Sharing Our Faith

Sharing Our Faith is an annual opportunity for Canadian Unitarian Universalists to engage with a shared spiritual theme, deepen connections with one another, build community, encourage outreach, and support congregational growth across the country. Through common themes, worship resources, and guided conversations, congregations are invited to explore shared values and strengthen their sense of collective purpose.

Congregations across Canada reflect on the same theme, considering the world we live in and the future we hope to create. This shared focus deepens our national UU identity and nurtures meaningful connections among congregations.

Each year, the Canadian Unitarian Council provides a worship packet and conversation guide that can be used for Sunday services, small-group discussions, or community gatherings, offering Canadian Unitarian Universalists an opportunity to connect spiritually while supporting congregational vitality nationwide.

The program includes a collaborative fundraising component: congregations collect funds during special services and may later apply for grants to support their own ministry, growth, or outreach initiatives. This model emphasizes mutual support, interdependence, and collective care.

Every year the Canadian Unitarian Council offers worship materials to help congregations plan a Sharing Our Faith service to celebrate our faith in Canada. Many congregations organize this service in February, but it can be done at any time. All funds received by the CUC by March 31 will be used for the year's Sharing Our Faith grants, which will be announced at the Annual General Meeting in May.

We ask that congregations take up a special offering for the CUC Sharing Our Faith Fund at the service, to support fellow UU congregations. For further information, contact the CUC office or send an email to sharing-our-faith@cuc.ca.

Preparing for Sharing Our Faith Week

  • Prepare the worship service using the provided materials. It is sometimes worthwhile to reflect on how congregations across Canada are sharing the same theme for a morning.
  • Consider inviting special guests to participate in the service. This could be someone from the CUC board or staff, or possibly someone from a neighbouring congregation.
  • Consider creating a display emphasizing UU communities across the country or in your area. This might help congregants to think about our national UU community.
  • You may also want to create a display of CUC publications to offer for sale. Contact the CUC office for more information about this at info@cuc.ca.
  • Remind members of the congregation that Sharing Our Faith week is coming up, by including an entry in your newsletter or order of service ahead of time.

Introducing the Service

  • At the beginning of the service, mention your congregation’s history of holding a Sharing Our Faith service. Do you do it on the same day every year? (Many congregations do it on the first or second Sunday in February.)
  • Announce the Sharing Our Faith special collection, to be taken instead of the normal offering. Try to announce the special collection in advance, during announcements in previous weeks, or in your newsletter.

Taking the Offering

  • Mention some of the congregations and projects for which the donations have been used in previous years. If your congregation has received a grant in the past, mention that and how the money was used.
  • Ensure that people know that all the money collected is then given out to Canadian congregations.
  • Let people know that they can receive tax receipts from the CUC for their contributions, by including their name and amount donated with the Sharing Our Faith contribution.
  • Easy ways to give:
    • For individuals:
      • Scan the QR code
      • At this Sharing Our Faith giving link
      • By e-transfer to info@cuc.ca, following up with an email stating name of fund and amount of donation
      • Send cheques made out to the "Canadian Unitarian Council" with "Sharing Our Faith" in the memo line to
        • Canadian Unitarian Council | c/o Centre for Social Innovation | 302-192 Spadina Ave | Toronto ON M5T 2C2
    • For congregations:
      • Through the QR code, e-transfer, or donate link; or
      • Send one cheque to the CUC for the total amount collected (if tax receipts are required, include names, mailing addresses and amount donated); or
      • Send individuals' cheques, plus one cheque for cash donations. Write Sharing Our Faith in the memo line.

The 2026 theme—Practicing Hope: Facing the Future with Gratitude, Imagination, Courage & Action—was developed collaboratively by more than 50 UUs from across Canada who participated in Canadian UUs Read this fall. Their wisdom, insights, and shared longings helped shape a national conversation about how we live our values in rapidly changing times. The Orientation session is on January 15.

Here is the 2026 Packet. What is Inside:

This year’s packet includes:

  • A full, ready-to-use worship service, written by Rev. Karen Fraser Gitlitz
  • A readers’ theatre script exploring themes of grief, imagination, courage, and collective action
  • Song recordings by Wendy Luella Perkins
  • A children’s story suggestion, readings, and reflection prompts
  • A congregational conversation guide for follow-up dialogue
  • Publicity tools to help you share the service with your community

Everything is designed so congregations of any size—professional or lay-led—can easily create a meaningful, beautifully cohesive service.

How to Use the Packet

You can use the packet in whatever way best suits your congregation:

  • Lead the full worship service: Perfect for a Sunday morning, with all elements provided—music, readings, and a script requiring four readers.
  • Incorporate only the pieces that fit your context: Use the readers’ theatre as a sermon, choose one of the songs, or weave the reflection questions into your own service.
  • Host a congregational conversation: Facilitated prompts help communities explore grief, change, resilience, imagination, and the hope we create together.
  • Offer a Sharing Our Faith collection: Support the national movement while strengthening our ability to nurture spiritual life, justice work, and innovation in UU communities.

 

  • 2025 Service: “Whose Belonging” By Rev. Karen Fraser Gitlitz. Belonging is complex, shaped by personal history, social context, and systemic structures—often more noticeable in its absence than its presence. Our internal “maps of belonging” are marked by experience, ancestry, and societal design, requiring awareness and effort to mend the gaps. True belonging is co-created through empathy, action, and dismantling barriers—calling us to widen the circle and live out our shared values. Access all the materials here.
  • For 2024, the UU Ministers of Canada (UUMOC) created a new offertory message for the Sharing Our Faith collection available here in both print and video formats.
  • 2023 Service: Congregations are dealing with a lot of upheaval and change, and which challenge members to remain in good relationship with each other. “Covenanting Through Transitions” is a national worship service that asks us “How do we stay in covenant through all of this in our communities? How do we stay in it in a good way when it is hard and people aren’t always their best selves or are disappointed?” Witness the reflections, both personal and professional, of several professional church staff. Watch and share on the CUC’s YouTube channel.
  • 2022 Service: “Celebration and Contemplation: The Path of an 8th Principle” Coordinated by Revs. Victoria Ingram and Anne Barker, this service recognizes the momentous step that Canadian Unitarian Universalist congregations took in adopting an 8th Principle for “individual and communal action that accountably dismantles racism and systemic barriers to full inclusion in ourselves and our institutions.” Witness how UUs commit to foundational social change to justice in ourselves, our faith community, and our larger society on the CUC’s YouTube channel.
  • 2021 Service: “A Faith Worth Failing For” Coordinated by the Revs. Shana Lynngood and Samaya Oakley, the service reflected on ways that we as Unitarian Universalists have fallen short and how we can learn from our mistakes. It can be viewed here on the CUC’s YouTube channel.
  • 2019 Service: Sharing Our Faith Package 2020, compiled by Rev. Fran Dearman with contributions from Canadian UU ministers, focused on the theme of Making Waves and contains an eclectic collection of reflections, art, readings, and sermons for your congregation’s use in planning. Our seventh principle calls us to respect the interdependent web of all existence of which we are a part. The worship materials in the package offer ways for UU congregations to live into that aspiration.

Donate to Sharing Our Faith!

The Sharing Our Faith fund is a program of the Canadian Unitarian Council, supporting projects that enhance ministry, growth, and outreach for congregations and for the Unitarian Universalist movement in Canada. It is designed to encourage greater associational awareness in our congregations, the fostering of relationships, and a sense of community and connection among and between our member congregations and communities.

Each year, this fund is renewed with money collected by congregations at special dedicated services, and from a Foundation Fund administered by the First Unitarian Congregation of Toronto. These donations are sent to the CUC to be distributed as grants to congregations applying for projects they may not otherwise afford.

Since its inception in 2001, through the generosity of our congregations and Canadian UUs, the Sharing Our Faith program has awarded over $200,000 in grants.

UU congregations and communities may apply for grants for growth initiative and projects which enhance ministry, and which contribute to growth and vitality for that congregation and for the UU faith community in Canada. Applicants will usually be either current member congregations, emerging groups, or UU communities. Grant applications are due by March 31 of each year with all required documents. Completed applications can be e-mailed to sharing-our-faith@cuc.ca..

2025 Sharing Our Faith Grants

2025
RecipientProjectGrant Amount 
Unitarian Congregation in MississaugaTo modernize the website$3,500
UUEstrie (North Hatley)To assist with publicity$2,500

2024 Sharing Our Faith Grants

2024
RecipientProjectGrant Amount 
UnicampRepair of meeting space floor$2,500
Unitarian Fellowship of FrederictonRepair of the RE space$2,500
UUEstrie (North Hatley)Repairs to the entry doors and pulpit$2,500
UUs of the Salish Sea Acquire some specified AV equipment$2,500

2023 Sharing Our Faith Grants

2023
RecipientProjectGrant Amount 
Unitarian Congregation of NiagaraSafety, appearance, and rental prospects of sanctuary$5,000
Mirth and DignityTo produce a second season of the Cracked Cup podcast$4,300

2022 Sharing Our Faith Grants

2022
RecipientProjectGrant Amount 
Unitarian Congregation of GuelphUpgrade equipment for hybrid services$4,500
Lakehead Unitarian FellowshipProfessional ministry$4,600
Westwood Unitarian CongregationUpgrade technology for outreach$5,000
Unitarian Fellowship of FrederictonBuilding retrofit$3,000