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Jan. 4th, 2009 04:30 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
rivkaI'm on the DRE Advisory Council at my church. It's a small panel of people who provide support and feedback to our Director of Religious Education, and who are available to help sort out any difficulties or dramas that arise within the RE program. I'm counting down my last few months on the committee - I'll be replaced in the fall. I've really enjoyed the work.
Over the next six weeks, we're hosting a series of before-church breakfasts, one for the parents and other interested adults of each RE class. The primary goal is to find out how parents are feeling about RE and what their thoughts are about the future direction of the program. We're also hoping that the breakfasts will help foster a sense of community and will encourage parents to commit to bringing their kids to RE more often. (We have a problem with sporadic attendance.)
I'm facilitating the first two breakfasts. This morning's was for parents in the youth group, and next week's will be parents of babies and toddlers in the nursery. My friend Laura provided breakfast this morning - quiche, fruit, juice, and coffee - and also set a table beautifully, with tablecloth, decorative runner, china, cloth napkins, et cetera. It's amazing, what that will do to make a meal feel special and make the guests feel honored. The parents were quite obviously pleased and touched.
We posed four primary questions:
1. What are the strengths of our RE program?
2. When do you and your youth feel most engaged in our church?
3. What are your hopes and goals for RE for you and for your youth?
4. What else/more would you like us to be doing in our RE program?
Parents of youth like the flexibility of our program, and the RE team's willingness to redesign and reorganize programs to meet kids' needs. They like feeling that our program will be patient and wait for kids, instead of pushing them. They like the sense that their kids are being welcomed into a larger community of people who are enthusiastic about children and youth, and they like that their kids are making multiple connections with adults who care about them. Coming of Age and OWL (Our Whole Lives sexuality education) were singled out as programs that parents value.
They think their kids are most engaged in RE when they're involved in active, entertaining, hands-on activities. Particularly mentioned: art, making things, cooking, big projects that take lots of sessions, activities that help them form peer connections. The youth group is currently doing a fantasy role-playing game focused on, I think, ethical decision-making. It gets good reviews.
The word "community" kept coming up again and again. Parents of youth recognize that their kids' religious development happens through relationships, through being part of a community of both peers and adults, locally and across the District, where kids are welcomed, accepted, mentored, and challenged. They value the opportunity for their kids to have deep moral discussions with people who aren't their parents. One mentioned that it is particularly important for boys to have multiple role models of manhood, and that church and RE can provide this.
The parents whose kids are involved in District youth cons (described by one as "a mixture of workshops and controlled teen stupidity") are incredibly enthusiastic about the experience. Cons give youth a sense of acceptance and community, and the opportunity to discover that although you may feel like an oddball outsider in your everyday life there are lots and lots of UU teens that feel the same way. Cons let youth know that they are not alone.
Parents of youth hope that in the RE program their kids will have the freedom to find their own path. They want them to be exposed to new ideas and traditions. They want them to be challenged. They want them to develop a moral foundation, to figure out how to get things done without sacrificing compassion and ethics. They want them to find mentors.
They'd like more kids to be in the youth group, and they'd like attendance to be more stable. They think it would be helpful to have more evening just-for-fun stuff like movie nights and music nights.
The parents present were all highly dedicated church families. (I'm hoping some less involved families come to subsequent breakfasts.) They spontaneously mentioned making a conscious family decision that "church is what we do" - a commitment to be part of the church community and help with church activities. They all agreed that it doesn't work to make a week-by-week decision about whether to go to church, or to allow your kids to see church as optional. "We have to help parents understand that when you go all the time, it's just better. Kids get more out of it, parents get more out of it, the church gets more out of it."
I am particularly interested in this question, about what makes some families commit to church and others remain on the fringe. Back when Michael and I first started attending, we made a conscious decision to have church be our default, rather than waking up on Sunday morning and deciding whether or not we felt like going. That decision deepened our relationships within the congregation and led to us being much more involved in church activities and church governance. But we were both raised in deeply committed church families, so I think that model felt natural to us.
I'm not sure how the process works for other people. In Unitarian-Universalism there is no obligation to go to church, no sense that it's wrong or sinful to skip church, no sense that the minister has access to spiritual gifts you can't get on your own. What makes church a deep part of life for some people, and a when-it's-convenient activity for others?
Over the next six weeks, we're hosting a series of before-church breakfasts, one for the parents and other interested adults of each RE class. The primary goal is to find out how parents are feeling about RE and what their thoughts are about the future direction of the program. We're also hoping that the breakfasts will help foster a sense of community and will encourage parents to commit to bringing their kids to RE more often. (We have a problem with sporadic attendance.)
I'm facilitating the first two breakfasts. This morning's was for parents in the youth group, and next week's will be parents of babies and toddlers in the nursery. My friend Laura provided breakfast this morning - quiche, fruit, juice, and coffee - and also set a table beautifully, with tablecloth, decorative runner, china, cloth napkins, et cetera. It's amazing, what that will do to make a meal feel special and make the guests feel honored. The parents were quite obviously pleased and touched.
We posed four primary questions:
1. What are the strengths of our RE program?
2. When do you and your youth feel most engaged in our church?
3. What are your hopes and goals for RE for you and for your youth?
4. What else/more would you like us to be doing in our RE program?
Parents of youth like the flexibility of our program, and the RE team's willingness to redesign and reorganize programs to meet kids' needs. They like feeling that our program will be patient and wait for kids, instead of pushing them. They like the sense that their kids are being welcomed into a larger community of people who are enthusiastic about children and youth, and they like that their kids are making multiple connections with adults who care about them. Coming of Age and OWL (Our Whole Lives sexuality education) were singled out as programs that parents value.
They think their kids are most engaged in RE when they're involved in active, entertaining, hands-on activities. Particularly mentioned: art, making things, cooking, big projects that take lots of sessions, activities that help them form peer connections. The youth group is currently doing a fantasy role-playing game focused on, I think, ethical decision-making. It gets good reviews.
The word "community" kept coming up again and again. Parents of youth recognize that their kids' religious development happens through relationships, through being part of a community of both peers and adults, locally and across the District, where kids are welcomed, accepted, mentored, and challenged. They value the opportunity for their kids to have deep moral discussions with people who aren't their parents. One mentioned that it is particularly important for boys to have multiple role models of manhood, and that church and RE can provide this.
The parents whose kids are involved in District youth cons (described by one as "a mixture of workshops and controlled teen stupidity") are incredibly enthusiastic about the experience. Cons give youth a sense of acceptance and community, and the opportunity to discover that although you may feel like an oddball outsider in your everyday life there are lots and lots of UU teens that feel the same way. Cons let youth know that they are not alone.
Parents of youth hope that in the RE program their kids will have the freedom to find their own path. They want them to be exposed to new ideas and traditions. They want them to be challenged. They want them to develop a moral foundation, to figure out how to get things done without sacrificing compassion and ethics. They want them to find mentors.
They'd like more kids to be in the youth group, and they'd like attendance to be more stable. They think it would be helpful to have more evening just-for-fun stuff like movie nights and music nights.
The parents present were all highly dedicated church families. (I'm hoping some less involved families come to subsequent breakfasts.) They spontaneously mentioned making a conscious family decision that "church is what we do" - a commitment to be part of the church community and help with church activities. They all agreed that it doesn't work to make a week-by-week decision about whether to go to church, or to allow your kids to see church as optional. "We have to help parents understand that when you go all the time, it's just better. Kids get more out of it, parents get more out of it, the church gets more out of it."
I am particularly interested in this question, about what makes some families commit to church and others remain on the fringe. Back when Michael and I first started attending, we made a conscious decision to have church be our default, rather than waking up on Sunday morning and deciding whether or not we felt like going. That decision deepened our relationships within the congregation and led to us being much more involved in church activities and church governance. But we were both raised in deeply committed church families, so I think that model felt natural to us.
I'm not sure how the process works for other people. In Unitarian-Universalism there is no obligation to go to church, no sense that it's wrong or sinful to skip church, no sense that the minister has access to spiritual gifts you can't get on your own. What makes church a deep part of life for some people, and a when-it's-convenient activity for others?
