On Sunday, our children gathered with Rev. Sasha after the service to cast their votes for the “Your Wish Is My Command” event. After the votes were tallied up, we had not one, not two, not three or four, but FIVE winners! Our 5-way tie is:

Movie Night
Karaoke Night
Ice Cream Social
Pizza Party
Pajama Party

Rather than try to break the tie, Rev. Sasha figured, “Why not do all 5 in one event?”

Thus, the Morristown Unitarian Universalist Fellowship will host a Movie Night Pajama Party on Saturday, June 7th, with a great film we can all sing along to while enjoying pizza and ice cream. Everyone in the Fellowship will be invited to wear their pajamas to our fun event and take turns stepping up to the mike to lead the singalong as we all watch the movie.

But we still have several details to hammer out, the most important of which is: What movie will we watch?! So, as Rev. Sasha promised, the Fellowship’s children are invited to help her plan our fun evening! If your child would like to help shape the event, please let Rev. Sasha know by emailing her by March 31st. We’ll then find a time for all of our planners (and their parents) to hammer out the details for our fun event.

We are excited to introduce a new service element on Sunday mornings aimed at enhancing our worship experience: “Minutes for Ministries.”

As you may know, Rev. Sasha occasionally faces the challenge of fitting a full sermon into our services while also accommodating announcements. To address this, we recently tried to limit the number of announcements at the beginning of our services, keeping them short and sweet to keep our services to under an hour and make our worship experience more newcomer-friendly. Research indicates that long announcements can drive away newcomers, especially younger folks. However, we understand that some members feel they don’t have adequate access to the pulpit to share all the great events and activities happening within our Fellowship.

While larger and younger congregations often exclude announcements from services entirely and rely on e-newsletters to keep everyone informed, we recognize that our small congregation and older membership have unique needs. Therefore, we will be experimenting with a potential solution over the next few weeks: “Minutes for Ministries.” This special section of our worship service will take place right after the Benediction, where all announcements unrelated to the morning’s worship experience will be made. Rev. Sasha encountered it at a neighboring congregation recently and thought that it might be a good fit for our community as well.

This week, our Worship Associate will deliver the morning’s announcements from the pulpit to get us started and model what this new part of the service might look like. In future weeks, we will open the floor, allowing all members who wish to make announcements a minute to speak from the pulpit. Our hope is that this will foster a more spiritual atmosphere throughout the service, provide adequate time for the sermon, and still allow sufficient time for announcements. Our hope is that services will still end on time if people delivering announcements are mindful about staying within a 1-minute time frame. However, members are welcome to leave the Meeting Room if the announcements run beyond 11:00 a.m. or if they prefer to keep up to date via our Fellowship publications. That being said, we ask if you do choose to depart during that time, that you be extra diligent about reading the announcements in our e-newsletter and order of service and that you depart the Meeting Room quietly to avoid disrupting others

By moving announcements closer to the end of the service, we aim to create a more welcoming environment for newcomers, young families, and older members alike and ensure that information about activities happening that day remains fresh in everyone’s minds. Out of respect for your fellow members, we kindly ask that you refrain from talking during the announcements and, if you are giving an announcement, to embrace the spirit of “Minutes for Ministries” by keeping your announcement to one minute or less. Additionally, please limit your announcements to information about Fellowship events and activities; this is not a space for general announcements about events in the wider community (unless the Fellowship is participating in those events.)

Finally, we value your feedback and encourage you to share your thoughts with Rev. Sasha after we’ve had a chance to try out this new process a bit. Let’s give it a try and see how it enhances our worship experience!