Worship Committee

During course of this year, we heard from a number of guest speakers, including Kristin Kinnear of Haven House, Sandra Franklin of Family Promise, UU Bev Smrha of Project Harvest Hope, Carol Whiteside of Great Valley Center, Lynn Goldstein of Family Promise and Pastor Geary Oreglia of National Alliance of Mental Illness.

Many of our own members presented, wrote or organized services this year, among them David Simons, Gene Conrotto, April Hejka-Ekins, Ted Pack, Jewel Whitaker, Fred Herman, Pat Egenberger, Martin Zonligt, Bill Greer, Aynslie Frederickson, Marcia Gilbert and Debbie Adair.

The Board recently set a policy whereby all guest speakers, unless they are UU ministers or seminarians, will henceforth be paid a $50 honorarium. (Unless a pulpit exchange is involved, UU ministers or seminarians are paid according to the UU Ministers Association guidelines.)

The committee has been making an effort to include younger people in the worship services and we hope that more of our young members will participate in various aspects of the services during the coming year.

One thorny issue with which the committee has been struggling is the length of our Sunday morning services. Some members of the Fellowship would like the services to be no longer than an hour in length. The sermons are allotted twenty minutes. Other elements of the service, however, require more flexibility. The Children's Story may be longer than five minutes, there may be many participants in Joys and Sorrows, the performance music may be longer than usual, an urgent issue may need to be addressed, volunteers may be being honored, etc. While we encourage our Worship Leaders to spontaneously drop an element from the service if it is running unduly long, this is not always possible. And, after all, one hour is less than one percent of our week.

As the quality of our worship services and the meeting of spiritual needs are of paramount importance in the life of the Fellowship, the committee would appreciate any and all comments and suggestions members and friends can provide.