Let me suggest worship committees are not needed - the work of worship is for the liturgist - ie the minister.   She designs and creates weekly worship - now there is another role where the meeting time is less often - it is to work with the liturgist and music person to see the quarter in adance - communion and other events - to have lay readers organized and themes if that is the direction of the church-  sometimes ushers fall under this and need to be organized=  this means a small committee or one or two persons.

I think you and I are more or less on the same page overall, at least for services where the minister is leading. For minister-led services, the minister does do the work of planning the actual service. The worship committee/team's role is to provide the supporting infrastructure. For instance, we don't have a music director or regular musician, just two piano students/grads from the local Faculty of Music. The worship committee's music coordinator sets up their schedule, then passes that schedule to the minister so he can work with the pianist schedule for each Sunday.  Ditto the service leaders (who do more than lay readers do in most of the UCCs that I've been to).  Sometimes, we are also the sounding board, esp. with a new minister who may be trying something new and wants to gauge how the congregation may react.

It is conceivable that the minister will take on some of this scheduling/management work himself but we had a minister who tried to do everything and fumbled the ball pretty badly at times, so during our three years of interim ministry, I and the interim ministers have largely agreed on having the worship committee do the scheduling and the minister has focussed on actually preparing and delivering the service.

However, in my UU fellowship, there is usually 1 Sunday a month, sometimes 2, that is lay-led or requires a guest speaker. It is the role of the worship committee to fill those Sundays, make sure the lay or guest leader has what they need, make sure deadlines for getting bulletins prepared and such like prepared are met, etc. The minister may be involved in a consultative role, but lay Sundays are ultimately our responsibility. My fellowship is blessed with some experienced service leaders (self included) but that doesn't mean it's always easy to fill those Sundays. I'm thinking of seeing if I can organize some teams (2-3 people each) from our roster of service leaders to each take a lay-led service and organize it. However, I need a core team first to make sure that the nuts and bolts are dealt with.

Mendalla

Yes we are on the same page = would like to have you on my worship committee when I was full tim - especially at Zion

My church has around 50 people who normally attend. The worship planning is usually done by the Pastor's wife who serves as our Worship Leader. In consultation with a few others who comprise the worship team, as well as the Pastor himself, she organizes the order of worship and chooses the songs we will sing each week. She also designs the powerpoint slides that will be shown during the services. As a member of the worship team, my responsibility is to show up for singing practices and help lead the congregation in song. 

I'm going to quite interested to see what role our new minister's partner (fiancee, not sure when they're getting married) takes when they arrive. She's begun the process of becoming a UU minister herself so has some training already. We didn't hire them as a team (but I don't think your church did either, given it's attitude to women in ministry?) but I suspect that they may still function as one to a certain extent, which seems to be what's happening in your Baptist fellowship. I do regret missing the Wondergathering and not meeting you (and your Yobo)  in person. There seems to be an odd amount of commonality between UU and Fellowship Baptist fellowships.

One role I will never take in worship, BTW, is song leader. My singing is legendary for causing vaguely  apocalyptic events like animals crying in pain and people rending veils and weeping .

Mendalla

Jobam;

Good for you that you have the time to put together graphic support for the sermons. For the last 5 years I've been putting together the ppt version of each week's hymns (each slide is illustrated with a congregational photo, which takes more time to put together, but is more enthusiastically received by the congregation). That takes 1 - 2 hours every week (I'm a volunteer).  Adding sermon graphics would probably make it unmanageable for me (I get the bulletin Friday and Fri eve usually means no family activities because that's when II am put the ppt together, although in a pinch I still have Sat if Fri gets booked up). Prayers are easy because they are just cut-and-paste, but I draw the line at Psalms, which would involve a lot of transcription, not to mention a lot of slides (it's one thing I would prefer the congregation use hymnals for).

Just musing here - I wonder if the reason that the adoption rate of projection is slow in Canada (especially vis-a-vis US) is the time commitment involved.

To respond to Mendalla's OP, though, our worship committee really isn't directly involved in running worship. Meetings provide the opportunity to toss a few ideas around and get feedback, as well as to assign specific roles like serving teams for communion or usher teams.  It sounds like Mendalla has a more activist role in mind (or by necessity).  I happen to think that the more ways congregants can be involved in worship, the better, but other than the choir, the main participatory roles at our church involve ushering/welcoming/collecting offering, running the sound board, and reading scripture. Those roles are set up using a roster system, but it is becoming increasingly difficult to plan ahead as fewer are will to commit when their slot is months away.

You are bang on. As a volunteer who produces his own show in the Cable TV industry, I know how much pre and post production work goes into what you see on the TV acreen. It's huge. Pastors do not have time to be video producers for their sermons and it's a huge job for any volunteer. Powerpoint, IMHO, is a useless waste of time and skill and not what worship is about. But then I'm a bit of a Luddite on this one.

We also do not honour or appreciate a well-preached sermon. Having heard many good American preachers, none of whom use Powerpoint, I know what a good sermon can be like. In that way Powerpoint is a crutch. A good sermon can easily be 40 minutes and you would not know it.

Amen, DKS. I go to church to hear a sermon, not read slides. Powerpoints are great for seminars, lectures, etc., and I could see using one for some types of UU services (we do have some that are basically lectures) but not for a straight sermon.

Mendalla

UU worship committees are more activist pretty much by definition. In my fellowhship, we normally have one service a month that is lay or guest led and worship is responsible for organizing those services. Even with minister-led services, we try to have more of a team approach depending on the minister and what's planned for the service. Our last interim would even have the lay service leader choosing and delivering the opening and closing words (= Call to Worship and Benediction in UCC worship) and her role was mostly the sermon, readings, and meditation (the middle part of the service, more or less).

Mendalla

We use powerpoint for hymns and the scripture the sermon is delivered sans embellishment except inthe case where the minister has a short video to cement his point.

I have a dumb question for you - since when is the sermon the sole part of worship?  If the Minister screw's up the sermon does that mean it has been a total waste of an hour or so???

Your system is much more hands on than ours.

WE have a worship committee but they act as consultation for the minister, works on changes to be made, proposals ....

The weekly service is coordinated by the minister.  He/she is the liason with the others involved.  With the organist about the upcoming themes, anthems, hymns, with the lay readers......

I think the musicains you have should liase directly with the minster, why add a level of middle management.  Ask them to work out a schedule between them, week on and off or month on and off or whatever works.  They need to take the responsibility to ensure that someone covers each week. and that they deal with the minster about what is needed.

Have a coordinator of lay readers to set up a schedule.  That could be done quarterly and given to the minster.  Then it is simple for the minster to call the readers the week before to give the scriptures.

If you church has no staff or sexton then yes soemone needs to deal with cleaning, candles, flowers.....  Again, a rotating duty roster woudl help.  WE do it for ushers.  Everyone knows that they are on teh second Sunday of each month.....  SO a team of 4 or 5 people could easily alternate weeks .  All that is needed is a list of duties to perform and a stock of supplies.  I would assume that whoever buys the toilet paper and office supplies can add in the candles.

The sermon and scripture are the core of worship, yes. So is prayer. But who is to decide if the sermon is a screw up? Preaching is like throwing paint against a wall. Everyone has a different idea about what they heard. From that perspective, it's impossible to screw up. Poor delivery, OTOH, can mess up a good sermon.  

It can for some people (or so I've found). Unless you're doing a communion or other ritual type service, the sermon is seen by many as the climax or focus of the event. Not saying it should be that way, but that's how it tends to work for some.

For my part, I take in the whole service (and when I do a service, I try to make sure all bits fit together to make a cohesive whole) and try to treat it holistically. A badly done sermon won't ruin the whole service for me if the rest is well done, but it may mean that I don't get the intended message. Similarly, a brilliant sermon can elevate an otherwise mundane service to an extent, but doesn't change that fact that the rest of the service didn't do much for me.

Mendalla

You've pretty much described what I'm trying to implement. Great minds and all that, eh? We can't rely on the minister to do it all because the minister doesn't even do every service (I've commented on this elsewhere in the thread).

Mendalla

That's pretty much how we work.

I hear ya, but that is why I get the bulletin by Wed.  Yes, you are correct it can take 1 - 5 hours depending on the service but I look at it as my contribution to my church.  I really like doing it.  it is a creative outlet for me.  For example, on the August long weekend 6 of us spent 12 hour days running a canteen to raise money for the church and it was a lot of work.  The powerpoint (or Sunday Plus) is like relaxing and being creative........