Kristin Maier, author of A Good Telling: Bringing Worship to Life with Story (Skinner House Books, 2013) shares the first in a series of tips for good storytelling. Purchase A Good Telling at the UUA Bookstore.

Good stories are central to good worship. As a Time for All Ages, as part of a sermon, or as part of a multigenerational service, stories engage our hearts and minds and help us grow.

Stories from Other Unitarian Universalist (UU) Sources

Storytelling in Worship

✳ Pssst! Have you visited our Storytelling page? It's filled with tips, how-to's, and lots of resources!

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Displaying 1 - 5 of 5

  • Change can be uncomfortable. Like any time we learn a new technology, it can take a little while to adjust.
    Time for All Ages | January 12, 2023 | From WorshipWeb
    Tagged as: Challenge, Change, Faith, Identity, Living Our Faith, Seven Principles, Unitarian Universalism, WorshipWeb, Worship
  • Today I’m going to tell a story about a girl who was searching for a porpoise. Now, as you probably know, a porpoise is a sea mammal in the dolphin family. Porpoises are smaller and shyer than dolphins. They are more difficult to find, but porpoises are very important. Minister (or other Worship...
    Time for All Ages | By Chrissy Bushyager | May 6, 2019 | From WorshipWeb
    Tagged as: Beginnings, Caring, Commitment, Discernment, Environment, Identity, Living Our Faith, Meaning, Purpose, Responsibility
  • [We suggest that the Worship Leader act out the relevant parts of this message: e.g clutch a bag tightly; let the contents spill; hold it like a "club" for bopping congregants over the head.] Babies don’t believe anything. Babies aren’t born Buddhists or Baptists or believers of any sort. But...
    Time for All Ages | By Gary Kowalski | September 8, 2016 | From WorshipWeb
    Tagged as: 4th Principle (Truth & Meaning), Acceptance, Belief, Credo, Faith, Freedom, Identity, Integrity, Living Our Faith, Reason, Unitarian Universalism
  • Sister Goose swam in the pond, happy as could be. Now and then, she ducked her head down to nibble a little bit here, and nibble a little bit there. She took no more than her fill of those succulent underwater plants, for she knew that the pond belonged to everyone....
    Story | By Faye Mogensen | June 8, 2016 | From WorshipWeb
    Tagged as: #BlackLivesMatter, 2nd Principle (Justice, Equity, & Compassion), 6th Principle (World Community), America, Anti-Oppression, Direct Experience, Division, Identity, Justice, Race/Ethnicity
  • This Time for All Ages is greatly enhanced by visual elements. If you're able to create a slide show, it may be helpful to show the accompanying images, as well as diagrams of the geocentric and heliocentric models of the solar system. We humans have always looked up at the stars, wondered about...
    Time for All Ages | By Erika Hewitt | March 21, 2016 | From WorshipWeb
    Tagged as: 4th Principle (Truth & Meaning), Awe, Earth Day, History, Identity, International, Living Our Faith, Partner Church Observation, Religion, Science, Secular, Wonder