Bi-Weekly Sunday Service | Gathering Places

In August of 1963 the Unitarian Church North began holding bi-weekly Sunday services at the Milwaukee Day School located at 6401 N. Santa Monica Boulevard in Whitefish Bay, WI. Both documents represented here come from a binder compiled by a historian at UCN. The contents represent the congregation’s early years. The first document is a portion of the order of worship from a service held on January 12, 1964. Congregants were asked to ponder the meaning of fellowship. The author reflects on the first Christmas service held at the Milwaukee Day School on December 22, 1963, and how bleak and oversized the space was for the then small community. Despite the setting, the story of how a busy father of five carried a fir tree in on his shoulder and the subsequent decoration of that tree by the Sunday school children brings into focus the real meaning of fellowship to this community. The second document served as a newsletter. The newsletter portion is on the left side and includes important announcements, such as extensions of sympathy for families of members who have recently passed away, welcome messages to those who recently joined the congregation and well wishes to families moving away. Unique to this document is the acknowledgement of Congregation Sinai who was then sharing the space with UCN at the Milwaukee Day School. Rabbi Brickman, the leader of Congregation Sinai, was the guest speaker for the January 3rd service at UCN. In comparison to the announcements on the left, the order of service on the right is quite simple. An agenda is provided for the service, but hymns, responses and readings are not listed as we find in UCN’s order of worship documents today.

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Source: “The Early Years Unitarian Church North 1963-1986” Binder. Unitarian Church North Archives, Mequon, WI. July 15, 2022
Creator: Liz Spaide