Sunday Service: 10:30 a.m. in person or on

Worship

Worship Celebration

Every Sunday @ 10:30 am

The United Church of Christ at Valley Forge has a strong spirit of celebration that is evident in our Sunday worship service. Our worship service is a time for gathering as God’s family to celebrate God’s presence through scripture readings, expressive, heartfelt preaching, beautiful music, prayer, meditation, and the opportunity to share joys and concerns with each other.

We participate in our faith through reading scripture, lighting the Christ candle, serving communion, leading Children’s Sharing Time, and offering our singing voices and our musical instruments in praise.

Our services are Sundays at 10:30 a.m. and you can join in person or online. New to UCC or UCCVF? You are welcome to attend services on Zoom. You are always welcome to attend in person.

If you want to join us in person, our church including the sanctuary, office, fellowship hall, and classrooms are all wheelchair accessible.

Sermons

Our congregation values preaching that is soul stirring and thought provoking. We like being challenged, as well as comforted and guided spiritually, morally, and intellectually. Our sermons are usually theologically progressive, grounded in scripture and in an understanding of the historical context, for the sake of a live changing message that is relevant to our lives and times.

Sunday services at UCC Valley Forge are a way to recharge, recenter, reconnect and reclaim ourselves as we head into a new week.

Uplifting our voices to God

During worship, our music ministry provides a beautiful and spiritual backdrop to the scripture readings, sermons, and prayers. Opportunities for praise and reflection are found in the variety of traditional and contemporary hymns, varied instrumental accompaniments and adult choir.

The choir is always welcoming new members and new ideas of sharing musical gifts in worship. Please feel free to contact our church office if you are interested in joining our music ministry.

A Worship Service for Everyone - All-Ages

One of the priorities our congregation has been working on in recent years is teaching children/youth about worship and offering them opportunities to worship. To move in this direction of helping our children and youth mature into adult disciples, the worship committee, all-ages worship team, and staff members have been looking at how our current worship service could be more welcoming of youth/children. Over the past years we have made some small changes to the weekly worship service (i.e. shaker instruments for children who may be too young to read song lyrics) and scheduled quarterly intergenerational services during our school year when children/youth joined us for the entire worship service (younger children, birth-K, were still welcomed in the Nursery).

Since 2018 we have incorporated a monthly All-Ages Worship service schedule. This will help us try more things, allow more people to experience this worship service, and solicit more feedback that will help us better live into our UCCVF priority.

These services are intended to be a “regular Sunday worship” that better include and integrate our young people. We have changed some elements, we have left other elements as they typically are. We have been and will continue to evaluate this experience and continue to pray and reflect about next steps to help us be a more fully inclusive community of adults, children, and youth so that we can better form disciples and grow as disciples of Christ who will multiply God’s healing life in the world.

Worship, Learning, and Fellowship for everyone

Including people of all ages in the life of our church is important to us.

Sunday School, including infant and toddler care, is offered to all children. All children and youth experience the beginning of the worship service with their family, and after Children’s Sharing Time, midway through the service, the children and youth leave worship for their classes. Of course, the children and youth are always welcome to remain in worship with their families for the entire service, if desired.

In addition to Sunday School, the children are encouraged to participate in the worship experience by volunteering to light the Christ candle, assist with ushering duties and participate in the children’s and youth choirs.

Sunday School Curriculum

The Sunday School curriculum for all ages is centered on God, Jesus, and the Holy Spirit. All our classes are led by a core of dedicated church members with two adults per class.

Each Sunday school lesson, regardless of which age-level, is centered around a Bible story. The themes in that story are then highlighted by the activities and discussions in the class. The elementary and middle school classes are designed to take place within the time frame of the worship service.

Baptism & Confirmation

In our faith tradition, most (but not all) youth were baptized as infants or young children, which was a celebration of their inclusion in the Body of Christ. At that time, parents and the faith community made promises to nurture our children in the Christian faith so that they would be able to “affirm their baptism,” to claim for themselves their continuing journey in Christ. Confirmation class is one way the church honors our promises to our children, offering an opportunity to deepen their faith and understanding of God, as well as better equipping them to choose to enter into their own covenants as disciples of Christ and members of the church.

This ministry is usually offered every other year to youth in late Middle School or early High School. The Pastor has a primary role in leading this class.