An Update

An Update

Dear Friends,

I thought I’d take this opportunity to update you on a number of things…

Firstly about Worship Notes.  The final notes for Creationtide have been added to this coming Sunday’s file, all the October notes have been up for some time and now November’s have been completed.  November includes notes for Remembrance and Safeguarding Sundays.  We’re working on December’s material now.  You can access these via the link above or by going to urc.org.uk then clicking on Your Faith and then Prayer and Worship and then Worship Notes.  

Secondly I’ve been asked a few times recently about the various recourses we produce in addition to the Worship Notes.

We create booklets, which we send in advance, of the Daily Devotions to be printed out locally and given to folk who don’t have access to the Internet, who prefer things on paper or who might be interested in reading and understanding the Bible more and who would value a booklet as a taster.  These are sent out in Large Print (18 point on A4 sides) or as a booklet (ready to print and fold).  The latest set are here.  You can subscribe to the email list that sends these out here.

As you know we send out a recording and the script of a service every Sunday and at other major festivals too.  This material is what is used to create the Worship Notes mentioned above but is also used to create resources to help local churches with their own worship.  Elders and lay preachers may use the Worship Notes to put a service together, but complete services can be downloaded ahead of time too.  A PowerPoint file can be downloaded with audio recordings of the hymns, prayers and readings and video recordings of the person leading worship giving the introduction, sermon, and blessing.  I lead this service on the first Sunday of the month and always include a celebration of Holy Communion.  The PowerPoint file could be adapted so local folk give the readings and prayers or play a musical instrument for the hymns or even change the hymns.  We give the full script to allow this to happen, a basic order of worship to print and give to people as well as the audio file to distribute to housebound folk ahead of time.  Local churches would need to have their own copyright licences in place to use the hymns if they project, or print, the words.  We send this material out a month ahead of time, so at the start of September we sent the links to October’s material which you can see here.  If you’d like to receive this material please sign up here.  

As you can imagine all this material involves a lot of work from the ministers and lay preachers who prepare services for us, and from our team of Daily Devotion writers.  There’s also a lot of work which happens after that work has been submitted – editing the recordings of the Devotions which are then disseminated as podcasts, preparing the sound, audio, PowerPoint and Word files for the services, and getting all the material loaded into the email programme.  The URC is currently recruiting a Digital Content Assistant who will work with me in the Ministries Department and also do some work for Nicola Furley-Smith our Deputy General Secretary (Ministries).  The job is a part time role (21 hours a week) and home based.  All the details are on the link, above, and the closing date for applications is 12 noon on Monday 13 October 2025 with an interview date of  Tuesday 4 November 2025.  Do share the details far and wide as we’d love to have a good field to recruit from so that we continue to offer such a range of resources to the Church.

With every good wish

Andy

The Rev’d Andy Braunston
Minister for Digital Worship