another definition of WOW: Awesome Brilliant Cool

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WOW Some Words from the Worship Committee!!

Hello my friends! I hope you're enjoying this "GLORIOUS DAY!" :-)
I want to talk a bit about our Sunday services and the work of the Worship Committee (WC)

The WC is charged with ensuring that we have a service every Sunday morning. That's quite a challenge when you have only a half-time minister, and no budget with which to pay guest speakers. Much of our time is spent trying to fill in the slots when Reverend Megan is not here. Sometimes Megan will ask around at the Methodist Seminary in DC, seeing if anyone is interested in leading a service. Other times we get leads from emails sent to Megan or someone on the committee. Occasionally someone from the congregation will give us a lead. Sometimes Carol Plummer or myself will repeat a service at another UU church in exchange for having one of their lay leaders lead a service at Sugarloaf.

But that still leaves a lot of empty slots. Those we fill with lay leaders from within our congregation.

Of course we want to do more than just fill a slot. We want to do everything we can to create "good" services. But what makes a service good? I suppose it's a question that can't really be answered without first answering "What's the purpose of Sunday Service?". The members of the WC need to constantly ask that question, not only of ourselves, but of all of you as well. We need to be open to all of you when you give us your own answers, either directly or indirectly.

To me a good service is one that has meaning. And for me, meaning is provided by one or more of the following:
- Reminds me of something important, some value to which I need to return
- Makes me see something in a different and valuable way.
- Makes me feel connected to other people
- Touches me on an emotional level
- Gives me hope, joy, comfort, peace
- Makes me feel spiritual
- Affirms who/what I am as a good thing
- ...

In the last few years I've discovered something interesting about leading services. The stronger my feelings about a topic, and the greater the honesty with which I speak about it, the more meaning the service has, not only to me, but apparently to others as well, based on the feedback I get. What I'd like to explore is the possibility of creating meaningful services by tapping into YOUR experiences, YOUR strong feelings, YOUR insights, YOUR spirituality.

In the "Forms" panel of the "Members and Friends" section of our web site ( SCUU.ORG ), I've created six forms. One of them is labelled "Sunday Service Topic Suggestion". It asks you for the following information:
- Your name and email address (so we can get back to you)
- The topic title
- A description of the topic
- Your role
When you click on Submit the information gets sent to me via email.

I recognize that not everyone likes to be in the public eye. But that doesn't mean you don't have something worth saying. So why not work with the WC to have someone else say it for you? The "role" field includes the following description:
What role do you anticipate playing in this service?
1) none
2) consulting only (no active role on day of service)
3) lead it by myself.
4) lead it myself, but assisted by a member of the worship committee
5) assisting someone else
6) not sure
So you see, there are all sorts of ways in which you can become involved in creating a service. And of course, you're always welcome to join the WC or just sit in on a meeting (see the Calendar at http://scuu.org/site/calendar for dates and times)

Peace,
Gus Vandermeeren