Lifespan religious education

is an important and ongoing component in the life and organization of the Fellowship. A religious education trustee on the governing board of UCF with an appointed religious education committee plans, recruits leadership and oversees a program of religious education. Included are classes for children on Sunday mornings, a teen and pre-teen youth group that meets on Sunday afternoons each month, and classes for adults. A professional nanny provides care for infants and pre-schoolers.

If you have questions about lifespan religious education at UCF, contact our minister, Reverend Sally B. White (at the church office 240-2283) or Debra Guthrie (725-9413).

 

ADULT PROGRAMS A range of lay and minister led adult classes are offered during the year. These are held during the week or on Sunday afternoons and focus on exploring and discussing our Unitarian Universalist history, traditions, and beliefs, current social issues, and spiritual and religious experience. Opportunities exist for members of the congregation to suggest, initiate, and sustain additional programs that address their spiritual, religious, and intellectual yearnings.   If you have questions about lifespan religious education at UCF, contact our minister, Reverend Sally B. White (at the church office 240-2283)

Teen Craft Workshops

RE News

February, 2012

Debra Guthrie, RE Administrator

guthriegourds@yahoo.com

The children are currently in the infancy of exploring ideas of sacred space or places. If you should work with the children (the little boys) you should probably try to avoid using the word “space”; as it invariably will lead to a discussion about Star Wars, fashioning of light-sabers and an epic battle. We are currently fashioning Cairns which
are stacks, created by people, of rocks found in nature and usually used to mark a trail but sometimes used to mark a sacred space or, in Buddhism, the site of a sacred relic .

Our plans are a little murky at this stage, or at least mine are, in as far as what will the activities look like. I have found that merely having a discussion with the children is kind of pointless. They must have something to do or we will have pandemonium (we might have pandemonium anyway).

So I was thinking that after the cairns we would start talking about “god”. We could do paintings (what color is god?). Maybe we could take a tour of the neighborhood - looking for “god.” We might make prayer flags—talking to “God.” I don’t know what else, but we would lead up the children defining and creating their own individual “gods.” If you have any ideas you would like to add please let me know.

I am looking for volunteers to work with the children on March 4 and April 15, I will be going away on those days with the choir. You may not realize that my job as Religious Education Administrator does not include that I am a Sunday school teacher. I am meant to recruit volunteers to teach every Sunday. But volunteers are hard to find so I just do it myself most of the time. I am concerned not just for these two Sundays that I will be away but also for how this situation will play out when I leave next fall to go to school. Will the job description for the new Administrator have to include that they must be available to teach every Sunday? Does that mean that we can only recruit someone in our church willing to teach our beliefs? Also I have been feeling that another, third, class for the older girls is needed; how will we staff that class?

At the last annual meeting when I gave my report, I practically begged for help with at least thinking about answers to our Religious Education issues. I know everyone is busy and doing a thousand things but these
are our children and the future of Unitarian Universalism. How can you help?

Debra