One of my passions is developing creative worship. I love crafting services that engage children and adults. Services come to life for a diversity of ages and learning styles when we can add song, props, embodied storytelling, dance, visual representations, and other multi-sensory communications.
In April 2010 Julie Lambert (then Director of Religious Education at Pathways UU Church) and I led a Southwestern UU Conference workshop about creating worship with children. It was very well received and I continue to hear from participants about how they are integrating ideas from the workshop. I include here one of our session handouts.
To kick off their international partnership with UU Hong Kong, I led a multi-generational worship service for Community UU Church of Plano where they learned about Chinese traditions and language and we explored what that partnership could look like. Children participated in a dragon dance and Chinese musicians shared traditional music. We played a video of members of the Hong Kong partners offering a greeting to us and we streamed our worship service so that they could watch it live. It was a joyful and a promising kick-off to the relationship between the two congregations.
This online-only Christmas Eve worship service was designed for families and young children (and anyone young at heart).
Children helping me share the message for all ages
Sharing a story during the annual Christmas Eve service for families
Singing and balloons during the festive ingathering service for all ages