0:19  
Um, tell me a little bit about your congregation and what I might experience in your programs. Do you

0:30  
want to start Sadie, or should I start?

0:33  
You? Go first, and then I'll add go for it.

0:36  
Well, I can start by telling you about our congregation.

0:40  
So we are in we're a mid sized congregation in Southern New Hampshire. We've got probably 250 adults, and I don't know, 70 kids. Yeah, about 7070, children and youth,

0:53  
and we have a single service on Sunday mornings.

1:00  
And right now, what you would experience is that we're not in our building, which is an extra wrinkle, but that's a that's a whole other, whole other conversation.

1:10  
And we have,

1:15  
we do a kind of rotation of Sunday morning experiences, and they follow approximately first, Sunday, second, Sunday, third, Sunday, fourth, Sunday of the month, fifth Sunday when we have them.

1:30  
So the first Sunday of the month we have children's chapel, Sadie Leeds children's chapel. And that's a like multi age, ages four and up, basically all together

1:44  
and and then I lead worship in the sanctuary that is, is,

1:52  
is mostly just adults. We sometimes have a baby in there

1:57  
on the second and third Sundays. We do workshop choices, which are the kids will be in the service for the first 20 minutes or so. We usually do a wonder box moment during that time, and and then they head off, and they get to do workshop choices, which I'll let Sadie say more about in a moment. And then on the fourth Sunday of the month, we do an all ages service, so all ages are together in the sanctuary.

2:25  
And when there's a fifth Sunday, we do what we call switch it up Sunday, which means that everybody gets, gets to do faith formation workshops. So we have a little bit of worship together, and then we have workshop choices, workshop choices for children and adults. Some of them are mixed ages. Some of them are child focused. Some of them are adult focused.

2:49  
Excuse me.

2:51  
And and so that happens a couple times a year that we do those those switch it up Sundays.

2:59  
So that is, that's the flow of our month. And I'll let Sadie say a little bit more about the programs. Yeah,

3:09  
and let's see. So the the children's chapel time so special. I love it. Um, when I came to the church, there was, there already was, this is my eighth year here, and there was children's chapel, the first Sunday the month already, but it was like 1520 minutes and then, and then they would go to their classrooms. And they weren't called workshops yet, their their classes. And we always went long whenever I ran it, and there was just such good stuff happening. So we after, we came back in person, after we were online for for a while, we I shifted it to be chapel, being the whole service time,

3:58  
and a lot of it is intentional

4:02  
moments that mirror what might happen in the sanctuary, and it's a little bit more engaging and and hands on. And then there are stations and like an activity that that children do when they're in chapel. So last, last month,

4:20  
we had lots of found objects, and they made, who am I? Found object, mandalas. So and all ages totally got into it with all the all the fun little kinds of pieces, and then to connect it back to everyone, we took pictures of all of them, and then had them as slides for our all ages service at the end of the month

4:43  
and and a bunch of kids. Some of this stuff is organic, like you could just go with where the energy is. So just to show the kids that, like it is temporary, the mandalas do go away after but we can take a picture so you can remember it. And then they said, Well, can you take a picture and send it to my parents? Yes.

5:00  
Yes, and then I realized I had to figure out who's was, who's and remember. So I had them take their name tags off and put it like right next to their their image. And so then in the sanctuary, their names were next to their mandalas, and

5:17  
I could see the kids getting excited to see their names. I could see the parents being excited, and everyone got a chance to see and this was during the prelude, so it was a longer musical moment, and it just kind of helped bring everyone into the space. And it was great. So that's my tangent, talking about chapel. Do you ever have like adults who aren't, maybe associated normally with that, with Sunday school, who

5:47  
go there instead.

5:49  
So interesting, you should ask, what we now do is we have a great, I think so, worship Associates Program at the church where we have this team who meets. I also join this team and meet with Allison once a month. And on the days, we pick who's going to help with a service, we also invite who's going to help with the Children's chapel. So we have a worship leader, and sometimes they're parents, sometimes it's someone who has never been with kids,

6:24  
and they do fabulously and

6:28  
and now I'm also looking for people, not my regular teachers, who, as I'll talk about, I really only asked for them for two Sundays of the month. That's a commitment that

6:39  
this year our folks are able to do they're like I can do second and third Sundays. And I'm not asking any more of them, because I want them to go to church on the other days or be with family, you know.

6:50  
So I reach out to other helpers to say, Will you be there to accompany the kids in children's chapel? I will be leading it, but it's helpful to have someone sitting right next to the the kids who would benefit from having someone sit next to them and and that's and that's working.

7:11  
And we've got, we've got some members who, for what, other reason, for different reasons, sitting in the sanctuary for the whole service is hard on their body physically, or is hard for them cognitively. And they've asked me, Can I help out with the kids? And this is the first year that I've had that ask, and it's twice, and I we, we make it work. We figure out what room is the best one for them to be in. And I think it's so powerful to show they still want to be part of the community, even though one part of it is hard for them.

7:49  
So yeah, so the answer to that one is yes, I'm so glad you named that, because I

7:55  
for the longest time, I think there's been this assumption that worship is great for all adults, and I mean, our style, our current style of worship, is great for all adults. And

8:05  
I'm not one of those adults. Yeah, name it. I'm like, All right, more real. That's great. Yeah,

8:15  
that. So one of the things that we, Alice and I had a great conversation with your questions ahead of time. So thank you for that.

8:24  
We talked about the different ways that we offer, the different kinds of worships that we offer, so they're not all sermon based

8:33  
and and it's not only that the all ages Sunday is the only one that's unique,

8:39  
but we we do a lot of the

8:43  
the all ages. Sundays tend to be ones that are more ritual based. They might be story based

8:50  
with with readers theater. Now we have a whole group of youth and child readers who are comfortable reading in church. Delighted to do it.

9:01  
And it's hard to plan ahead. It's hard to know who you're going to have. So I'm generally asking my families Thursdays, Friday, Saturday, of like the fog Sunday. But our our families are up for it, and so it may take a few asks, and families may say no for a couple weeks before they're available. But just last Sunday, we had four readers, right? Allison,

9:27  
and one adult. So it was a, it was a multi age cast and and it was great. And the stories you don't do all at once, so you do a part of it, and then you go through some parts of the service, and then you come back to the story. Oh, yeah. Okay, where do you get those stories?

9:43  
So the Loretta portal is great. This new, you know, sharing, and we, we took a story that the mishmash heart story,

9:56  
and it was shared just as a narrative. You know, what? Usually?

10:00  
Just one person would share it, and then Alice and I talked about it, and she turned it into readers theater, so we just take out the lines and then give them to different people, and we adapted a little bit. And we're planning to re share our version to the Loreta portal, so you'll be able to see how we used it.

10:19  
Yeah, and we get stories from all over the place. I mean, like from, from books, from, sometimes they're from worship web, sometimes they're from

10:29  
colleagues sharing them and and

10:34  
sometimes we write them less off, right? We rarely, we, every so often, we write one, but not that's not our, our typical way of doing it. Yeah.

10:45  
So there were a couple other things that we thought of

10:49  
when we were thinking about how we do worship. Because for us, worship is like, there's the the faith, faith formation program that some people think of, which is, you know, going off and doing some some kind of workshop. But we also think of worship as obviously a part of faith formation. And have done that, tried to do that really intentionally, starting, and we started kind of small, I would say, with getting kids involved in worship, with lighting the chalice and being the person who opens the Wonder box. The Wonder box has been

11:27  
great. Not everybody loves it, and it it, it is consistently engaging to a large number of people, and so we we use it three, probably three times a month, or at least two times a month, often three times a month. And for people who are like, what is this wonder box? What? How would you describe?

11:48  
Sure I can touch that.

11:50  
So we use a wonder box is a way of using an an object lesson to help with your your point and your as like an intro into the story or the moment for all ages. So we have a specific box. I actually have quite a few different boxes, but generally we use the same one, and I invite one. When I first started, it would say, who wants to open the Wonder box? And all the kids are like, me, me, me, me, and someone's disappointed that they don't get picked so I stopped doing that,

12:22  
and I recruit a family ahead of time, and then they come early, and, and so that's one way you always know you're gonna have one kid on Sunday. Yeah.

12:33  
And we get more than one kid, but that that's helpful. And, and family, family involvement, yeah, yeah. And they're they often dress up on their day. They don't all but they often do. So

12:48  
they come forward, help open the box, and then we have, like, a very short chat about what it is. Sometimes they don't speak at all. We just hold it up and I talk about it that I like to rehearse what we're going to say, you know, we so we have that moment with that. I do that moment with them, with the wondering before the service. So they're opening it up. They don't know what it is. They wonder about it with me. And then I ask, Would you like to say this in front of the church? Would you know? And then I'll ask you this, could you say that? And so we have, like, a very, very, very short rehearsal.

13:23  
And then sometimes they are a part of the story. Sometimes they will hold the props for the story. Other times I give them the item, if they're really little, and I say, go sit with your family and we're going to hear a story.

13:38  
And so I give them like a very clear. I try to give them you're clear, you're done, you get go sit, and then sometimes I tell a story, sometimes

13:48  
we try to vary them. So I love that with using zoom, we got a lot more tech savvy, and we have screens that make showing pictures work in a way that I my first 12 years. I never use picture books, but we use them more now, but we don't do it every Sunday. We try to, if we do it, we try not to do it more than once a month.

14:14  
And then I try to tell an original story. I try to tell a story once a month. Either it's original or it's found on worship web, but kind of engaging, try and do an off book, that kind of story moment and then,

14:30  
and then, maybe other one is a reader's theater. Maybe it's a guided meditation. Maybe it's body prayer. So we do try to change it up. And this wasn't something that we did intentionally from the beginning. I think it was just something that we noticed we were doing because we liked being innovative, and then we liked it. And so now

14:54  
one thing about you, Nashua, I'm super grateful, is that it is part of the system that.

15:00  
The religious educator has one Sunday off a month. I'm full time, and I'm really grateful for that one Sunday, and a worship associate will usually read the Wonder box, do the Wonder box moment in my absence, or sometimes Allison are an intern, and generally on the days that I'm not doing it, that might be the picture book day where we're saying, Here's a book. Will you read this, and that's an easier ask of someone. And during that years, yeah, yeah. And community ownership, and sometimes we ask youth to do the reading and stuff like that too. So that's a little bit and then at the end of the Wonder box moment, I close with wondering questions for the whole congregation, and

15:45  
and then oftentimes, I will read Allison's sermon because we were both, we're both Saturday night people. Um, so Allison's sermon goes in at some not super early hour, and I read it, and I really appreciate it. And then I come up with my wondering questions. Or we, we kind of do that, like connect, like we're connected. It's not just wondering questions for the Wonder box story. It's for, like, the whole service. You

16:17  
know, I want to hold up something else that I just,

16:22  
I hadn't thought of it this way, but the way that you're describing how you approach the Wonder box families come in. They do it together. It's centered. It's reminding me very much of how families will light the chalice. And when I say families, I mean families of all different kinds, right? Light the chalice. And as somebody who

16:43  
wonder, I would say is a core value of mine, and it is a wonderful antidote to certitude, which our people need right now,

16:53  
that that holding chalice lighting wonder box is so beautiful.

17:02  
Yeah, I'll do some more.

17:05  
That's good. One of the things I think is really amazing is so I think we started, you came in 2017

17:13  
Sadie, that's when we started doing wonder boxes. And in 2019 we did a whole like revamp of our mission and values and end statements as a congregation. And one, we came up with four core values, and one of them was Wonder. And I don't think that would have happened without, like, the idea of the Wonder box being introduced and becoming a part of what we do. And so now that is like, wonder is, is now core to our congregation, in a way I don't think it was 10 years ago. Well done. I have goosebumps. That's really, yeah, I wish that for all the congregations. And we didn't choose the core values. They did, you know? So it was like, yeah, really cool to see that bubble up from the congregation. Yeah, that was something that was congregational LED. Our board was very actively involved in that they it was very impressive. My first couple years was just supporting and being aware of this big

18:16  
organizing and all these cottage meetings about who we are and and it really came from the congregation, and Alice and I were thinking that that's really helped us implement, like implement the changes, because wonder is in there and so. So when I wanted to shift away from

18:37  
curriculum based faith formation program age specific,

18:42  
we shifted to workshop choices, and I got the idea from Catherine farmer Loya at the Tennessee Valley UU church. She did a wonderful presentation. It's on in the portal of of the different kinds of themed workshops that children and youth can choose to attend when they gather on Sunday mornings. So we took that, adapted it to make it work for our for us, and we, I made the workshop choices be our core values. So what does that mean? So wonder is now wonder art, and so it's where you say wow and ask how so I call it like art with a wow factor. And I've got volunteers who love doing that love doing really fun art projects, and I've got kids who really love doing fun art projects.

19:33  
And then we have our other core values, courageous community. So we have courageous community games. And that is for the group who likes to move and groove and play together and not sit down and draw the whole time. And those are our two main workshops that had always got the most. And then we weave in.

20:00  
Love in action, which is our third one. They're not ordered, but I'm just counting them right now, right?

20:06  
So we do love in action projects periodically we might swap out. If our program were to grow. We could have three on Sunday morning. At the moment, mainly, we have two, and

20:18  
then the other one is authentic connection. And I, the way that I worked that in was worship leading. So that could be worship leaders writing chalice lightings, working on the solstice pageant, but generally it's community games and wonder art.

20:36  
And now we have the authentic connection teens. And now we have authentic connection teens, right? So that's the ACT group. But Act doesn't really, I don't usually stick with, you know, the letters, because they're confusing and not clear, but, but it's really funny to be like, I'm an authentic teen,

20:56  
and that's we do use our own version of a games curriculum that Kathy Smith wrote,

21:05  
but that is our whole point. On Sunday morning program for our teens is to get them to have fun and play and and make connections with each other and

21:15  
and I just went to my first play of a youth who was in community theater, and I talked with her parents afterwards, she was great. And I said, Is there any other shows coming up? And she said, Yes, but I told her, the rehearsals are Sunday night, our Sunday mornings and Friday nights. And Fridays is when we have owl. And this, this seventh grade girl said, then I don't want to do it. She picked, she picked church over Theater,

21:45  
which I was just like, Oh, boy. And she's, she's been coming since she's in the first grade, and we've figured out ways to connect with her all the way through and support her love of drama and and she's for her drama, yeah, gosh, and I, I just bought tickets to the other one that I wasn't sure I was going to make it to.

22:10  
So that's now I've, I've heard about that from full week that was part of full week faith, right? Is to go to these Yeah, events. And I always love the idea, and it just never, never fit in my schedule, or knew about it enough. So now I'm telling kids. Tell me when your shows are because I love theater and I want to go see them and I'm proud of them. So

22:33  
this could be like a drinking game, like, when does Tandy start crying?

22:39  
Do not underestimate the power of that Sadie, I don't think you do. Otherwise you wouldn't show up. But oh my, yeah, so I so. So another fun fact, Alice and I both grew up Unitarian, Universalist.

22:52  
And I remember when my a y s teachers came to my senior show. I was blown away. I remember when they came to my championship swim meet and that that stuck with me. I was like, of course, I've been doing this 22 years. Why did it take us

23:12  
be able to go? No excuses. It's fine, but it's stuff that we that we know it really does make a difference to show up.

23:21  
Have more things to say about worship. Do you want to go for Ellis? Go for it.

23:26  
So we talked about the challenge, like lighting the chalice and the wonder box and readers theaters.

23:32  
But I guess the other thing I wanted to lift up is that we have really intentionally made space for kids in worship as well and families, and particularly our youngest kiddos.

23:45  
We had like a bumper crop of babies and toddlers in the last five years, and

23:57  
that

23:59  
they we had a little corner in our sanctuary. That was that we had made our family corner, which happened because we did it for one Christmas Eve service, and then we just left the sign up

24:13  
and like, what is that money? Is that just like, where people can know that they can be squirmy and yeah, exactly it was like it was, it was literally a corner in the back that had pews on either side. We put a rocking chair back there and some quiet toys and a sign that said family corner. And then we had this bumper crop of of babies and toddlers, and they there was not enough room for them in the family corner, and they spilled out more into the, yeah, they started, they started to become kind of a dangerous obstruction to, like, fire exits, um, things like that. You know, people could trip on them. These new Coronavirus were like, Yeah, especially when they started moving, you know, that was, that was problem. Um, you.

25:00  
And it was a great problem, right? It's like exactly the problem you want to have. And it was also true that they like, it was a little hard to hear under because they were underneath our balcony,

25:13  
and it was a little hard to hear. It felt a little bit separated. They didn't have a super good view. And so we ended up, actually, in in the winter of 2020

25:23  
taking out January, like January of 2020 we took out two pews. So we left the back pew and we took out the two pews that were right ahead of it,

25:35  
and added so it opened up this space between the back pew and the next one, and added some rugs, and again, more like kind of soft toys and books, and made that our family worship space.

25:52  
I still call it the family corner, even though it's not in a corner. And I try to correct myself, it's our family worship. And it made a space where, you know, the grown ups Could, could sit on that back pew

26:05  
or on the floor with their kids, and there was, like, kind of a it was a little contained, right? It wasn't quite, wasn't quite like playpen ish, because there were no signs to it. We still had runners, but it was a little bit contained, and they had a little bit more room and

26:23  
and they, you know, they knew it was their space, but it was also more integrated into the rest of rest of the space.

26:32  
So we did that in in January of 2020, and then we left our sanctuary for a year and a half soon after. And now we've left our sanctuary for a construction project, but that space has been very, very well utilized by by our families and

26:55  
and I have gotten comments so we have a preschool in the in in in our building, and my kids have been going to that preschool recently, and so I go to the preschool events, and they'd always do their like, holiday concert in our sanctuary. And I was there just sitting there, being a parent, and overhearing the the parents of these preschoolers that aren't affiliated with the church, sitting in our corner, being like, I wish my church had this and I was like, Yes, we have.

27:24  
We have succeeded. If we have, people have nothing to do with our church who are, are feeling welcomed into this space that way. That's That's beautiful. We first started with a video that we've made that we could share with you. It's on our YouTube page. Um, of Allison and I very enthusiastically introducing people to the new space, talking about it, explaining it. And that went out. And then not too long after that, we we co led a zoom webinar. So this is like we were already doing zoom even before COVID, but we did a zoom webinar for the congregation about children in worship.

28:07  
Two, it was a series. There was one that we did that was about supporting children in worship for people who don't have children, yes, and one about supporting children in worship for people who do have children, right? We were able to explain why, talk about faith formation and faith development, and

28:28  
say this is something we were going to try for a few months, and then we were going to come back. We didn't know we weren't actually coming back.

28:37  
And one thing that happened is that people started seeing how they on Zoom, how they missed seeing the kids on Sunday mornings, how when we had a kid, oh my gosh, during COVID,

28:50  
we have a an amazingly talented tech person, and he works with robotics, right? He and his student made a robot that would open a wonder box that was remotely controlled from a website so children at home, I would still recruit a wonder box open every week and say, Can you push these buttons like so on a phone or tablet of like, move forward, arm down, Close claw, arm up. Oh my god, isn't that amazing? Like, within the first like few weeks, like, this was so quick, like, I think, like the first couple weeks, I would

29:31  
say, Okay, do you have a box in your house? Can you put a bear inside it? You know, so that we were doing it that way. But then there was really this moment of wonder. And congregants on Zoom were saying how much they enjoyed seeing the kids again, because we were also separated,

29:50  
and it it did take everyone a little bit more learning when we all came back together again, and Allison and I are seeing that our kids.

30:00  
Yes, and our whole congregation are just, just learn to worship again. And it was not as bumpy.

30:07  
And I started sitting in the sanctuary in the front pews when I wasn't leading worship. In the past, I would always be up in the pulpit like kind of behind and maybe not be seen. And what I would do is I would sit with my helpers, so I would invite them to come up, okay, and when it's our turn, we're going to go up, light the chalice. We come back, sit here. And that kind of was like a little graduation from the family corner. And like, help them be more engaged. And then, not even intentionally, this brought their friends who wanted to come sit up with their friends and with me. So for a few services, I would have the front row of kids not sitting with their parents. Their parents wouldn't be too far away, but they were doing worship with me up front. And I just loved that. So

30:54  
that was like kind of a next step of them really learning how to worship together. Yeah. So some of the things

31:02  
we did was, was we have done some like intentional work on our sound and improving the sound quality and teaching people how to speak in the microphone better. Because the biggest complaint we would get is, I have trouble hearing right, which don't want anyone to have trouble hearing right, like we don't want

31:23  
that. And I think the other thing we did is, you know, we talked about this Sadie, talked about the intentional process we did, long range planning process that we went through that got us to this new kind of mission, values and statement.

31:38  
And I don't think we could have made some of these changes without that, because we had what it meant is that we had decided together who we wanted to be as a congregation.

31:49  
So for people at home who are thinking, oh my gosh, I want I want that, how do we get a clarifying process? My community needs a clarifying process.

31:59  
Did you have somebody who accompanied you through that. How did you do that?

32:04  
Yeah, so nuts and bolts, but like, yeah, yeah, we so we started it on our own, and then we brought in

32:13  
Unity consulting, and we worked with Laura Park, who doesn't, I don't think work with Unity consulting anymore, but we use policy based governance. So that means, you know, we were going through a particular kind of process, and she really worked with us to move through that and to create the new values mission. And ends, okay, fantastic. And also, I want to put a plug in variational Life staff I used to be on that, yeah, we love getting those kind of calls.

32:42  
So, yeah, yeah, give them a call. Give your person a call. If they can't do it, they'll know people. They'll know people. Yeah, yeah,

32:51  
sweet. I was thinking I had an idea.

32:55  
Oh, for it. No

32:57  
idea. Um, so we have this great family worship space right now. And, but we are currently out of our building because we're, we're, we're starting construction Any moment now, and, and, and so we're in a,

33:12  
we're in a university classroom, like a an auditorium style classroom, and we talked like, how could we create space in this classroom that would be like our family space? And we decided we just can't, like, there's just no way.

33:28  
And so we came up with the idea of Wonder bags, just to, like, really lean into the Wonder right?

33:35  
Wonder bags, which are little canvas bags that have, like, a little mini clipboard in it with some coloring pages and cleaners, pipe cleaners, and what else do you put in them? I do two. I made two versions. And basically I didn't buy much at all. I just used what we had bought some more clipboards, and I bought the bags.

33:58  
And so the bags for younger kids has

34:04  
an extra fidget in it, whether it's a little pillow with sequins on it, or it's one of those marble mazes inside little felt squares,

34:13  
or these star cube things that are so fun to unfold and fold so it's got a manipulative and then a juggling scarf that kids just use for all different kinds of things. And I love it when they dance with them for for music

34:31  
and pipe cleaners and

34:34  
and and chalice themed, and you themed coloring pages.

34:41  
And in them, I put

34:44  
you can make your own word searches, and I started doing those for our all ages services. And the words are in the order of what's happened. It's a it's an order of service word search. So, so they can follow along that way, or they're just doing it and and adults.

35:00  
At the those two. So those are in there. Yeah, we clear that you two have done your work. I mean, you've you've got a collegial relationship. It's a generative relationship. And are there other people on the team, or is it like you to get stuff done.

35:23  
We're kind of a great staff team. Yeah, we are the We Are the full time program staff.

35:30  
We have a very part time is he 12 hours

35:35  
music director who's so incredibly skilled that it just kicks our worship up a notch, and we can, on Sunday morning say, Hey, I'm telling a story that has a rainstorm in it. Can you just play wonderful rain music? And so he'll just be up for it. And now he's even starting to play music under one we're doing some of our reflections. And

35:55  
so we just have a lot of collaborative spirit. I think. Do

36:01  
you wanna talk about that anymore? Allison, yeah, um, I guess we so. We also have, we have a full time administrator who just helps keep, you know, keep us organized and make sure, keep, make sure we, like, plan our orders of service and that sort of thing. It's great. It's great. And we do, we do have? We have had a ministerial intern for the last five and five years. We're in our sixth year of having not the same one. We've had three different we're on our third and so that, you know that always just brings something a little different into the team, and it changes every couple years.

36:37  
I think one of the things we really emphasize it on our staff team and working with volunteers is being, like, as collaborative as possible. Like, how many people can we bring into this? And you can see that on Sunday mornings, because you don't just see one person up there doing everything. There's, you know, six different people that you see having having parts. And it,

37:00  
you know, it takes a little bit more work to do things that way, and I think, I think it's better.

37:07  
Everything turns out better, even if it's not as perfect, I

37:11  
don't get to have as much control over everything as I could if I, like, just got up there and did the service myself. But it's far higher quality,

37:20  
even though it's less perfect,

37:23  
oh, okay, want to say that again, it's much higher quality, even though it's less perfect, yes, yes, yeah.

37:33  
And one thing I appreciate is that we meet regularly, so

37:39  
we we have staff meetings where our music director leaves his day job and comes in and joins us and and our our admin is there, and and our intern, if we have one, and we meet weekly, and we we check in. We care about each other. We share appreciations at the end of our meetings, we review what happened last Sunday, we talk about what's coming up,

38:05  
and that's super helpful to have that open communication. And then Allison and I meet the two of us once a week. Occasionally, we are too busy and we have to skip it, but there is a lot of intentional check in time and planning, and what do we talk about? And

38:27  
so I, I'm a good officer, and so I, my heart goes out to our colleagues who do not have that,

38:36  
and who knows when the last time they had a staff meeting, or they never meet with the minister who's their supervisor, and that

38:43  
that's just way too, way, way too much. So we do, and that that communication and support and collaboration is there. And just this past Sunday, we we switched it up. Where else we like? We planned the service together. We knew how we wanted to do this, all ages service. And then we're just like, well, Allison's like, out did the Wonder box part, and I did the congregational reflection, and it was totally fine. It was great. You know, I don't always need to be doing the Wonder box. What advice do you have for folks who are looking, who are hearing this and going, oh my gosh, I want whatever they're on. What advice do you have?

39:27  
Well, I think the, you know, the thing we talked about in terms of, like, grounding in mission and values, just feels, feels really central and important, which, you know, it takes a lot effort to get there. And you like, you need a lot of buy in, and you need the whole you need, you need people behind it. But it also is one way to get people behind it right. Like, if you start having those conversations, then there's

39:54  
just more buy in and to what you're trying to do. It keeps it really grounded in the congregation.

40:00  
Right? It's not just like what I want them to do or what Sadie wants them to do. It's like we we talked. We had a lot of conversations. There were so many conversations, and from that, we decided who we want to be, and now we're trying to live into it. I thought of, I thought of one more thing that yeah, is advice to say that this is okay. What we're thinking of is that

40:27  
we have moments that we're all together, you know, multi Gen, where everyone is all together in worship. We also have times when we're in age based groupings. We also have times where,

40:42  
like, it's only adults, and we provide childcare and offerings so that those, those spaces are possible, because we, we were finding, like, there is benefit to that, like clusters and huddling. And I forget what the what the term is,

41:00  
caucusing, or affinity groups or, yeah, and being all together, right? So

41:06  
we we had a conversation with someone who missed doing circle dinners in the past. Like that was a great way to get to know people, but the problem was the children

41:18  
and and I love this person, right? So we stayed in conversation. And I was like, Okay, so the problem is the children

41:26  
was that if they were at the circle dinners, they were running all around the house, it was chaos, like it wasn't fun or safe. And I was like, yeah, that that situation is not great. So then we started doing

41:39  
movie nights at the church for kids, which I've wanted to do anyway, on circle dinner nights, so parents drop their kids off free childcare while they go and get to meet other people in the church, and the elders get to meet the parents, who are usually got their hands full on Sunday mornings. That's right. And we, and Allison, puts those groups together, and it's, you sign up just for one, and we do three a year, but it's not like you're making a commitment, yeah, like in the past, and that's been really successful, that's doing it as like a one shot. And so, yeah, oh, I was just going to add that one thing we found after people were kind of coming back from social distancing time

42:23  
was that our parents were twice as exhausted as they had been yes before, and

42:32  
although kind of pre 2020 we had a lot of parents being like, Oh, this is one of the only times I get to be with my kids. Maybe I like, we want to be together more on Sunday mornings. Now, what we're hearing more is like, I need a break, right? I need an hour where I can sit and no one will climb on my lap. You know, that might be me saying that personally

42:55  
and and so we leaned into like, Okay, we're going to offer so much child care, and we've, like, what tripled our child care budget this year, Sadie, or at least from what it was in 2019,

43:07  
right? Partly because we've got the population right. Like, no one was using child care before COVID. Yeah, we We had staff that we turned into a faith formation assistant position who could help in other areas, because we just didn't have anyone using it. They would stay in the sanctuary if they had a little one. And now we have eight kids, often in our consistently, we could have 15, yeah, we could have 15,

43:35  
yeah. So, so also, just like I think

43:40  
it felt a little bit when we made that shift. It felt like to having more childcare and like doing,

43:49  
I felt a little bit like, Oh, are we betraying what, what we are meant to be doing in

43:55  
in faith formation now, which is like making everyone all together, right? Which was kind of, I felt like the theme in like, the 20 fifteens,

44:05  
that was kind of the theme, everybody all together and,

44:09  
and we just like, listened to our community and what our community's needs were, and followed those and the needs were. Sometimes we want to be all together, and sometimes we want, you know, kids in one place and adults in another place, and, and, and making all of those opportunities available feels like where our community is at right now. And and feels good. It feels good and balanced. And,

44:34  
you know, not, not what I imagined in 2015 was going to feel good and balanced. But

44:40  
yeah, and the one curriculum we do do so post curricular, the one we do do is owl, so, and those are specific families sign up for it so, and they may be on Sunday mornings, like we did k1 owl and it was, these are the weeks on Sunday mornings, and we had families come all those days.

45:00  
You know, for five, six hour, it was during and then a little bit after church. Sometimes we do double sessions. And now seven, eight owl, we are on Friday nights and Saturday afternoons. But so there is still hunger. There's such a need for that curriculum, yeah. So we still, we still do do that, and we do coming of age, and we do coming of age, yeah. And there are some other things that we may, you know, introduce in but when we've done curriculum, they've been sign up. It's, it's like a special extra thing, right? It's not like the the core of faith formation.

45:36  
Well, I'll tell you, if I could time travel, I'd be with y'all on Sunday, and I'm sure throughout the week, what is, what a lovely, lovely place. I'm really grateful for both of your leaderships, and I'm grateful for your generosity and helping cast a vision for those who are like, how do we do this? Thank you. Thank you for showing us away. Thank.