We had an amazing turnout for our first Youth and Family Ministry visioning session after service on Sunday, October 16. We invited Rev. Diane Venzera, Great Lakes Unity Regional Youth Consultant to facilitate our session. Fourteen from our spiritual community enthusiastically showed up to brainstorm, share ideas and create a vision for our Youth and Family Ministry. And it was a diverse group: men and women, working and retired, parents of small children, parents of teens, parents of grown children, and non-parents. We all came together with the common understanding that having a healthy Youth and Family Ministry is key to the success and wholeness of Abundant Life Unity Church. You will be hearing more from us in the coming weeks. Here is a taste of what we created:

We have invited Joan Coletto, team leader of the Bodhi Spiritual Center prayer practitioners, to lead a 3-week workshop on affirmative prayer beginning Tuesday, November 1.  Joan will teach all participants a powerful 5-step affirmative prayer practice coupled with plenty of opportunity for prayer practice. This class is for anyone who is interested in learning how to effectively pray and for anyone who wants to be a group leader or prayer team member within our community.

Want to reconnect with the center of your being in the middle of the week? Join us at 7PM on April 12 for a Contemplative Interfaith Service in the sanctuary of First Church of Christ Scientist, 155 Deerfield Road. This is a very powerful, deeply enriching experience.  The theme for this month is Spiritual Surrender. You will hear this theme presented by sacred texts or writings of the mystics of the world's major faith traditions and supplemented by meditative music. Live music - Native American flute, singing bowls, gong and drums - will be provided by Cheryl Good to complement the readings and create sacred space for meditation and reflection.

NOTE: This service is being put on hold after April 12 to allow Rev. Carol to focus on community building and leadership development. We love this service and will resume it again in divine time.

Join us for our special Thanksgiving Service this Sunday, November 20 at 10:30AM. Our new in-house band, The Grateful Living, will make its debut! Be sure to arrive ON TIME to hear them. We will conclude our November Gratitude series with the lesson: Being Grateful For The Gifts Of Others. After service is our annual Thanksgiving Fellowship Feast. Let us gather together in gratitude for the wonder of our lives and for the joy of our spiritual community. Bring friends, family and delicious food. We will have music, activities and some prizes! Also, Camille Winer will show us how to we can each help market our church through social networking.

Our next Prayer Consciousness circle is on Saturday, May 19 at 10AM at the First Church of Christ Scientist, 155 Deerfield Rd. Deerfield, IL. Everyone is welcome to join together and lift our church and each other in prayer. You will find that this prayer time will bring you peace and a calm, centered state of mind. Please arrive at 10AM. We will begin promptly at 10:15AM and end at 11AM.

Can you envision our spiritual community continually growing, impacting an ever-widening circle of people, while providing care and support for all and encouraging the expression of everyone's area of genius? That is the path we are on.

On October 10-12, five of us from ALUC trekked down to the Bodhi Spiritual Center in Chicago for three solid days of training on a church care structure called the Meta Model. Over a hundred ministers and lay leaders from New Thought centers across the country were in attendance. It was so popular this year that they closed registration a month early. Attending with me (Rev. Carol) from ALUC were Molly Hansen, Susan Sigler, Bonnie DeMartini, and Mathea Jacobson.