Monthly Resources for Congregations
Did you know our Rural Resource Minister, Rev Craig Bosman, sends out a monthly email with a wide range of worship resources to help with Sunday service preparation and delivery?
Our Rural Resource Minister, Rev Craig Bosman, sends out a monthly email with a wide spectrum of resources to help with Sunday worship service preparation and delivery. It contains everything you would need to put together a Sunday worship service and is sent out 3 to 4 weeks in advance. These resources don’t only go out to regional, rural, and remote churches, they are also sent out to Perth metropolitan congregations who are in need of support. Some receive the resources because they don’t have a Minister in placement, or are small, or generally under-resourced.
If you wish to receive these resources for your congregation, please email Craig [email protected]. The resources are sent out via email and post, but email is preferred due to financial and environmental concerns (only four churches in WA receive them via post).
Here’s an overview of what’s generally included:
Full Weekly Liturgies
L3 (Liturgy, Learning Life), Words for Worship, Fig Tree Worship Resource and Salt Bush. As licensed, paid-for resources, L3 and Words for Worship are included as attached Word documents.* As free resources, only the links to Fig Tree and Salt Bush are provided. These four liturgies include everything needed for a Sunday service including acknowledgments, prayers, hymns and song recommendations, embodied practices, message helps, blessings, and more.
Sermon Help
The following three sermon supports for each week are included, attached as Word documents: Bill Loader’s First Thoughts, Sacredise Reflections, and UMC Discipleship Preaching Notes. Each document has the source link from which the sermon help was taken – accessing these links leads to a wide range of additional helps including suggested videos, prayers, intergenerational activities, and much more.
Video Sermons
Project Reconnect and Salt Bush provide weekly video sermons which follow the lectionary. Both are home-grown Australian UCA offerings (from over East) and include an all-age video and a main-message video. These can be projected (for audio & video) or simply played to be listened to (video only – e.g. over a phone connected to a Bluetooth).
Livestream Links
Links to three of our Uniting Church WA congregations are included: All Saint’s Floreat, South Perth, and Bunbury St Augustine’s. Others will be added as they become known and available. Did you know you can apply for a small grant to lease a laptop, data projector and/or large TV screen and router for 3 years (through the UCA at favourable rates?)
Music Support
If you’d like choir-sung hymn videos from Together in Song (to be played via audio and/or video) then Project Reconnect’s Song and Extras is a good option. As mentioned above, the L3 and Words for Worship Liturgies are full of suggested hymns and songs (Together in Song (TiS) specifically, and others). The L3 Introductory pages (included in the email as a Word document) also include several helpful few websites including, for example, Singing from the Lectionary, Together to Celebrate, and more.
Extra Links
A variety of other options are suggested in a document with a list of links. For example:
- Ian J Mobsby’s Substack – a weekly contemplative reflection on the weekly Gospel text;
- UCA Assembly Lectionary Resources – providing a range of links to other helpful resources;
- Laughing Bird – liturgical resources with an Australian voice including weekly sermons and prayers, and much more;
- The Australian Liturgical Almanac – a unique resource with a daily office including home-grown prayers;
- Rev Chris Crause’s Hymns – new words to known tunes;
- Merredin Uniting Church YouTube Channel – bible studies and previous week’s services;
- Transforming Worship facebook group – a great online community that shares helpful resources on a weekly basis in preparation for the Sunday Service; and many more.
Lastly, additional resources are included occasionally for special days or seasons on the Church Calendar e.g. Season of Creation, Reconciliation Week, Sorry Day, Day of Mourning, UnitingWorld Sunday, Frontier Services Sunday, Older Person Sunday, Refugee Week, etc.
If you have any resources to suggest to Craig, please let him know of them – he wants to provide the best possible selection of resources to the churches. You can email him here – [email protected]
*Please note that we currently have an agreement with the South Australia Synod whereby we purchase three licenses each of L3 and Words for Worship. As our distribution list grown, we will increase this, however, please bear in mind that if you receive these resources, they are licensed, paid-for resources, and therefore cannot be distributed further than the email list. Those who are able to subscribe to L3 and W4W directly are encouraged to do so at their website here.
