First in a series: short overviews of typical elements of Unitarian Universalist worship services. Later note: This series morphed into a more comprehensive review of post-Christian worship. Link.
My real interest in examining the various elements of a typical worship service is to determine the theological significance of each element. My assumption is that we truly live out our theology in our liturgy, in actual living worship services. If we want to know Unitarian Universalist theology is really (as opposed to what people say it is), let’s look at Unitarian Universalist worship.
And let’s begin with announcements.
On a practical level, announcements are useless:– someone stands up, gives a rambling announcement that no one listens to anyway, and at the end gives a name and phone number to call, as if anyone in the congregation has pen and paper ready to take down all that information. One or two announcements given by a worship leader from the pulpit might be marginally effective. Least effective is when anyone is invited to stand up and give any announcement at all. Printed announcements in the the order of service work well because people can take the announcements with them and act on it later; but practically speaking spoken announcements aren’t effective.
If announcements are useless on a practical level, why do they persist in our congregations? Announcements provide an opportunity for people to stand up in front of the congregation and be heard; it may be the only place where certain people feel they have an opportunity to be heard. Thus, while on the surface announcements give a false impression of a congregation that values community, in actuality a congregation that values announcements is likely to: silence minority viewpoints, avoid conflict, show active dislike towards ministers and other authority figures, and/or tolerate irrational behavior. Such an environment is not conducive to open, mutually-enriching conversations about theology.
From a theological perspective, then, the presence of announcements serves as a reminder that all too often Unitarian Universalist congregational life may not include time and space to discuss theology. I have been in congregations that devoted ten to fifteen minutes to spoken announcements, which seriously reduced the time for other more explicitly theological elements in the worship service. Which is what spoken announcements in the worship service do: squeeze the theology out of our religion.
I don’t like announcements in a service. We can all read. The (Christian) churches I’ve been in who did announcements out loud in a way I appreciated, did them after the service. One church had a sort of discussion time (optional) about the sermon after the service, and as I remember, announcements preceded this. It had the effect of prioritizing the worship service, but also giving some space for community interaction in a separate arena.
Course, the theological reasons for this had to do with a very Puritanical (in the historical sense) understanding of worship, and wanting it to be ‘pure.’ But the practical effects were ones UUs could appreciate.
I like announcements more than Joys and Sorrows/Concerns, but only marginally.
The proper way to do them, I think, is to print them, and have whoever does the welcome draw attention to them and then every once in awhile a spoken announcement about something important, like the annual meeting or something, is okay, but all of this should happen before the chalice is lit.
I wouldn’t go so far as to say that all spoken announcements suck theology out of the service, though, because community is still a big part of our UU theology and if announcements are reined in properly, they can be helpful in reinforcing information in at least two styles for those who process information differently.
Jess — I think you and I only disagree about whether or not announcements can ever be reined in. I have never seen a UU congregation where they were reined in, so I’m seeing the glass as half empty;– you can concieve of reined-in announcements, so you see the glass as half-full. Yeah, I admit that I’m a pessimist.
By the way, what exactly do you mean when you say “community is still a big part of our UU theology”? Can you be more specific?
I’ve seen announcements reined in – where they’re only given from the pulpit by a lay leader/board member, or where only committee chairs can make announcements. It helps immensely to cull down the “I read this thing about this cause and we gotta DO something” ones and the “this event is printed but I’m going to read it to you anyway” ones.
Community as UU theology – I would omit the “still” from the sentence I wrote and argue that UU theology has always been based in community, particularly once non-Christian faiths were also included in our congregations. I don’t think that you could get any congregation to define what it is they’re gathering for on Sunday mornings in any other universal terms than for community (worship of god/spirit doesn’t jive with so many). So announcing community events in such a way as to draw as many people to them as possible seems to be an important part of our church lives. And some people just aren’t going to read all the announcements.
Having an email broadcast once a week is another avenue to reinforce those announcements printed in the order of service which seems to work well for many congregations, as do visual reminders in the social hall. But the long line of random people who ramble at the microphone? Ugh. ;-)
Jess — I still don’t get why you think community is part of our UU theology. If the only reason we’re gathering together in community on Sunday mornings is to gather together in community, that sounds like a circular definition.
I believe that when you’re doing theology, you don’t have to please everyone — there has never been a theological position that everyone agrees with. In fact, I believe that they way theology works is taht someone puts out a statement of what they really think, not trying to please everyone, but trying to be as careful and definite as possible — and then other people respond to that statement — and after some conversation, the community of inquirers gets a little closer to the truth. So I really want to know what you think when you mean “community is still a big part of our UU theology.”
As for me, I would say that covenant is central to who we are as Unitarian Universalists. A covenant is (to be overly simplistic) a set of promises that we (who are a part of a community) make to each other. That covenant sets the framework for our ongoing search for truth and goodness (or however you want to term the ultimate — I’m comfortable with saying “God”, “Goddess”, “ground of all being”, “creative process”, etc., but I prefer the simplicity of “search for turth and goodness). In this sense, a covenanted community is part of Unitarian Universalist theology, insofar as it is the most important framework for theological conversations.