Rev. Megan Foley  0:05  
Hi, everyone, welcome. It's great to have all of you here tonight. I am Reverend Megan Foley. I'm the Regional Lead of the Central East Region, and of the UUA and I'm a member of our smaller focus teams. So that is congregational life staff who work with smaller congregations. So I'm joined tonight, members of our smallers team are Erika Baron. She can wave, from New England Region, Sara Schurr from the Pacific Western Region, Phil Lund from Mid-America Region, and southern regions in the house in spirit, but not actually, I don't know if this is physically or in a square. Tonight, we have Amy Kent, behind the scenes here doing all the muting and the sharing and stuff. And I hope, this is the third of our three part webinar series for especially for smaller is about sharing. Sharing, we've done so far sharing worship, sharing staff, and tonight, I'm excited that we'll be welcoming our colleagues Shannon Harper and Eric Bliss. Shannon is from my region, works with me, Eric Bliss is in the Pacific Western Region. And these are our two congregational, your two congregational life staff that are have portfolios that are specifically for the youth ministry. So we're really lucky to have them here tonight. And I'm going to just turn it over to them in a minute. But I want to mention that all of these have been recorded. So if you want to go back and catch one that you missed, maybe we can get Amy to put them in the links in the chat in a bit. And this will be recorded too. So if you got excited and wanted to show it to the rest of your congregation, you'll be able to access it. And just a little while. I think that's it, Shannon and Eric, would you like to take it away?

Shannon Harper  2:01  
Yay. Hello, everyone. Um, see I'm are we playing the slideshow. Yes, we are. Okay, good. I have so many screens, and many of them don't tell me what I need to know at any given time. So I'm okay. Awesome. Thank you so much for joining us. We're super excited that you're here. And we were really excited that you invited us to be here, too. talk with you about youth ministry in your congregations. Um, alright, let's change like this should be like a chime. It's time to change.

Yes. My name is Shannon Harper. I am the youth and emerging adult ministry specialist for the Central East Region. I've been doing that job for, is my sixth year I believe. Before that I was a religious educator in a medium sized congregation in Dayton, Ohio. And I have a teenager and two young adults as children. Eric..

Eric Bliss  3:14  
Thanks, Shannon. Hey, everybody. My name is Eric Bliss. My pronouns are he him his. I'm based in Salt Lake City, Utah. I'm a lifelong UU working for the UUA and the Pacific Western Region as a youth and emerging adult specialist. Before that I was a DRE for six years at First Unitarian Denver. And then before that I was a high school teacher and soccer coach for 12 years. And I'm just tickled to be with you all. I grew up in a small congregation and think it was an old dry cleaner on Kingston Pike in Knoxville, Tennessee. And so excited to learn and grow with you this evening. Thank you for coming. Please introduce yourselves in the chat if you would type, your name, your location and your pronouns as you feel inclined, that would be wonderful to get to know you in that way.

Shannon Harper  4:11  
Okay, so just really quick, we're going to go over the overview of what we're going to do tonight, and just also invite you into our realm of organic thinking and that we're going to try to do these things and present these things. And we're also going to try to go with what feels alive and necessary for us to talk talk about in questions and things that you have. So basically saying we might not stick directly to this, but this is the plan right now. We just did introductions and chat checking you're doing that. I'm getting ready to do a chalice lighting, we're gonna have a little bit of a breakout we call the ice breakout because there's icebreakers which is something that we use in youth community to like, signify we're doing an activity that like breaks the ice and it gets us you know, to know each other names, things like that. We have a storytelling point where Eric and I are going to share some stories. And we're gonna invite you in small groups to share stories with each other. The ice breakout is instance in small groups to. And then we're gonna we have a little section about practices and learning with breakout.

Eric Bliss  5:24  
After that, we'll kind of go over a view we'll have, we have kind of a review page to hit some highlights. And Shannon, I have some recommendations. We'll do some Q&A. So you can ask the two of us as well as we brought two amazing panelists with us, who will be joining us and you'll get to know them in just a little bit. Um, there'll be some take home stuff as well as we'll ask you to make some commitments about next steps in this journey of youth ministry. And then some resources and I'll share some closing words and we'll, we'll say adieu.

Shannon Harper  6:05  
I'm loving the chat. I'm seeing a Texas and Wisconsin, New York. Maryland, Tennessee, Florida, Florida, Connecticut, all in the house. Thank you, keep sharing. That's awesome to see. Key West Well, that's where I'd like to all right, Chalice lighting. Um, I have this is my favorite, is my favorite reading from Spilling the Light by Theresa by Reverend Teresa Soto. And it's called The Part That is Not Water. The part of clouds that is not water are pieces so tiny that no human eye can see them. They float so fast and easily that weather scientists identify them as aerosols. Don't, don't fall asleep because I said a science thing. I want you to remember that all around you dust atoms, tardigrades, and other tiny things that hold the world together, are doing dances for you. Without that tiniest of Specht, us in perfectly clean air, a cloud would struggle to ever form, which is true of anything that you want to grow, it must start small. There are people who would tell you that this chain reaction of events is one on which everything for them, rises and then falls. The smallest dust the cloud, the rain, allows the earth to drink to grow our food to feed an ecosystem to fill the rivers and lakes for which we drink. The part that is not water is the tiniest.of dust on this small and humble thing. We find that everything does rest.

Eric Bliss  8:03  
Thank you Shannon. That was beautiful. Um, so we're gonna do our ice breakout now. And we're pretty proud of ourselves for I think we coined that term, right, Shannon, we can get the credit for that. Um, it's a little speed dating activity, you're going to be in a group for about 10 minutes. And you're going to answer three questions that I'm putting in the chat. Now. Each person can answer all three questions or you can take them one at a time. That's up to you get to decide, but our amazing whiz behind the scenes, Amy will break you up. And you will get to know one another by answering these three prompts.

Shannon Harper  8:48  
In full transparency, Eric and I are youth ministry specialists. So I hope you expected that we were going to make you do youth ministry type things in this webinar. That's Yeah, that's what we call.

Eric Bliss  9:00  
It's all about modeling, right?

Shannon Harper  9:08  
Okay, so we are on. Um, so hopefully that was fun for you. The idea of icebreakers is to kind of like, let everybody talk, let everybody share, but be real low risk, like you're not like sharing like really deep stuff, but just getting to know each other. So hopefully you have that experience with some new people. Um, all right, we wanted to share with you a little bit of our own experiences, I'm not going to talk too much because I feel like mine is not incredibly, it's kind of relevant, but not incredibly well written, then Eric has a little more of a relevant story, but our own experiences as youth. So like I always say one of the reasons I do the job that I do, I'm so passionate about the job that I do, is because extra didn't grow up as a UU. And I think that like what the experience that my children had, as I have young adults now, that they had in youth community like what It was so powerful and so amazing that I want to make sure that other youth have that experience. Because I didn't, what I realized growing up is that I did have a youth experience. Um, it naturally happened in church, I was raised as a Jehovah's Witness. And so I'm not going to get into all the details of what that and what that means. But it was a small congregation, let's, let's put it that way. And their way of doing things, at least back then, was that everybody did everything together. There was no you didn't have RE, you didn't even have a nursery, like, everybody came to church on Sunday, and sat in the same room and listen to the same talk. And, you know, interact with it in your own level. You know, like, as a kid, I remember, like, the biggest activity that I had was like, searching through and finding the scriptures that they would say, like, that's all I really was the race to see, you could find description of that stuff. Um, but then, as a teenager, I had a, I had a person who led my Bible study, and she was this young woman in the congregation. And she led a Bible study with me, I think it was like, monthly or weekly, I don't even know anymore. Um, and she, what she would do is she would gather up the youth, the teenagers, and it was it was girls, it was very gendered. So she would gather up the girls. And we would have like, our own youth group type activities, like we would go bowling together, we go and do things together. And I realized now that she was even though Jehovah's Witnesses, the faith tradition doesn't really have congregationally based youth group things, or archery or anything like that, she kind of took it upon herself to say, hey, these young people need to have a space where they can just be together because it was all multi generational, which was really fantastic. In a lot of ways, I there was a lot to be said about, um, you know, like, babies would just get passed around, like, somebody had to hold the crying baby, you know, and they would get passed around, and you would be playing with somebody else's kid while you try to entertain them while the mom was dealing with something else. And it was it was lovely family, multi generational experience. And yet, we still needed that separate space, where we could, you know, talk about just what's going on and laugh and joke and all of that. And so she really created that, of course, I'm very grateful for her I consider her to be my youth group advisor, even though that was never an official title that she had. Here.

Eric Bliss  12:23  
Yeah, so as I alluded to earlier, I grew up UU, um, I was troubled youth. And my parents thought, you know, they might find some structure for me by getting me more involved in youth group. And so I went to Westside Unitarian Universalist Church, it was a storefront church on Kingston Pike, tiny little church, I remember the sterile fluorescent lights and the partitions that divided the sanctuary from the RE space. And we had this tiny little youth area that was cordoned off with a blanket hanging from the ceiling. And there were four of us to start. And we had this amazing youth advisor, a lawyer by the name of Art Klare, who loved to air guitar to Jimi Hendrix, and was the warmest, just most loving presence. And our youth group grew over the course of my two and a half, three years there, from four youth to about 13 to 15, on average. And I think it started with that love. It started with a real interest in what our voice was and what we were interested in doing. And we were encouraged to bring people who we cared about to the space. So I brought relatives who are staying with me, cousins, I brought friends from school, and as a result, the group really grew. And I think with that right fertile soil, and when you're asking the right questions, and encouraging some outreach, amazing, beautiful and transcendent things can happen.

Shannon Harper  14:28  
Okay, so that was our stories of, you know, our experiences in our smaller congregations and the adults that were important to us, we want to give you an opportunity, we're gonna put you into the same breakouts, there's a whole point of icebreakers was so that you got to know the people in your breakout. Now you're going to be back with them to share your own stories. Um, so the prompt is, what's something that felt important to your development regarding connecting with other young people when you were a teen, So recognizing like Not all of us grew up as UU, not all of us grew up in church. But what was what was the thing that helps you connect with other young people when you were a teen? And what adults played a role in that connection? And now I'll put that in the chat. And Amy will put you into your uh, let me ask any questions?

No. Okay.

Then I'm going to put it in the chat so that you can have it. When we go Amy we are ready for breakouts.

Eric Bliss  16:01  
Hope everyone had a wonderful time sharing. We're going to be delving into some of the things that you talked about in just a moment. Amy, I'm sharing it. Yes.

Amy Kent  16:14  
I'm sorry to interrupt you. But there are two rooms that are not back yet.

Eric Bliss  16:18  
That's okay. That's okay. This is just kind of preliminary filler. Thank you. You're not supposed to call it that. But that's okay. No, I I appreciate your directness. Always, always. Um, so I'm going to be throwing a link in the chat for a jam board. If you've never done jam board. This is something really fun. You can also do with your youth. Going back to Shannon mentioning how we're modeling some activities that you can do, particularly if you're your virtual with them. Welcome back, everyone. Glad you could have some time to share with one another. And I hope the stories were edifying. As I was mentioning to those who came back a little early, we're going to be putting in the chat a link to something called a jam board. And feel free to raise your hand or digitally Raise your hand if you've ever used this fun platform. But it's a great way to share ideas and to co create in a space. Amy, would you be willing to share screen with this particular jam board? Or would it make more sense for me to do it? Amy, you're muted if you're responding.

Amy Kent  17:37  
Oh, I was being very articulate to? Yes. I'm going to share the screen right now.

Eric Bliss  17:45  
Thank you. So what's beautiful about these jams, as they're called is on the left hand. If you click on the link, and you go to this chalkboard, you can see that there's little icons there that allow you to interact with the jam board, the 123. Fourth one down is the post it note. And so you are invited now to click on a sticky note and you can change the color of it there along the top. Thank you, Amy for demonstrating and just share an idea or a story just a brief kind of paraphrase of a story that you told or heard that resonated for you. And then once we get a few jams up, we get a few of these sticky notes up and we begin to see the stories that were told. And again, focus on your own stories, please, we want to ask other people for their permission before we start to tell other stories. But then we'll ask for two stories to be shared. So take a moment and I see some are already popping up. So let's jam for a minute. So I'm seeing it's a tale as old as time. I love it. College 16 to 20 more significant than high school, youth orchestra as a place where queer adults and peers could be themselves. youth group about connecting with other teens and adults were the container. teens can find connection even in places that are not particularly designed for that. Very true, very true. That's one of the things that we'll be lifting up as we delve deeper into this webinar that the traditional youth group experience isn't always a place where a teen will want to connect with the congregation. As I mentioned, we do have time for two Share outs. for about one minute each. Is there anyone who had a particularly impactful story that they want to share with the entire group.

being shy is okay, too. That's why we have these breakouts, encouraging those who may be more shy or introverted, to be able to connect and have a deeper sharing of stories. So feel free to unmute if you do have a story to share. We'll just spend another minute then checking out what people are posting on our jam board. So peruse

the puppets one, there's a story there, there is a story with the puppets one.

Shannon Harper  21:14  
So while while you're sharing, I do want to give another little push for my push whatever recommendation for jam board or something like this. Because what we find with youth, especially online, is that sharing out loud is not something that unless they are really used to the group of people, but even then sometimes they don't want to do because first of all, they're kind of tired of zooming. Some of them are tired of zooming from school and stuff like that. But jam boards are great, because as you can see, unless you're signed into jam board, it's anonymous too. So it's like they can share. And it doesn't have to be like you know, the spotlight is on them and they're having to talk or whatever, but they can, they can really do it anonymously.

Eric Bliss  22:08  
So you're invited to continue to add your ideas to this and this will live on we will be sharing these links in a follow up email. So stay tuned, you'll get the PowerPoint as well as these other jams. And I think we can move on now Shannon and introduce our our guest stars.

Shannon Harper  22:28  
We have guest yes stars. So we are joined today by a Tina Leslie Fox, who is in Syracuse, New York, Tina's waving. Tina, I don't know what your official title is. I'll let you introduce yourself. How's that? There's Tina, Leslie Fox and Kitty and now I don't even remember what Kitty's last name is.

Tina Lesley-Fox  22:56  
I'm the director of lifespan faith development. At First, you you in Syracuse,

Shannon Harper  23:05  
and Kitty, Kitty, what's your last name and what's your title?

Kitty Kaler  23:11  
It's Kaler but I've been playing with changing my last name so I've kind of been leaving it out. Kaler or Kalebarn and I am the youth coordinator for UU Church of Boulder and the Boulder Valley UU fellowship. I also one of the chaplains to youth for the Pacific Western region and yes, am I muted? No.

Shannon Harper  23:36  
Okay, I think we had it. In my I think my notes got crossed with Erics notes. So who would like to share first Kitty or Tina?  Does it matter?

Eric Bliss  23:51  
I think Tina was first.

Shannon Harper  23:52  
Okay. I told Tina that she didn't she wasn't gonna go first. And I think we both you told Katie the same thing. So it's okay. We're just gonna, Tina, would you like to Yeah,

Tina Lesley-Fox  24:02  
it's really fun to me at all, whether I go first or second. Um, so we've been asked to share a little bit with you about our programs. So I'm in my 11th year at First UU in Syracuse. And my very first year I was hired in mid November. And the church year had already started in the youth group was already running. And I had never been religious educator before. So I didn't touch the youth group. It had youth advisors, they were doing their thing. At the end of that year, all but two of the youth graduated and the two youth advisors quit. So then I had these two youth and no programming. So I reached out to the religious educator at the other UU church in town May Memorial and and were congregations are just two miles apart. So that's really handy. And another handy thing is that I had an outside UU church relationship with a religious religious educator who was in that congregation. So I reached out to her and said, Is there a possibility that y'all could take my youth next year to join your youth group so that it's not just two youth by themselves. And she was totally open to that. And so our youth started to just participate in youth group at May Memorial. And, and the next year, we decided, the two religious educators decided to run the middle school OWL program together as well, because neither of us had enough middle school youth to run a full hour program. We're both on the smaller end, but not teeny. Right? So First UU right now we have about 120 members, and I think May Memorial has like 160. So we decided to run OWL all together that next year, and then, and then we had a critical mass of high school aged teens. So we started running it so that half the year, the high schoolers were at May Memorial and then the other half the year, the high schoolers were at First UU. And some of the advantages of that were that it gave our youth an opportunity to get to know the cultures in two different UU congregations, and the different traditions. And they got to know the adults in both congregations. And as two part time, religious educators, we had the ability to pull volunteers from both congregations to support the program. So after a while, we realized it would make sense to hire youth advisors. And so each congregation hired one part very, very, very part time youth advisor. And then we had adult volunteers also. But that helped with some of the accountability and the endless paperwork for cons. And transportation for cons. If we had people, we knew we were paying to do the thing. We knew we had people to do the thing. And so eventually, both our middle school and our high school groups got so large that we couldn't have all the middle schoolers. And, oh, what's a con, so a con is a short word for like a youth conference. The Gathering of, of youth over a weekend. We had too many kids to fit in either building all at once to have all the middle schoolers and high schoolers in one building at a time. And so instead of having all of them at my church, and then all of them at the other church, we ended up like, one month, I had the high schoolers, and they had the middle schoolers, and then they swapped. So we, we've continued with that swapping back and forth plan for quite a few years now.

Once we began sharing finances, because the youth, high school youth group started doing fundraising to do service trips. And once we started sharing finances, then the two boards have a covenant with each other around specifically around the youth programming and how the money works out between the two congregations. And the two ministers and the two DREs also have covenant with each other. So some of the things that have worked and that we've learned along the way and team building at the start of the year, and then throughout the year. We try to do some kind of camping ropes course thing at the beginning of the year. Obviously this is all I'm talking all non pandemic times because none of this is what we're doing now. We've done escape rooms, we do overnights in the church. We participate in community festivals, neighborhood festivals and the pride festival. We do a lot of service and the outside of the church building, connections with the youth I think really helps build the youth group. And it also gives those youth an opportunity to connect with other adults in the congregation, which then helps feed the youth group, to support the youth group. So other things that I feel like I've helped our youth feel real connected to each other. It's con planning. And we host the leadership con in our congregation every year for the I don't even know who all it's for our area, which it's not for the whole region, but it's like what used to be the St. Lawrence district.

So, the youth have an opportunity to connect with each other and with youth from further other congregations. We have done service trips, which we did one to Haiti. And that was an multigenerational trip. So we had, I think our oldest person was 72. And our youngest was 16. And that was like a whole year of study about Haiti and fundraising, and it involved both congregations supporting the youth group. And before the youth groups joined, these two congregations were not, they didn't do things together. Syracuse is actually the place that the vote for our denomination to become a denomination happened between the Unitarians and Universalists, and First UU, where I work, was one of the holdouts to say, No, it wasn't going to happen. So the, the tension remained between these two congregations for a lot of years. And the youth really led the way in changing that. So now we do joint services, we have adult programming together. We are, we're very much interdependent with each other in a lot of ways, but we also have really different cultures between the two congregations. So I think that's a really special thing. For our youth, that they get to see how different service is, how, how different the board structure is, coffee, our like, there's so many things that are different between the two congregations, that our youth have an opportunity to experience in both places. Um, something that I have found important is staying flexible. What you think is going to work might not be what works. And so remaining flexible and not having this idea like this is how we're going to do it, we're going to try it this way. And then it's going to work with this group of youth within this group of youth is going to graduate and move on. And this next cohort of kids has entirely different needs. And now that I've been in my position long enough, I've been through a couple of cohorts of kids with very different needs. And I appreciate our congregations, the plural congregations abilities to be flexible with, with how we're running things and how how we're supporting those kids.

And yeah, so one of the I mean, I mentioned this a little bit, one of the really awesome things, I think, is that we're both smaller congregations, but we run big church programming, because we're able to collaborate with each other and have support from two budgets and two part time religious educators and adults from two congregations. We're able to do things like take our coming of age kids to Boston, every other year when we run coming of age and run a full Middle School OWL program and go on service trips to places like Haiti and West Virginia. Yeah.

Shannon Harper  34:18  
Thanks, Tina. Okay, Kitty, really share your story.

Kitty Kaler  34:26  
Yes, hi everyone. So I am Kitty Kaler or Kilburn. I am the youth coordinator for UU church of Boulder and the Boulder Valley UU Fellowship, fellow fellowship. I swear I'm not from Texas. Fellowship. I'm just a little bit about our congregations. We similarly had some kind of contention at some point, actually, the fellowship was, is it's it's in the same county so it's not that far, but it was it was born after there was a, there was a breach of trust. With a minister at the Boulder church and so there's, there's, I think over time that is healed to the point that now there are also there are combined worship services. And about five or six years ago, one of the one, of the one of the employees of the Church of Boulder, started looking into various ways that they could be resourceful and combine resources. So her name is Emily Congre. Now Reverend Reverend Emily Congre if you know her, and, and she started developing different resources like sharing OWL and sharing. Sorry, I'm coming of age, the coming of age programming, and any other ways that they could combine forces. So the the UU Church of Boulder is, was a medium sized congregation is probably closer to small now, I think, that's good to keep in mind and the Boulder Valley UU Fellowship is, is probably a medium sized congregation. So just keep that in mind when I say that with what we're doing. I think that a lot of this still can apply. But you know, resource wise, it may it may change. So we have right now a shared, a shared youth program. And again, we're still doing coming of age. And OWL has been on hold. So I've been with the churches I have, I have also a unique position in that. I've been with the churches only during the pandemic.

So it's been a kind of a wild ride. So I don't you know, I have some when I first started it, it was, I was made aware that there had been five different people in five years being the youth coordinator. So a difficult position to maintain for various reasons. And I can give you some tips on that. But what that pointed to me was, okay, if I'm going to take this on, I need to know as much as possible about what would make this shared ministry sustainable. What does it need? From my position? What does it what kind of supports does it need from the two congregations? And what what does that all look like? So I did a lot of my own research, because I wasn't about to take it on and fail again, these youth like me, they needed some sustainable support. So I don't have it, like perfectly outlined for you, because, again, I'm still learning. But I will lay out some of the things that I that I noted. Um, so my position is, it is a paid position, and the contract is done by one of the congregation. So I'm officially an employee of one congregation. But I report to both. So that was really important to me making sure that there was a balance in my relationship. Rather than having one, you know, you know, just sending all if you just send all your kids to one larger church for for them to get their youth ministry, things you might miss out on that real shared opportunity and the balance between the congregations. Um, I think some of the reason that that they've had so much turnover is some of the people they had hired didn't have a UU background, some of them moved on to other roles. And, and some didn't find the balance and support in the position that allowed them to continue at the pay that was offered. So maybe sometimes, because it's not a lot of hours, I think that can be tricky for a religious education position. And also, you have to have like this right person who just happens to be like, super passionate and super skilled, and, you know, willing, willing to deal with that. And I think you can find that in a volunteer, but like getting some kind of commitment can be really helpful for sustainability. Unless, of course, you are doing some kind of volunteer like your DREs is like Tina was saying, like the DREs and really good in covenant and really connected. So that so to speak to that. One of the things that we do is, I noticed in previous people that had my position, sort of the communication fell apart. So I insisted that we meet weekly. So having a weekly meeting, even if you don't have anything to talk about, even if it's just kind of a loose check in to make sure that we're we're connected and on the same page has been essential. So I alternate between meeting with each DRE, and, and with the whole group. I think that having a clarity of what exactly the role is and what is being provided was really essential. So before I started the position, I wrote up a vision plan for it. And I think that that could be done collaboratively between the DREs and I'm happy to share my vision with you all if you're curious. I will document, But it kind of outlined what I felt like what levels of support were needed from the congregations what, what the position should very specifically offer both during COVID. And after? So that's a little again, another additional challenge. If you do decide to have paid paid people, I think, and if you can, if you can swing it, I mean, I think you have to think, How valuable is our youth, How valuable is supporting our youth, you know, and so and, and it sounds like, there's opportunities to fundraise to Tina is saying that they're, they're doing that, like, I don't know if that's throw that in there. But what I want to suggest if it is a paid position to consider that maybe the pay should be slightly more than the average paid for UUA guidelines, because it's very complex to work between two congregations. It's not like the average between two, you're actually adding kids and you're adding youth and you're adding complexity. And so that could help make it more sustainable for the right person. I said, meeting frequently, having excellent communication in our congregations. And I also think, are really important to have a balanced role between the congregations. So at one point, the person holding these coordinator position was called in to be interim DRE for one church. And then during Sunday's wasn't able to provide the same level of support for the high school youth. Our churches decided in the past year to take the middle school piece out of the youth coordinator position. So now the churches are independently supporting their middle school, and I'm not sure how long that will hold up. But it did. It frees up the ability of the person in my position to give a more full and balanced attention rather than going back and forth between the churches on Sunday morning, during middle school, I can be there, virtually now, I'm in in a role holding the youth in my high school youth in mind. Um, I think also kind of to what Tina said, like bonding, the bonding, the bonding, seed planting opportunities, like coming of age, owls, retreats, I'm going to have to do that low ropes thing that you suggested Tina, because that's wonderful.

But which we haven't got to do as much online. But having like a big come together a bonding thing, I think, early on, because what we've seen too, is like as our five youth coordinators have gone through our our numbers have dwindled to some degree. And so having a big connecting thing, I think will help draw people back in and I'm excited to see what happens post pandemic, I think people are eager to get back. Um, I think that's largely my advice. And I I'm happy if any of you ever want to chat. Oh, the last thing I want to say is that in if you do decide to create any kind of position, I spent a lot of time reading job descriptions of other youth coordinator positions around the country, including shared ones, and kind of getting a baseline of what, what other folks are doing. So, you know, workshops like this are the ticket to right, like, what are other folks doing? And so thank you all for letting me chat.

Eric Bliss  43:30  
Big ups to you, Katie, and to Tina, for sharing your wisdom with us. Thank you. We're going to do a q&a later. There were some amazing questions that came in to the chat. We've asked folks to hold on to those questions and type them as jams as posted notes in the jam board. So please feel free to add those to the jam board. That first page somehow got erased. I think someone might have accidentally hit clear frame. I've tried to bring back the previous content and it doesn't seem to want to return so we'll hold those stories in our hearts. So let's review a little bit can we bring up the PowerPoint? Amy? Amy, are you with us? Oh there we go. Thank you Amy.

muted Shannon.

Shannon Harper  44:40  
We wrote this review actually before we we actually heard Kitty and and Tina story, but um, so this is what we were imagining the review would be so gather a team reach out to other nearby congregations. Include a larger church if you can. So like if you are a very small church, sometimes it helps to partner with a larger church. If you have them close by. Professional support helps. The all of you belong to regions that have regional staff, we don't want to also volunteer regional staff to talk with you about youth ministry, if that's not their specialty. So you can always reach out to Eric and I, we're happy to have a conversation with you. No matter what region you live in, that's we feel like that's our job is youth specialists who work for the UUA is to talk to anybody about youth ministry, and then connect you with people who can support you on a more ongoing way. I think it's important to survey the families that are involved, I just sent out a big survey for all the youth in the Central East region, because before I go create a program or something, I'd kind of like to know when they want to meet how often they want to meet what they want to meet about. Design experiences include youth in the design process. So that's part of that leadership thing that we were kind of talking about, like I say, leadership, Eric has like its partnership, it is partnership. That's what I mean, when I say leadership, is that youth are not just being told what to do. And given given that they have, they have their own decision making power. And they're able to take on what they want to take on that choice there.

Eric Bliss  46:20  
And I'll hop in. So after you've kind of gone through your initial forays into this collaborations, start to get some feedback. And I really encourage you to center the youth voice in this what is it that you've appreciated about this doing appreciative inquiry process with them, and other marginalized voices that are involved in the program, adapt and modify as appropriate? Sometimes I think we get locked into this is the way we've always done it, which is interesting, because many of the youth communities that I interact with it sometimes experience kind of the most areas of problem behavior aren't because of the youth. It's because of the long standing adults who are trying to relive their LRY days, liberal religious youth. That's the entity that predated YRUU young, religious, Unitarian Universalist. And, and it's, it's really a process of adapting, because youth ministry is constantly evolving, it's important that we evolve with it. Mm hmm. And then lastly, this is something that I really encourage with all the youth communities that I work with, celebrate success, you know, hold a worship, hold it into the year celebration, commemorate with ritual and ceremony. These are the things that I remember, as a youth, I remembered leading a Christmas Eve worship that was youth led and our tiny little storefront church, I'll never forget that, that the the minister trusted us to do it, and we did it and, and in the form of storytelling, and I'll never forget those stories. So just some, these are some of the kind of big broad brushstroke tips that Shannon and I would give you, outside of the amazing information and advice that you got from Tina and Kitty.

Shannon Harper  48:20  
And, um, this next slide, I'm not even gonna you know, what I'm gonna, I'm gonna suggest that it would be really fantastic if you all invited me back because I would love to do a whole other session about what it's like to do youth ministry, in small congregations when there's only a couple of youth and how you can still do that even if you don't have a youth group that you can serve youth in your congregations and how we can like change our cultures and our congregations so that your congregation becomes the youth group when you only have a couple of youth or you know, here and there. I would love to talk with you more about that. But I want to get to our questions tonight. So questions. Um, we did take down some of them.

Eric Bliss  49:21  
Yeah, there are a few of them that are in I see five questions. 123456 questions here. And I would just invite Tina and can we spot light, Kitty is Kitty spotlighted spotlit. Sorry, I'm working on my grammar tonight. So yeah, let's just grab the ones that that speak to us. Thank you, Kitty and Tina for sharing your wisdom with us with this group.

Tina Lesley-Fox  49:53  
Are they all on the jam board now or are they in two places.

Eric Bliss  49:58  
I see them on the jam board. Oage one of three 

Kitty Kaler  50:08  
I like this, what if there are no use? Like, I would say, why not get some.

Tina Lesley-Fox  50:18  
So one of the are coming of age program right now is running with three congregations. And one of the congregations is three hours from here, because we're doing it by zoom. So right now, there's a whole lot of possibility for bringing people in who you might not be able to bring in if you were in person. But there are also maybe ways that the couple of youth that you have, could invite friends from school to come play jackbox games in your youth group or, you know, finding ways to pull pull folks in online right now in the zoom rooms where we have a lot more flexibility.

Shannon Harper  51:02  
We'd love to give a quick note for It's okay, if you don't have you. Um, and and I just want to recognize that that like, I don't even know all the congregations that you belong to. But sometimes smaller congregations are, first of all places that have larger congregations, you'd have options where they could go to youth groups, and I've talked to people who are like, who felt like their the the the health and wellness of their congregation was dependent on whether or not they had young people. And if they didn't have young people, that was a sign that they were a failing congregation. And that is not true. I just want to say, that is not true for all of you. Like, don't feel like you have to go, like roundup kids in the neighborhood. If that's not, you know, like everybody has to find their ministry and sometimes small congregations, your ministry is growing the little ones so that they'll be the big ones eventually or that or or you know, or you have a very strong elder kind of ministry, like everybody has their their things. So I also want to just let go of the you have to have a youth group, you have to have youth and it's it's okay to not.

Kitty Kaler  52:07  
worry about my little tease there.

Eric Bliss  52:27  
I see the question about scheduling between youth groups, I can tell you that, in my role as youth specialist, I have a devil of a time I work with youth adult boards, and in different time zones. And we're trying to bring people together to work on conferences and various things. So I can sympathize with that. My recommendation. And this is but by no means a panacea, but is to offer multiple inroads and understand that you, you may not necessarily be able to plan a time that works for everyone, but playing multiple events at different times, so that people can plug in when they can. And so, you know, it's not you may not always have youth group at a set time. During the week, maybe you have it one month, it's this time and the next week, it's another time. Because Yeah, people's schedules are really all over the board these days. And we just have to be flexible. And the goal isn't perfection, the goal, the goal is ministry. One of the benefits, though is there are a ton of great scheduling apps out there, there's doodle poll, and when to meet, and lots of others that are probably don't even know. And so I recommend just, you know, start getting your first events dialed in. And, you know, as you miss people check in with them and say, okay, what's not working about this time. One of the things that we did at First Unitarian Denver was we'd have a kickoff event that we made sure, the maximum amount of people could get to. And then we did our scheduling from that kickoff event where everyone was in place. And we could we could kind of map it out. We also set goals for the year, we did a ton of icebreaking, team building, we created our covenant. So having like a lock in that at the beginning of the year, is a great idea to get everyone on the same page and to start doing do some of that scheduling.

Kitty Kaler  54:34  
to piggyback off that, and also sort of connected to what Shannon said, I think there's a lot of ways to serve the youth that aren't just youth group, like youth group is a really great community bonding thing, but also having one offs because even in my youth group where I have lots of youth, there are a few kids who just can't make it or they're too into scouts or they're too into band and like but they still deserve to be connected. So finding ways to connect with them, whether it's bringing them into a service or, or having these big fun, like intro events or, or other random events throughout the year, can open a lot of doors in that way.

Tina Lesley-Fox  55:14  
Yeah, and that's a place that with our service projects, that youth can come for one off things and get connected and feel like they're part of the community, even if they're not able to attend youth group. And right now, all of that is different, right? I just feel like I need to say that because, you know, in regular times, we have all of this stuff going on the reality right now is that we have 12 youth in our high school youth group, but we let in the eighth graders, because we didn't have anything for them any place for them to fit in. And on any given time that we meet, when reading twice a month, I have five to six youth show up. And mostly what we do is play games, because that's what they need, they need that time to connect and just be together. So

Shannon Harper  56:12  
I think what we're seeing across the board is that, um, middle school age youth are more interested in connecting online than the high school youth that there is a little bit but that's I think, across the board, we're kind of seeing that. And so you know, if you haven't done anything, like starting with the middle schoolers, if you have some middle schoolers might might make you feel better, because they're going to show up, and they might, and they're going to interact, and they will do love to play games. But you can I like got them to start playing games. This is my own my own congregation. We I got them to come in, because we were gonna play games, but then I was like, okay, we're gonna do a check in for half the time and then games. Now we're at the point where we don't have to play the games. They love the check in. So it It builds.

Eric Bliss  57:00  
Seen, I noticed a question about joint youth groups. But if the churches are very close, do you have thoughts on that one, that one came up during your, your, your presentation?

Tina Lesley-Fox  57:12  
And then I don't know how far apart they are. But basically, the way it works for us is, I mean, we have people coming from all over the place to our congregation, they travel up to an hour for church. So parents will drop their kids off at one church and then drive to the other church for service. That's what some parents do other parents follow their kids. And so when their high schoolers are at First UU they attend service at First UU and when they're high schoolers are at May Memorial they attend to service at May Memorial about a 25 minute drive apart. Yeah, so you know, you it comes to scheduling. So maybe having youth group during service is not what makes sense. Maybe it makes sense to have youth group on Sunday afternoon, or Sunday evening or Thursday evening. And then you, you know, you work with everybody's schedules. And if the churches are further apart, and you're not sort of competing with worship, then it gives you a little more flexibility too

Eric Bliss  58:38  
I also saw a question about youth led culture, we could do a whole series of webinars on that, I do recommend you go to uua.org. And look at the youth ministry competent competencies, just do a little search for youth ministry competencies. And there's a whole series of webinars on that subject. It's it's very complicated and our understanding, and the paradigms over time have really shifted from Youth Gone Wild, to youth empowerment. And now we're in this very partner that we're in a partnership paradigm. And we're just about out of time, Shannon, shall we breeze through these last couple slides?

Shannon Harper  59:22  
Yeah, I want to lift up a one of the questions that was in the chat that I just added, are there opportunities that exists now for sharing youth programming, because we are online most of the time? So could we keep youth online if it means that the ability to share programming, so I think that's another like option is that like, you know, as we're moving into a place where we can be in both places, like Will we ever get rid of all you know of online opportunities? I hope not because we're seeing youth that never showed up to in person events online. I A lot of you, who we weren't serving with our in person events are showing up for online things. So I hope We can continue doing that an offering that and so maybe that's the thing like you have you to meet in person, but then you always have this, this virtual thing where you can be from anywhere and and come and join your group. So, okay, what am I, what's next? Where are we resources that we're talking about Eric

Eric Bliss  1:00:24  
commitment, and we are at time. So if you have to bounce, by all means, we just have a couple more things to cover if you want to hang with us for just a few more minutes,

Shannon Harper  1:00:34  
but there'll be recording, and we will share the slideshow. And we'll figure out how to get the questions into the slideshow so that it is all combined together. So you won't miss anything, you have to leave. Um, so well, we were just going that we were thinking, it might be good when you hear all of these ideas that it might be nice to connect this back to yourself in your congregation. And like what would be the next? I think Adrian Marie Brown calls it the next elegant step. So like not having to come up with a whole plan. But is there anything that anyone has been inspired to do? Or look into, or ponder more or talk to people about? And do you want to share it in a way sharing their certain place for sharing, you're

Eric Bliss  1:01:24  
just in the chat

Shannon Harper  1:01:25  
in the chat. We can read them out as you share.

Eric Bliss  1:01:34  
Next slide, Amy. So here's our list of resources. When you get the PowerPoint, these are live links. So you can click directly at them. And I forgot to ask the question about youth Lee leading culture, but I talked about youth ministry competencies. They're there. We suggest you preview those resources. If you have questions, you can email either Shannon or myself. We will close now with the words of Wayne Arneson and I've heard this quote, maybe too many times. And I was like, wait, maybe I shouldn't use this one. It's it's pretty, pretty common. But in this time for this subject. When we're talking about youth, I think it's still so apropos. Take courage, friends, the way is often hard. The path is never clear. And the stakes are very high. Take courage for deep down. There's another truth. You are not alone. Wayne Arneson. Please reach out if you have any questions or if we can support you in any way. Thank you for joining us this evening. And a special thanks to our our guest stars, Tina and Kitty.

Rev. Megan Foley  1:02:57  
Yeah, thanks so much Tina and Kitty for coming out and for your great work for the faith. So appreciate your efforts. And and thanks, of course to Eric and Shannon for your awesomeness and sharing. So please do get in touch with Eric and Shannon, if you have questions. And this has been our three part youth our three part smallers focus webinars for this for this spring, winter, spring, almost spring, hopefully ended the pandemic time. We do have at least one if not a couple of extra offerings at General Assembly this year, which is virtual. So please do go and check us out there too. And if you have other suggestions for things that would be particularly helpful for you, in your smaller congregation work, please let us know when a staff team now because we want we're here to serve. And we really appreciate the work that smallers in particular do, we think you have a lot of relevance and nimbleness. It's exactly what the world needs. And so we want to support your work. So please do keep in touch with us. And I think that's it for tonight slash early evening depending on where you are. So thank you so much everyone and have a good night.

Transcribed by https://otter.ai