Why We Edit Your Contributions

Q: Why do you edit my contributions?

A: Each contribution is edited according to the style guides of The United Church of Canada and Gathering Worship to provide consistency in presentation. We also pay attention to commitments made by the United Church, such as to be an anti-racist church, to be inclusive of all abilities, genders, and sexual orientations, and to avoid anti-Jewish language. In addition, we edit language so that it will be useful in a wide variety of churches by a diversity of people. While you and your congregation may understand certain references in your context, they may not work in all contexts. Words that are written by you flow easily as you offer them, but sometimes they cannot be easily presented by someone other than you. Sometimes we’ll add a phrase or line to make it work for a certain season or scripture for which we need material. Our goal in editing is to provide the material in a way that will work for many different people in many different settings. People also are invited to adapt any prayer or worship piece for their own context.

We often receive comments from those who use Gathering that one of the reasons they trust the resource is that they know that the materials have been carefully edited according to United Church ethos, ethics, and practice.

We are unable to contact every contributor to have changes approved because of the number of contributors to each issue and the fact that all of us on the editorial team work limited hours on this resource. Thank you for trusting us with your material.