It's a new day for UUA.org! Our new home page addresses topics of interest to newcomers to Unitarian Universalism, including a video feature and an interactive banner highlighting our principles and beliefs. A short "Find a Congregation" form makes it easier than ever to look for a local congregation. People already familiar with our faith may want to bookmark the new Resources for UUs page, which features expert-recommended resources, multimedia, and more!

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• UK Unitarians Twibe
• Unitarian Universalist Twibe

UUA Announce 'Music in Worship'

The UUA now have a new expanded 'WorshipWeb' with a facility called "Music in Worship". Among other things, this includes a UU Composers Database.

Contributed by Rev Dr Linda Hart

The first episode of the CUUPS Podcast features basic info about CUUPS and an interview with British academic Michael York recorded at the Dec. 2009 Parliament of World Religions provided to us courtesy of the Pagan Newswire Collective.

• Disasters Emergency Committee

• Unicef UK
• Medecins Sans Frontieres
• International Red Cross
• World Food Programme

What UUSC will do

UUSC’s disaster response in Haiti will focus on those survivors less likely to have access to aid, such as child domestic workers (restaviks), women-headed households that work in the informal sector, and people living with HIV/AIDS. Haiti has a vibrant grassroots movement with a vision of empowering people. UUSC will work closely with partners in this grassroots movement to reach those survivors at greatest risk of being overlooked. As of this afternoon, we’ve already connected with three organizations and will be reaching out to others over the next 24 hours in order to shape our response.

We will be updating our website regularly as our plans develop.

In the depths of the global crunch, why would anyone want to waste precious money on pointless junk that ends up in the trashcan after a couple of uses?

But sales of consumer nonsense are still rocketing - stuff such as wand-shaped TV remote controls, desk-top hoovers, and electric toothbrushes costing hundreds of pounds. Even a hollow plastic golf-club you can wee into while playing a round (don't show it to Tiger Woods, please). We're still madly addicted to consumption.

Despite the financial collapse, carbon emissions from fossil fuels rose by 2 per cent last year to an all-time, planet-melting high. Scientists in Nature Geoscience say that much of this was caused by Chinese exports of consumer gadgets to Europe.

So, welcome to the Landfill Prize 2010, a divertingly subversive initiative to help to break this costly cycle.

We want people's nominations for the most needless, wasteful uses of our planet's precious resources that they've seen, bought or been given in the past year. Whether it's an electronic skipping rope, an automatic cucumber peeler or a laser-guided pair of scissors, we want to spotlight such pointless ingenuity as it makes its fast-track journey to the junkheap. This year we're specially interested in 'faux' green goods.

The prize, to be presented to the 'winning' manufacturer in February, celebrates the stupendous creativity of the people tasked with inventing constantly inflated new wants for us to want. It's a monument to perverse imagination and needless consumption. Most importantly, it's a plea for us to say, "Thanks. We've got enough stuff," and to break free from this crazy cycle.

The Landfill Prize site features a list of scientifically backed ways in which you can help to proof your brain against consumerist chicanery, written by John Naish, a national newspaper health correspondent, the author of Enough, Breaking free from the world of more . and the man behind the prize.

Nominations will be judged by a panel consisting of:

• John Naish (author of Enough: Breaking free from the world of more )
• Anna Shepherd (author of How green are my wellies?)
• Carl Honore (author of In Praise of Slow )
• Ben Davis (co-founder of BuyLessCrap)

The winner will be announced on the 16th February 2010. We'll invite the makers along to a little prizegiving. and if they don't want to come, I guess we will have to pop around to their place to make the award.

For more information go to www.enoughness.co.uk

There are two time honored institutions in Unitarian Universalist churches that are, or should be, guarded by clergy and laity as if they were the Holy Grail. They are the free pulpit and the free pew. Succinctly stated, the free pulpit means that when a congregation lends its pulpit to a minister by calling that minister as its spiritual leader, the congregation pledges complete and unencumbered freedom of speech to say anything from that pulpit that he or she believes to be true. But that freedom is not something the preacher is born with, but originates in the bond of affection, the covenant established between the congregation and the minister. The free pew means that when a Unitarian Universalist congregation is gathered by a bond of affection, a covenant that makes it into a spiritual community, the most sacred agreement made is that no theological test will be given for membership in that congregation.

• Blackpool Unitarians - sermons by Dr Martin Pulbrook and others
• Addresses by Yvonne Aburrow (Bristol Unitarians)
• Cambridge Unitarians - sermons by Rev Andrew Brown
• Kensington Unitarians - sermons by Rev Sarah Tinker and others
• Newington Green and Islington Unitarians - sermons by Rev Andrew Pakula
• Oxford Unitarians - sermons
• Richmond and Putney Unitarians - sermons by Rev Linda Hart

• Unitarianism - A faith worth thinking about
• Your first time at a Unitarian service? What to expect
• Namings and welcomings - the Unitarian way
• Weddings and same-sex blessings
• Funerals and memorial services - the Unitarian way
• Unitarian views of Jesus

• Advent – A Humanist Adventure (1984) from The Sermons and Musings of Carl J. Westman, DD.
• Celebrating Advent without misrepresentation, sentimentalism or parody (and a couple of recommended books) by Andrew Brown

• avoid passive voice
• avoid long sentences with dependent clauses
• avoid jargon and non-literal phrases
• avoid excessive formality
• Try to expand acronyms (e.g. GA) and explain unfamiliar jargon the first time you use them
• If you are explaining a procedure, try to set it out in small steps in the same order as the person will need to carry out the procedure.
  
• Use numbers not words - it's better to use "23" than "twenty-three" as it stands out more
  

1. The structural design of shared information environments.
2. The art and science of organising and labelling web sites, intranets, online communities and software to support findability and usability. » More

• All-in-one - all the information on one page
• Flat - all pages are arranged as peers
• Index - like the flat structure, but with a table of contents
• Hub-and-spoke / Daisy - usually used for web applications
• Strict hierarchy - a system where you can only access a lower-level page via its parent
• Multi-dimensional hierarchy - more than one way of browsing to the same content
• Search - for websites with a lot of content

In computing, internationalisation and localisation are means of adapting computer software to different languages and regional differences. Internationalisation is the process of designing a software application so that it can be adapted to various languages and regions without engineering changes. Localization is the process of adapting software for a specific region or language by adding locale-specific components and translating text.

• Colloquialisms (slang)
• Non-literal phrases and expressions, e.g. "keeping us on our toes"
• Phrases from other languages such as Latin, French or German, e.g. lingua franca, Schadenfreude, viva voce, double entendre
• Excessive formality and convoluted sentences
• Passive voice
• Dependent clauses in sentences

• If you're writing about "local" events or information, it's OK to use British English
• If you're writing about "international" events or information, it's better to use more generic English

• If the information is intended to be read online
• If another content type could be used instead, i.e. a normal HTML web-page

• When a document needs to be downloaded, read offline or printed
• If a document is more than 5 pages long. But consider whether it could be broken down into smaller sections and presented as HTML
• When attaching a document to an email
• As an additional alternative to online content - e.g. this set of tutorials could also be provided as a single PDF document
• When formatting needs to be preserved - e.g. a PowerPoint presentation
• Instead of Microsoft Office documents. But HTML is better most of the time
• See the definitive list of when to use PDFs by Joe Clark

• An online HTML version or summary of the document
• A link to download Adobe Acrobat Reader
• A PDF icon to indicate that it is a PDF document (see an example on the BBC website)

• Microsoft Office and PDF Document Guidelines
• Avoid PDF for on-screen reading (Jakob Nielsen)
• Facts and opinions about PDF accessibility (Joe Clark)

• "Click here" just looks stupid.
• "Click here" looks especially stupid when printed on paper.
• "Click here" is useless in a list of links or when in "links reading" mode, or whenever a link text is considered as isolated from its textual and visual context.
• "Click here" is bad food for search engines. If you say "For information on Unitarianism, click here", search engines won't know that your document contains a link to a document about Unitarianism. Some important search engines use the link text in estimating the relevance of a link. Using descriptive link texts thus helps users in finding documents they're interested in, potentially including your document due to a link text with some key word.
• There's usually a fairly simple way to do things better. Instead of the text "For information on Unitarianism, click here", you could simply type "About Unitarianism".
• "Click here" is device-dependent. There are several ways to follow a link, with or without a mouse. Users probably recognize what you mean, but you are still conveying the message that you think in a device-dependent way.

Describing links correctly

• Andy Pakula
• Vogelbeere
• Monastico
• fmcdancer
• Linda Hart

• UUpdates.net: the latest content from many UU blogs and websites
• Philocrites' annotated guide to UU blogs
• UU World: weekly round-up of blog posts
• Discover UU: blogs section - imports snippets of many UU blogs

[The school district] continues to plan for safety and security improvements in this changing landscape but we need your help. The best safeguards start with vigilance. We know that social media is a place where warning signs and chatter can take place. It takes all of us to monitor the many channels of social media (i.e. Facebook, Twitter, Snapchat, Instagram etc.). Together we have thousands of eyes and ears. Everyone, including our students, should be reminded that if you see something or hear something, please tell a principal, teacher, counselor, myself or another adult. 

"Two days later, still up too late and unable to sleep. Euphoria having worn off a bit, I'm thinking about what our local LGBTQ community had to go through on Tuesday. Five and a half hours of deliberate misgendering and mockery, name calling like sodomites and perverts, insinuation that they would harm people in restrooms, being told that God would damn them. And then over and over again being told that this wasn't about hatred, but their identity goes against God. I know how awful it was for me to listen to that, and can't imagine how hard it was for our LGBTQ community who came up and talked about fear, about abandonment, about abuse, and about discrimination. I'm so proud of our LGBTQ youth, but so sad the world still holds these hatreds. 

"I'm proud of the work we did to win the vote, and happy we have the nondiscrimination ordinance at last, but I'll never forget how some of the people stared right at me as they said that their Christian faith demanded they act this way. For one evening my hetero privilege was stripped away, and it was shocking and scary. There were people trying to intimidate me at several points. As I left the theater, a man started yelling at me and accusing me of things I hadn't done, and I felt threatened and afraid. Fortunately the police were there and hurried him on his way, and also fortunately I had a ride to my car. 

"I'm so glad we had our row of clergy to counter that disgusting show of the worst of our community. God loves you, friends. And those people were outnumbered by the ones who know that you are loved for who you are."

Clearly there is a problem with ableism in our public presentation. Public statements, music, stories and metaphors that perpetuate ableism have been hurtful to colleagues. As with any oppression, this ableism likely runs deeper than our public presentation. I remain grateful to all those who are willing to call it to our attention, and I am deeply sorry that such calling is still necessary. (The full response is here.)

Ingram said some rapists started out as Peeping Toms, or fed their clothes fetishes, stealing undergarments from clotheslines or homes before targeting victims. Others were simply opportunists.
   ''They were looking for open windows, unlocked doors, people moving around alone,'' he said. ''They were just looking for the opportunity to prey on someone.''

1.  A theme that let me use my own custom logo along with a title to the site.  
2. A theme that did not need a large picture in the header. 
3. A theme that allows for some sort of slider on the first page. 
4. A theme that includes links for social media like Facebook and Twitter in its header. 
5. A theme with a top menu bar. 
6. A top menu bar that was aesthetically pleasing to me -- a thin stripe with links on it, and not something that looked like tabs. 
7. A theme with a presentation page for the home page that's different from other pages. 
8. A theme that was accessible on multiple different platforms and responded nicely on mobile devices. 
9. A theme that gave me some choice about color scheme.  

•  A theme that let me use my own custom logo along with a title to the site.  This is surprisingly rare -- lots of pages allow only for one or the other, or you have to hack the code, which I don't do.  The UUA theme clearly lets you use the UUA logo along with a church title, and I'm betting allows churches to put their own chalice logo in.  
• A theme that did not need a large picture in the header.  The UUA Theme does not.
• A theme that allows for some sort of slider on the first page.  The UUA Theme does.
• A theme that includes links for social media like Facebook and Twitter in its header.  The UUA Theme does.
• A theme with a top menu bar.  The UUA Theme has top navigation. 
• A top menu bar that was aesthetically pleasing to me -- a thin stripe with links on it, and not something that looked like tabs.  The UUA Theme has this as well.
• A theme with a presentation page for the home page that's different from other pages.  The UUA Theme has this.
• A theme that was accessible on multiple different platforms and responded nicely on mobile devices.  The UUA Theme is.  
• A theme that gave me some choice about color scheme.  The UUA Theme does.  From the materials and demo site, I can't tell how much flexibility is here, but I can tell that there is some.

"They have something to say to every minister of the gospel who has remained silent behind the safe security of stained-glass windows. They have something to say to every politician who has fed his constituents with the stale bread of hatred and the spoiled meat of racism. They have something to say to a federal government that has compromised with the undemocratic practices of southern Dixiecrats and the blatant hypocrisy of right-wing northern Republicans. They have something to say to every Negro who has passively accepted the evil system of segregation and who has stood on the sidelines in a mighty struggle for justice. They say to each of us, black and white alike, that we must substitute courage for caution. They say to us that we must be concerned not merely about who murdered them, but about the system, the way of life, the philosophy which produced the murderers. Their death says to us that we must work passionately and unrelentingly for the realization of the American dream."

"Some districts, including many affluent suburban ones, reported little or no truancy. The Forest Hills schools outside Grand Rapids reported five truant students among 10,147 enrolled, and Bloomfield Hills in suburban Detroit just 32 out of 12,306. But Kentwood, another metropolitan Grand Rapids district, had 590 truant cases, representing 6.8 percent of its students, according to the data."

• Muslims, Jews, Buddhists, and any people of non-Christian faiths
• Atheists, agnostics, and the unchurched
• Single parents and unwed couples

My interim friends have told me I have overstated the case on interim preaching, and that there are many who always write fresh material or whose rewrites are extensive enough that it's not much of a time-saver to have old material to use.  I believe they're right, and apologize for overstating the case.  I think it's still true, however, that the time when sermon-writing takes the most time is early in ministry in general and after a number of years in a long-term ministry.  The longer you go in any pulpit the more you know you've used your best stories and examples.  Moving to a new church lets you use those pieces again, even if written into new sermons.  Early in ministry, in general, you have a lot of fresh examples, but are unused to the rhythm of regular preaching, which makes it harder.

So, turning to the focus of my last parts of this series, I've talked about how preaching in our religious tradition takes up a significant portion of the week, and a higher percentage for part-time ministries.  It's appropriate that this big percentage of our working hours goes into the production that is Sunday morning, since this is the most visible part of ministry and Sunday morning worship is the heart of the church still.  Even so, it's a lot of work for a one-time production, and it leaves less time for all those other parts of ministry which may be things that would attract the non-churched "nones," like web presence, social justice work, community building, adult religious education, and other writing and other public speaking and public presence. 

There are two things we can do to change the equation.  One is spend less time on Sunday worship.  The other is use the worship service more.

For the first (and less radical) option, I highly recommend the workshop on "Preaching by Heart" ( http://www.preachingbyheart.org) by Rev. Stephen Shick  and Rev. Dr. M'ellen Kennedy.  I went through the workshop last winter.  I'm a manuscript preacher and love the written word.  I love writing.  But I tried preaching extemporaneously from that point forward on a regular basis (less often this fall, but still using it), and the results were great.  Even though I still felt like it kept me from finding the exact perfect words that I might have chosen on paper, my congregation greatly appreciated the extemporaneous preaching, something they had always liked about my predecessor, Rev. Susan Smith.  And it saved a lot of time.

Shick and Kennedy argue convincingly that people today are suffering from spiritual disconnection, and the direct experience of connection more present in extemporaneous preaching is what they're longing for more than for the perfectly crafted theological argument.

Another way to change the equation by spending less time in worship preparation is through theme preaching, which is a movement that is sweeping our country.  The secret to this isn't that we're preaching on themes, it's that we're doing it in groups and then the groups can share resources -- stories, images, examples, quotations.  Each preacher can then frame those in their own way, but it saves a lot of research time.  Essentially we're getting that lectionary benefit that Christian ministers have by working with each other and sharing themes.

There are a number of theme-based groups, I think, across our movement.  But the two main ones I'm aware of are the "Soul Matters" group ( http://www.soulmatterssharingcircle.com) led by Scott Tayler (Congregational Life Director at the UUA) and the themes published by All Souls, Tulsa ( http://themebasedministry.org). 

I would guess that each of these tactics can decrease worship preparation anywhere from 25-50%.  For me, preaching extemporaneously probably saves me 5 hours of actual writing time, but all the other preparation time is the same, research particularly doesn't go away.  Soul Matters themes, on the other hand, changed things in the opposite way -- research is decreased by maybe as much as half, but the writing time is the same.  Since trying themes I've used less extemporaneous preaching, so I can't speak to how the two might work together, but it's conceivable that together they could decrease worship preparation time very significantly by decreasing both the writing and the research. 

Next and final: worship and the changing church -- using the worship service MORE.

I've talked about why UU sermon writing takes more time, why UU ministers don't preach every Sunday, and why the dynamics are tougher for part-time ministers.  Next I wanted to talk about some models for making this situation more workable, particularly in light of the changing dynamics of church life.  But before I do that, I want to talk about one more thing that really belongs in Part 1 or 2, which is for whom does sermon-writing take the most work?

My suspicion is that there are two categories of ministers who need the most time for sermon-writing.  The first is ministers who are new to the ministry.  These ministers don't have a large number of old sermons to draw from, although they have a handful from seminary and internship.  Their advantage is that their seminary learnings are fresh, and that they've had more recent experiences of being regular worshippers at other ministers' worship services, but they have a disadvantage of less experience in the work of writing sermons week after week without pause.

The second category of ministers who take more time for sermon-writing are those who have been in their current pulpits for several years.  Any bank of sermons they had coming into that pulpit has been used up, and they have to cover the same holidays for years running and bring new approaches each year. 

These two categories of ministers will need the most time for sermon-writing.  Those who will need the least time are those coming to a new pulpit from an old one, who have built up a bank of sermons from which to draw.  While every preacher will need new material to respond to events in the world and in the individual church, and most sermons will need a rewrite for a new context, these ministers are still at an advantage having large blocks of sermons that they can use from week to week.

This is particularly a useful feature in interim ministry, of course, because that ministry has all the regular work of ministry plus particular goals of the interim ministry period to achieve.  Having blocks of sermon-writing time freed up for the other work is important.  The down-side of this is that if the congregation gets used to the level of activity of an interim minister using old worship materials, then they may expect that same level out of their newly settled minister, as well.

Up next: changing models for the changing church

In the last couple of posts, I've outlined why it is that the sermon-writing process is different for UU ministers and why it is that we are not in the pulpit every Sunday.  And, of course, this has ramifications.  And the impact of this is different for bi-vocational (part-time) ministers.  It's important to look at this, since bi-vocational ministry is getting a lot of interest these days because of the increasing struggle of churches to afford full-time ministry, particularly in the changing religious landscape with fewer people in younger generations interested in traditional church.  The bi-vocational trend may need to look different in our UU churches than it does in other denominations.

Generally in our movement, it seems that half-time ministers preach twice a month for ten months of the year, or a total of 20 sermons.  They don't really get extra Sundays off for denominational leave; those are just scheduled into the half time that they're not working -- even though, of course, denominational work and continuing education is, indeed work.  Note that two half-time ministries would equal more than one full-time ministry -- a minister with two half-time ministries would have no off Sundays, and no Sundays free for continuing education, chapter meetings, and General and District/Regional Assemblies, unless that half-time minister was preaching at two churches on the same weeks at different times.

Now think about what percentage of a minister's time is devoted to preparing for and leading worship.  With a full-time minister, it might be as much as 20 hours a week on those weeks the minister is preaching, or 60 hours in a four-Sunday month.  If that minister is working, conservatively, 50 hours a week for those 4 weeks of the month (pretend this month is February that we're talking about), then that's 60/200 hours, or 30% of their time devoted to worship.

With a half-time minister, suppose that minister is working, again conservatively, 25 hours a week for four weeks of the month, and preaching twice using 40 hours devoted to worship preparation.  That's 40/100 or 40% of their time.  So the bi-vocational minister will need a greater percentage of their time for worship preparation. 

The problem is, what do you decrease and do less than half of?  Not pastoral care.  Trust me, you can't just refuse to answer every-other pastoral need.  You're doing 100% of that, not the 50% that half-time ministry would suggest.  So that's going to take a double percentage.  Now you need to cut something else even more.  Perhaps you only respond to half of the social justice issues in your community?  The major area to cut is committee work and administration, but administration is a hidden work of the minister to begin with, that congregations don't think you're spending much of your time on.

Basically, as every half-time minister knows, there's no such thing as half-time ministry. 

This becomes even more complicated for 3/4-time ministries, particularly when increasing from half-time ministries.  A church increasing from half time with 20 Sundays wants naturally to move to 30 Sundays for 3/4 time, which is virtually full-time ministry from a preaching standpoint.  With preaching and worship being a large percentage of the job. 

If, again, you start with assuming a 50-hour week, 3/4 time of a 4-week month would be 150 hours.  Three sermons at 20 hours each would be 60/150, or 40% again.   It's a slightly better struggle than half-time ministry, because you're still doing 100% of pastoral care and 100% of everything else that you can't really do less at, but now you're getting paid for 75% of it.  So it's closer to workable.  But the big problem is when you try to go to full-time ministry without any substantial increase in the number of Sundays, so what the congregation is getting for paying you 25% more is basically just the good feeling of knowing they're paying you fairly for the work you've already been doing, but they aren't going to see much more result for it.  I suspect, as a result, sadly, the 3/4-to-full jump is the hardest to make.

Ultimately, I want to say that bi-vocational ministry is harder in our tradition because the worship preparation time is harder in our tradition, and it's the most visible and desired part of ministry, and part-time ministers really are seldom given the amount of time they need to devote to it, without just working more and more hours for part-time pay.  This is one reason why you find ministers less willing, in our tradition, to consider part-time ministry. 

In my last post, I talked about one major reason why UU ministers usually don't preach every Sunday of the year, and why our tradition is different from Christian churches about this.  In addition, there are the following reasons:

First, and most importantly, we believe in the prophetic power of the laity.  We're not the only ones with something to say about our faith, about the big questions, about the future of the church, about social justice.  We have amazing lay people, and we believe in sharing our free pulpit with them.  This is a major difference from traditions which believe the ordained have a more direct connection with God, and a difference from traditions that don't let lay people preach without license.  While we often give ministers a quality control responsibility for how their pulpit is shared, we fundamentally believe in the "prophethood of all believers."  Our lay people are amazing, and we want to hear them.

Secondly, we have an increasing understanding that a healthy church is helped by a healthy minister, and that our ministers have high-stress jobs where they are always on call, and have little time to spend with family and friends who work or go to school in a regular work week.  We want ministers to have friends and to have family, and to get some time to spend with them.  That means they should limit their working evenings and have some Sundays off. 

So how often do we preach?  That varies tremendously.  But what I often hear is that the average UU minister (full-time) gets one Sunday off per month (for 10 months), plus 4 weeks of vacation and 4 weeks of study leave.  And then often added to this is up to 4 weeks of denomination leave for things like General Assembly, District/Regional Assembly, UUMA Institute and Chapter meetings, other continuing education, and study groups.  Some of these may not actually encompass a Sunday, but may take up enough of the week to make it difficult to prepare a sermon for Sunday.  So my math would say that full-time ministry would look like 52 Sundays a year minus 10 off minus 4 vacation minus 4 study leave minus up to 4 denominational leave, and the result would be 30-34 Sundays per year leading or participating in the worship life of the church. 

Next up:  Implications for bi-vocational ministry and implications for the changing church.

With all the discussion in recent months about bivocational ministry, it's worth discussion what implications it has for that central role of the minister: the preacher.

My assertion is that Unitarian Universalist preaching for our ministers is a very different thing from preaching in Christian traditions, and from what lay people experience when they preach.  And the reasons that this is different are also some of the reasons why many of our full-time ministers don't preach every Sunday.  Here are some of those reasons:

First, in many Christian traditions, there's an assumption that all your sermons are going to in some way tie back to that specific faith and its religious text, the Bible.  You've spent much of your seminary career studying that particular text and you know it well.  Your members are not surprised to hear the same stories coming up in worship again and again, and the same Biblical images.  You may have a lectionary that you use that tells you which passages to use for each week of the year.  You have online resources of sermon starters, stories, examples, and more, to go with that lectionary.  And you probably have a group of local or online colleagues who are doing that same lectionary that you can discuss the week's choices with.

Our lay people when they preach have something of a similar experience, in that they're often preaching on something that they're an expert on, or at least is their real passion.  And they may have months to prepare that one particular sermon.

Contrast both of these with the UU minister's experience.  While you've had four years of theological school, you're expected to be well-versed in not just our religious tradition of UUism, and not just that tradition plus Christianity, but that tradition, Christianity, and all the world's religions.  But then these world religions and theology while they may inform your preaching, will likely not comprise all of your topics.  It is a common experience for the UU preacher to tackle a number of new sermon topics each year, each of which might require extensive new reading in an area completely new to the preacher, and which may be a topic never used again. 

This is the number one reason I think our preaching takes a larger percentage of our time, and also why we don't preach every Sunday even while full-time. 

The amount of time it takes a minister will vary, but I've often heard colleagues saying it takes them two full days of sermon-writing, although most of our letters of agreement give us one sermon-writing day.  20 hours is a number I've heard multiple times, which would equal about half of a regular worker's full-time week.  That 20 hours may include research, meeting with musicians and worship associates, writing, and more.  It seems like a lot of time, but as central as Sunday morning still is to our tradition, and with our expectation of scholarly and original work, it's not surprising that we put so much emphasis on it.

Coming up next:
-- Other reasons UU ministers get some Sundays off
-- Implications for bivocational ministry
-- The changing church and implications for worship

There once was a minister who planned far ahead,

Not knowing that current events would instead

Make her wish her week’s sermon was not planned

So that she could respond to events in our land.

She had planned to give her whole sermon in rhyme.

When she gave it before, it was liked at the time.

It was a sermon that was given for a holiday, Earth Day,

And speaking in rhyme was an unusual way

To bring attention to the message of global warming

And all the climate trouble that’s forming

It’s still a relevant message, so she’ll give it next week,

But if it was next week’s sermon on art that you seek,

Well, don’t fret, because it’s likely a topic this year.

Ann Green, you see, is likely to steer

The sermon she purchased at auction that way.

And, so the message that you’ll hear today

Is not the one that was in your Bellnote.

Not the one that got the vote,

That was submitted when Cindy asked for your choice

Of sermon for her anniversary to voice.

Nevertheless, there’s more ways to celebrate,

This ten-year occasion, than just when we congregate.

A party at Elissa’s is coming on Saturday at seven.

Or seven thirty, either way, it’s sure to be heaven.

We’ll hope to see you there.  And again, come next week,

If it was the Lorax/Earth sermon you came here to seek.

If we must die, let it not be like hogs

Hunted and penned in an inglorious spot,

While round us bark the mad and hungry dogs,

Making their mock at our accursèd lot.

If we must die, O let us nobly die,

So that our precious blood may not be shed

In vain; then even the monsters we defy

Shall be constrained to honor us though dead!

O kinsmen! we must meet the common foe!

Though far outnumbered let us show us brave,

And for their thousand blows deal one death-blow!

What though before us lies the open grave?

Like men we’ll face the murderous, cowardly pack,

Pressed to the wall, dying, but fighting back!

He was my brother
Five years older than I
He was my brother
Twenty-three years old the day he died

Freedom rider
They cursed my brother to his face
“Go home, outsider,
This town is gonna be your buryin’ place

Calm desperation and flickering hope,
Reality grapples like a hand on the throat.
For you live in the shadow of ten feet of rope,
If you're Goodman and Schwerner and Chaney.

When black youth find it difficult or impossible to live up to these standards—or when they fail, stumble, and make mistakes, as all humans do—shame and blame is heaped upon them. If only they had made different choices, they’re told sternly, they wouldn’t be sitting in a jail cell; they’d be graduating from college. Never mind that white children on the other side of town who made precisely the same choices—often for less compelling reasons—are in fact going to college. The genius of the current caste system, and what most distinguishes it from its predecessors, is that it appears voluntary. People choose to commit crimes, and that’s why they are locked up or locked out, we are told. This feature makes the politics of responsibility particularly tempting, as it appears the system can be avoided with good behavior. But herein lies the trap. All people make mistakes. All of us are sinners.  All of us are criminals. All of us violate the law at some point in our lives.[ii]

Listen, I’m gonna be honest with you, and this is a practice I engage in every time I’m stopped by law enforcement. And I taught this to my son who is now 33 as part of my duty as a father to ensure that he knows the kind of world in which he is growing up. So when I get stopped by the police, I take my hat off and my sunglasses off, I put them on the passenger’s side, I roll down my window, I take my hands, I stick them outside the window and on the door of the driver’s side because I want that officer to be relaxed as possible when he approaches my vehicle. And I do that because I live in America.[vii]

One day I locked myself out of my car on Roberts Street and so I’m trying to break into my car with a coat hanger and a cop comes up. And he sees me doing it. He does not even ask me for ID or proof that that’s my car. Literally, the NOPD was like, hey you’re breaking into the car the wrong way. Let me help you. The cop was trying to help me break in. Now there is not a black man in this country 23 [years old] for whom that would’ve been the reaction.[viii]

…certainly we all want to live the well adjusted and avoid neurotic and schizophrenic personalities. But I must say to you this evening, my friends, there are some things in our nation and in our world to which I'm proud to be maladjusted. And I call upon you to be maladjusted and all people of good will to be maladjusted to these things until the good society is realized. I never intend to adjust myself to segregation and discrimination. I never intend to become adjusted to religious bigotry .I never intend to adjust myself to economic conditions that will take necessities from the many to give luxuries to the few, and leave millions of people perishing on a lonely island of poverty in the midst of a vast ocean of prosperity. I must honestly say, however much criticism it brings, that I never intend to adjust myself to the madness of militarism, and to the self-defeating effects of physical violence….  Yes, I must confess that I believe firmly that our world is in dire need of a new organization – the International Association for the Advancement of Creative Maladjustment. Men and women as maladjusted as the prophet Amos, who in the midst of the injustices of his day, cried out in words that echo across the centuries—"Let justice roll down like waters and righteousness like a mighty stream." As maladjusted as Abraham Lincoln, who had the vision to see that this nation could not survive half slave and half free. As maladjusted as Thomas Jefferson, who in the midst of an age amazingly adjusted to slavery, cried in words lifted to cosmic proportions—"We hold these truths to be self evident, that all men are created equal. That They are endowed by their creator with certain inalienable rights; that among these are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness." As maladjusted as Jesus of Nazareth, who could say to the men and women of his day “he who lives by the sword will perish by the sword.” Through such maladjustment we will be able to emerge from the bleak and desolate midnight of man's inhumanity to man, into the bright and glittering daybreak of freedom and justice.[xii]

I have lived that moment when, despite having some success and security, I could see no way out.
I have lived that moment when, despite knowing that there were people who would miss me, I thought they would be better off without me.
I have lived that moment when, despite being knowledgeable about mental illness and the tragedies of suicide, it just didn’t matter.

Exult O shores, and ring O bells!
But I with mournful tread,
Walk the deck my Captain lies,
Fallen cold and dead.   

• http://www.lovedforwhoyouare.org/you-are-whole/
• http://www.lovedforwhoyouare.org/cottleston-pie-and-love/

• http://www.tomschade.com/2014/07/water-water-everywhere-and-not-drop.html

Were there activists who were ahead of their time?  Well that was true in every human rights and civil rights movement, but the vast majority of Americans were just waking up to this issue and beginning to think about it, and grasp it for the first time, and think about their neighbor down the street who deserved to have the same rights as they did, or their son, or their daughter. It has been an extraordinarily fast, by historic terms social, political, and legal transformation and we ought to celebrate that instead of plowing old ground when in fact a lot of people, the vast majority of people, have been moving forward.  

“I did not grow up even imagining gay marriage and I don’t think you did either. This was an incredible new and important idea that people on the front lines of the gay right movement began to talk about and slowly, but surely, convinced others about the rightness of that position. When I was ready to say what I said, I said it.”

Proverb also worked with the UUs to shorten their seven core principles, making them easier to remember, and has suggested putting them into “some sort of acronym form so that they’re easier to pull up quickly in your brain,” Needham says. “We don’t know if that will fly.”

"We have in our Principles an affirmation of our faith which uses not one single piece of religious language. Not one. Not even one word that would be considered traditionally religious. And that is a wonderment to me; I wonder whether this kind of language can adequately capture who we are and what we're about."