (1)
 
We face adaptive challenges like shifting ways people participate in institutions – affecting models of membership, volunteering, and communication; changes in families’ lives; and a model of how to do church that, arguably, has been dissolving for decades. Religious educator and innovator Karen Bellavance-Grace sums up the latter issue:  

“Author and theologian Phyllis Tickle writes about this time as a ‘Great Emergence,’ noting that every 500 years or so the institutionalized Church undergoes radical
​transformation that remakes the faith.

​The last such time was when Martin Luther posted his
​Ninety Five Theses in 1517. Now is another such time.” 

Ferdinand Pauwels' painting of Martin Luther posting his 95 theses -- what turned out to be the beginning of the Protestant Reformation (public domain, via Picryl / Wikimedia)

Congregations as laboratories. At the national level, the UUA is encouraging and supporting “covenanting communities” that go beyond the walls of church buildings – and beyond the leadership of credentialed religious leaders – in their forms. However, brick-and-mortar/multiplatform congregations are still the backbone of our movement. They could be the locus of much innovation.
 
Indeed, our congregations ARE the locus of much innovation.

“Even in the presence of so much pain and profound transition
at all levels of our institutions, we are in a time where many
of our congregations are experiencing vitality in new
and exciting ways, where our communities are emerging
to meet the profound shared yearning of our times.”
​~ Rev. Dr. Sofía Betancourt, UUA President (2)

The work of making ancient wisdom accessible and relevant today is something UUs often feel we are well-suited to do. But we may need to expand beyond our usual ways of doing church in order to connect with more of the “nones,” “spiritual but not religious,” and other unchurched people out there who are looking for spiritual connection, authenticity, and depth. If we are to evolve in how we serve both our existing constituents and some of the many more spiritually hungry folks who might “be UUs but not know it,” we need to allocate time and talent for new experiments.

That actually goes for both experiments in worship itself, as well as innovation beyond the sanctuary. Making worship preparation more efficient is a promising way to free up time and talent to engage more in outward- and future-oriented endeavors.

Examples. What kind of new offerings?  There are many possible answers to that.

(Image: OpenClipart-Vectors / Pixabay)

I can mention some that interest me, but that I have not yet had the time to pursue

• classes that reach out to the community, as well as members (e.g., a small group curriculum for healing from religious/spiritual trauma - which is at the top of my list, OWL for various ages, spirituality and money)
• weekend retreats for spiritual nourishment and growth - these could build on worship series, or reach particular demographics or interest groups, (e.g., men’s retreat, women & nonbinary retreat, elders’ retreat, creativity and the spiritual life)
• support or affinity groups (climate grief and adaptation group, people with chronic illness group, BIPOC group, LGBTQ group, neurodivergent group)
• spiritual practice groups (small group spiritual direction, sacred song circle)
• social action projects engaging the community around us
• consistently-staffed support for young adult and campus ministry (an under-represented demographic in many churches), that might often hold programming off-site
• your ideas here…
• things we are not able to conceive yet here...

 
Innovation takes time and creativity. How can we carve out these resources for trying new things, while maintaining quality in our flagship program, worship?

Next Up    I’ll review an experiment with a UU sermon co-op, undertaken in 2024-2025 with participating colleagues, which was one possible answer to this quandary.  

---

Endnotes
(1)  Sharing Spiritual Heritage: Convening, Dialogue, and Field Building, by the Fetzer Institute (2022).
​(2) “Holding the Heart of Unitarian Universalism: Update on the Faith from UUA President,” UU World, 3-27-26.