Five years after a small group of youth and emerging adults across the country in collaboration with Lifespan Faith Engagement started theYoung UU Project as a way to stay connected when they couldn’t be together in person, the LFE office has decided it’s time to sunset the program. The Young UU Project (YUUP) was a very useful experiment in building a digital community during the covid lockdown era and well beyond. The initial Design Team worked really hard in 2020 and 2021 to create the foundation and run some really cool programs. From 2022 to 2024, the two teams of Community Moderators carried forth with the vision of monthly meetups, built a community server on Discord, had a Facebook, Instagram and YouTube presence, and facilitated workshops at General Assembly.

I am so so grateful for the time and wisdom those youth and adults offered to steward YUUP. It made a difference in the lives of people who participated, I know because I heard so directly from them on many occasions. I appreciate the Design and Community Moderator teams for creating and nourishing a beautiful thing that thrived during a very difficult time!

Do you rememberShannon Harper’s story of The Garden published in 2022, (Or watch Sunny Korinek Fuchs describe it in the 2022 Synergy Worship at GA)? In it, she describes a liminal time after “the floods” (i.e. the covid shutdown era) have washed away the previous structures and plants and before “the roots” of the future have taken hold. 2022/2023 was when YUUP was at its most hopeful and full of possibilities. We knew we were in a liminal time and, I’ll speak for myself at least, I thought by the time we got to 2025 we would be in the well established “future” and the YUUP community’s roots would be running deep. In hindsight I can see now that YUUP was an elegant Liminal Action Plan that helped us navigate a delicate transition away from relying on national immersion programs to connect Lifespan Faith Engagement staff to youth and emerging adults to a more distributed and consultative model that prioritizes the realities of Religious Education Professionals and their role in the lives of the young people in our faith.

So, while the YUUP socials have gone quiet, your friendlyYouth and Emerging Adult Ministry Regional Liaisons have been diligently connecting with Religious Education Professionals to support congregational or cluster offerings that are safe, theologically grounded and inclusive. Are we in the well established future I’d naively thought we’d be in back in 2022? Haha no. But we are establishing roots! Here is a taste of the ways we are meeting THIS moment.

1. Nico Van Ostrand (MidAmerica liaison) is hosting weeklyThrive virtual drop-ins for BIPOC UU youth and emerging adults to connect with each other and a Thrive gathering at GA.
2. Ember Kelley (Central East liaison) is developing a youth leadership model called The Stream.
3. Eric Bliss (Southern liaison) is convening a National Emerging Adult Team that formed a pastoral care support network for emerging adults.
4. Mylo Way (Pacific Western liaison) is working with leaders to create more safety and community for young trans folks.
5. Jennica Davis-Hockett (New England liaison) is sharing the Community Building Map to Deeper Joy with congregations so they can add it to their work in creating accessible, inclusive, spiritually grounded multigenerational communities.

For youth interested in a leadership role, please check out the Youth Community Guides application for General Assembly. To stay up to date on information about youth and emerging adult ministries please subscribe to the Lifespan Faith Engagement Newsletter.

My deepest thanks to the following people for their dedication, creativity and tenacity in stewarding the Young UU Project.

Design Team

Arianna Whitaker, Sage Hirshfeld, Paige Cupp, Evan Cannon, Genevive Baldwin, Rebecca Throop, Aliana Hermann-Campana

Community Moderators

Amara Hemphill, Kanen Craig, Mas Nagase, Matt Dalby, Nathan McPhail, Theo Dawson, Lara Anderson, Steph Santiago