Hull Unitarian Church

Welcome to the Unitarian
place of worship in Hull.

The church of the open mind:
We do not stop thinking at the church door!

Hull Unitarians are a congregation of religious liberals who cherish wide differences of religious opinion and belief. Together we explore and celebrate life as a spiritual journey. We search for meaning and truth whilst respecting the best in all faith traditions. We encourage people to think for themselves.

Worship

We meet on most Sundays of the year at 11.00am.

On the last Sunday of every month we have an evening service 'Alternative Worship Experience'. This is an interactive gathering without hymns, organ or sermon, usually consisting of readings, prayers, poems, music and silence, usually lasting 30-40 minutes and followed by an open space for discussion and reflection. This is normally a smaller service of 6 -10 people and is an opportunity for sharing a more intimate sacred space.

Please join us for worship. We sing, we reflect, we pray or meditate together. We often listen to an address prepared by the worship leader. We draw from sources of insight both traditional and modern. We may not think exactly alike, but we can worship together.

For weddings, child namings, funerals, memorial services and other special ceremonies to suit individual needs, please contact the Minister.

History

...from Bowl Alley Lane to Park Street.

The roots of our church lie in seventeenth century Hull - dangerous times for Dissenters. There were many occasions when worshippers had to meet secretly in private houses. The congregation was established in 1672. The first building (1691) was in Bowl Alley Lane. The move to Park Street came in 1881 and the present building dates from 1977. Leonard Chamberlain was one of the first trustees. His trust still supports the church and also almshouses in Hull and Selby. A notable former member of our church was Dr Alderson, the senior physician of Hull Infirmary in the nineteenth century.

Activities

Our Reaching Out Club manages a Friday coffee morning at the church and invites charities to display items for sale. Money raised goes to charity. The church also has a full programme of activities including music and literary evenings, games evenings, a Christmas Candlelight Supper, discussions and adult religious education meetings. We have an interest in inter-faith activities.

We have a regular social evening on the first Wednesday of every month at 7:00 p.m., when our literary group meets. This alternates between formal presentations and informal get-togethers with a variety of themes, blending the lighter and more serious of words and music. We have had evenings on Dickens, Conan Doyle, Victorian Music Hall, and 'Whodunit - the Moral Dimensions of Detective Fiction.' These evenings also feature a sumptuous buffet and a decent glass of wine.

Once a month, after the Friday coffee morning we have a congregational outing to a cinema matinee at Hull Screen, preceded by a fish and chip lunch.

The church is used during the week by many local people, for example, for Yoga and Tai Chi.

Minister

Rev. Tom McCready

'I gave up a prestigious career as a lorry driver at the age of 40, and went to university as a mature student where I did a degree in 'Religion and Modernity'. It was at this time I became involved in Unitarianism and soon felt that 'I did not decide to become a Unitarian. I discovered that I had always been a Unitarian.'

My particular theological interests are 'Unitarians and the Bible' - bringing a critical, liberal perspective to the Bible; and 'Unitarians and World Religions' especially on the meeting points between Eastern and Western spiritual perspectives.

Contacts

Hull Unitarian Church, Park Street, Hull, HU2 8TA.

Directions: Go north up Park Street and look for a large white board on your left, after the end of Londesborough Street.

For further information please contact:

Minister:
Rev. Tom McCready
Tel: 01482 867804
Email:

Secretary:
Brigitte Altemoos
Tel: 01482 449844

Reflections

A selection of original prayers and reflections
by Rev. Tom McCready, minister with Hull Unitarians.

This Unitarian Believes

'Well, what do Unitarians believe?', You might have heard asked. Or 'Unitarians! They don't believe in anything!' You've heard that said.

I belong to this church because I am interested in the attempt to formulate the religious response to the spiritual demands, problems and possibilities of our times. I belong to this church because I am passionate about the search for a way of being religious, and a religious way of being that is modern and mature, that has intellectual credibility and emotional integrity in equal measure; that allows us to live with simplicity clarity and compassion in an increasingly complex, confused and conflict-ridden world.

I belong to a Church where there is scope for passion and poetry in the practice of religion.

I belong to a church where human diversity is not merely tolerated, but is welcomed and celebrated.

I belong to a church where we are not afraid and not ashamed of the shapes and colours of the human heart.

I belong to a church where human frailty is not regarded as a grievous fault but as the glorious depth wherein God dwells.

And I believe that the God who is the creator and sustainer of the universe is the God who loved us all into being; that God is bigger than any belief, is greater than all our imaginings; that all our words and all our arts cannot begin to contain the endless splendour of God's all-creating love. I believe that God's voice can be heard in the holy writings of the world' s religions and that the writings of the Christian tradition have a special depth and delicacy, a special range and resonance and that all the poetry of the human heart is present in the words of Jesus. But God speaks to all the nations, to all his people, in their own languages.

And I believe God also speaks in the sunset and the sunrise and the pattern of the stars; and in the rainfall; and in the rainbow; and in the spray of blossom on the bough.

I believe that we find the presence of God within ourselves when we learn to look upon a suffering world, not with fear and bitterness, but with love and humility.

I believe that we are most fully ourselves when we walk with God in wisdom and that humility before God is the greatest wisdom, and that humility before God is the foundation of all hope of happiness in this world.

Now I ask you, are these the words of one who does not believe in anything?

What do you want from a service?
What do you want from worship?

I want worship to be a celebration, a celebration and an affirmation.
I want worship to be a celebration of the human spirit in all its diversity,
And of human consciousness in all its creativity.
I want worship to be an affirmation of the divine depth
Of the eternal spark, of the sacred centre within each human self
It matters not at all whether we call it God or call it anything else
Or leave it nameless
As long as we meet to make a space where it may be celebrated.

I want worship to be a celebration of all the ways
In which we are connected to each other through God
And an affirmation of all the ways
In which we are connected to God through each other.

I want worship to be a sharing of heart and mind
And a sharing of all the difficulties and disappointments of life
And I want a sermon to remind me that
beyond all the difficulties and disappointments of life
Beyond all the stupidity and brutality in the world
In spite of everything that is wrong in the world
There is at the heart and at the root of everything
Something that is utterly and wonderfully right.

I want worship to remind me of the joy and love
And wonder and wisdom that spring from the human heart
I want a sermon to remind me of the richness and mystery
And heart-breaking beauty of the spirit that shapes the human heart.
And I want a sermon to help me or guide me or to give me a glimpse
Of how I might come closer to these things in my own life.

That's what I want from worship.
And if you think that's asking too much
If you think that's expecting an impossible perfection
Then all I want, is for all of us
To attempt the impossible.
And not to settle for anything less
Than the finest failure we can make.

We pray for a religion that is not a set of preconceived beliefs,
but a pattern of living
In tune with the land with the seasons, and with human needs,
with the moods and movements of the human heart.
We pray for a religion of passion and reason,
A religion of poetry and story and drama.

We pray that our religion will be
A religion of forgiveness
Of wisdom and of gentleness
Of the wisdom of gentleness

Let the symbols of religion not be those
of guilt and sin, of the darkness of death
but those of renewal and redemption
the rolling aside of the stone,
of friendship and fellowship
of a loaf and a fish,
let our symbols be
the symbol of life and light
Of warmth and sharing,
The sunrise,
And a chalice and a flame

Let our religion be as old as sleep
and as new as tomorrow's dawn,
and let our covenant be
the loving and joyful acceptance of the natural world
in all its shapes and colours, in all its seasons;
and the loving and joyful acceptance
of all the shapes and colours of human desire:
of the heart in all its seasons.

And let our God be
a God who is both mystery and certainty,
A God of all hopes, of all hearts,
God of all joys and of all sorrows,
God of all loves and of all lovers.

Who do you pray to if you believe in prayer,
but do not believe in God?

And who, or what do you pray to, if you belief that the sacred depth that binds us together and holds us forever cannot be separated from the reality of ourselves, in order to be prayed to?

Where do you aim your prayers if you truly believe that the beauty and grace and glorious frailty of the human spirit is all the God we need?

If there is a God who listens, then he or she is listening in the people gathered here. And if the great creator spirit who was before the world began is present here among us, it is in the hearts and in the hopes of the people gathered here that that spirit is within reach. most real, most near, and most fully with us.

Let us pray together;

Creator spirit, spirit of love and renewal from which we all spring and in which we all share, I send my prayer to you, I share my deepest fears and dreams with you; grant me, I humbly ask, that which I most need: Not pride nor glory nor worldly success; But rain for my roots and room to grow.

We send our prayer to you, we share our deepest fears and dreams
with you; grant us, we humbly ask, that which we most need:
Not pride nor glory nor worldly success;
But rain for our roots and room to grow.

Hear me, spirit of love and unity
And grant me, I ask, that which I need most:
Rain for my roots and room to grow
And a place to belong
And friends to forgive me when I go wrong

We send our prayer to you, we share our deepest fears and dreams
with you; grant us, we humbly ask, that which we most need
Not pride nor glory nor worldly success;
But rain for our roots and room to grow.
And a place to belong, and friends to forgive us when we go wrong.

I am the singing of the wind

And I am the arc of the rain
I am the endless light that was
Before everything began.
I am the dawn, I am the storm,
That pounds on the door of the soul
I am the still small voice that says
You shall be healed, you shall be whole.
When all that falls has failed and passed
I am what remains
In all the world's clamour and crash
I quietly proclaim
There's a law, there's a way, there's a choice
There is love in the heart of chaos
And love has a voice.
In the wind and the rain
In your joy and your pain
I am near
I am called the Bright Rider
And I am the destroyer of fear.

I am the light that shines upon
The tragic blankness of the heart
I am the bright, transcendent hurt
That feeds the wounded healer's art.
I am as far as the countless stars
That dance across the Milky Way
I am as vast as the darkness
And I am only a heartbeat away
I am the light that shines in the mind
When the heart is not afraid
I am the fire that burns in the heart
When the self has been unmade
When the light and the fire unite, I rise
I am love in the heart of chaos
And love does not tell lies.
With your loss and your gain
With your joy and your pain
Gather here.
I am called the Bright Rider
And I am the destroyer of fear.

Oh Father of the Universe
Oh Mother of all things

Oh You who in the very first
Did breathe life into empty dust
In the beginning was the word.
Oh you who made the mighty kings,
Who made all gentle, broken things
Be here with us.

Oh Mother of the Universe
Oh Father of all things
Oh You who on that first day
Did breathe life into empty clay
In the beginning was the way.
Oh you who made the mighty kings
Who made all gentle, broken things
Be here with me.

And let your deepest truth unfold,
And this, your finest art, behold;
A gentle, broken thing made whole

When the Dark Night of the Soul is done

And the weary sands of disbelief have run
And the broken-hearted, haunted night has gone
Comes the Morning, comes the Dawn.
In the hiss of the dust and the roar of the dew
You will be there with us, we will be there with you
We shall see the tide of life returning
And we shall be together in God's Morning.

Those who die to fear and envy, those who die to hate and lies
They shall know the joy of plenty, they shall see the spirit rise;
They shall know the quiet splendour that blessed the Earth in Galilee
They shall know the deep surrender that woke beneath the Buddha's tree:
They shall see the tide of life returning
They shall live forever in God's Morning
They shall live forever in God's Morning.

A Preacher's Prayer

God of the still mountain
God of the flowing stream
God of every human hope
And of every human dream,

God of the falling leaf
And God of the thrusting seed
God of human longing
And God of human need,

God of the brightest star
And God of the smallest spark
God who dwells in the inmost light
And beside us, in the dark,

God of story
God of rhyme
Grant, by your grace
That for this brief time,

As I speak for us
When we speak with you
May my words be wise
May my words be true

For the gentle spirit
For the troubled mind
May my words be soft
May my words be kind,

For the untried soul
Where greatness sleeps
May my words be strong
May my words be deep.