Tapestry of Faith: A Place of Wholeness: A Program for Youth Exploring Their Own Unitarian Universalist Faith Journeys

Alternate Activity 2: Faith Development Interview

Activity time: 30 minutes

Materials for Activity

Preparation for Activity

  • Find two to three adults from the congregation who are willing to participate in this activity. Make sure they are comfortable talking about their own faith journey in a positive manner. Also, look for some diversity (in age, ethnicity, life experiences) in the people you invite to come talk with your group. Tell them they will be asked to talk for three minutes about their faith journey. Give them copies of Handouts 1, 2 and 3. Let them know this is the material the youth are using. Suggest that they shape their sharing around these handouts and/or by answering a couple of questions: 1) How have faith development stages played out in their life? 2) What is a story from your own life that highlights your passage through one of the stages?
  • Copies of Handouts 1, 2 and 3, for all participants.
  • This activity is best done following Activity 2, Faith as a Process. Participants will get the most out of the interviews if they have a grounding in faith development theory.

Description of Activity

Congregants share some of their faith journey with youth.

Invite participants to interview members of the church about their faith journey. If you have not already distributed Handouts 1, 2 and 3 in previous activities do so now. Tell participants that these handouts will give them some inspiration for crafting good interview questions. Give them a few minutes to review the handouts and think of questions. Brainstorm questions for ten minutes. Then ask each participant to pick one or two questions they would like to ask. Make sure to mark the questions that have been selected so that the same question is not used twice.

Invite the church members into the room. Introduce them to the participants and let them talk for a few minutes each about their faith journey. They can answer the two questions posed ahead of time or share in another way. Then invite participants to ask their questions.

After participants have asked their questions, let the church members ask some questions as well. Thank your guests for their time.

Variation: If you have a larger group and one hour for this activity, consider breaking the group up so that two to five participants are with each church member. Make sure that all questions are assigned to someone in each group. Ask one participant to act as a recorder. When the interviews are done, bring everybody back together and have each small group share what they heard about the church member and their faith journey.