True Story:

It’s a Saturday afternoon after yet another week of “unprecedented” national and international news and there’s a family “blanket fort” activity in this congregation’s fellowship hall. The religious educator brought only a few cloths and binder clips. Each family who came brought their own ideas and many brought additional supplies. As we step into the room a kid on wheely-shoes goes by, excited to add something to the fort they’re building with their friends. Another child bats a balloon towards us and we bat it back. 

There are several families here and an older couple who enjoys spending time with the congregation’s children. Some adults sitting nearby processing recent national events and their experiences parenting, the local schools, and more. 

The religious educator tells us the program was planned to go another half an hour. And calmly observes it’s “meltdown-o-clock” so maybe not. 

And, yes, two young people are having a lot of feelings. Their families are listening, being present. No one complains or offers advice, we just let them parent. The kid with the wheely-shoes shows me their cool blanket fort. As they point out details, what seemed chaotic from a distance comes into focus as intentionally crafted coziness. An adult explains they hadn’t planned for balloons. Or for there to be water in the balloons! But everyone has agreed the balloons will be popped outside, after everything is cleaned up. (Which seems wise). And it does get cleaned up. Children and adults both helping.

Leading Emergent Spaces

Emergent faith formation space can feel messy. Less structured. Sometimes noisy (except where there’s a sensory friendly room for children who need a noise break). And there is room for children’s voices and leadership.

This kind of space may be more challenging for some adults to “lead.” Some may find it harder to notice and name the UU values at play in the space. The blanket fort activity had room for play, fun and connection, and also conflict negotiation, being present with feelings, a chance to belong, and the deliberate creation of space to feel safe in. In some ways it’s an echo to a beloved curriculum created in the 1970’s and still used in some places today called “The Haunting House” in which children made houses from refrigerator boxes, each painting and decorating their own unique “home.”

As an adult leader – or perhaps we should say adult guide – our roles are different in these spaces than they are when we are teaching a curriculum. We’re more co-creators of space, watching, listening and asking questions to reveal faith formation opportunities. We embrace moments when we can guide conversation, name a UU value, make space for what the relationships present need, or honor spiritual practice.

Many adults have been trained in ways of being with children shaped by academic classroom culture, even if just through their own teacher/student relationships when they were kids. While experience working with children and youth in any format is helpful for religious education volunteers, prior experience as camp counselors, experiential educators, un-schoolers, and forest preschool guides may be more helpful in a post-curricular Sunday School program. Many of us have not had the benefit of being part of deliberately child-led or co-led spaces before. Having a strong religious educator who can mentor volunteer adults into these new mindsets is really helpful.

Experimenting

Examples of ways UU faith formation programs have moved away from curriculum while still having some structure include Maker Space, theater productions, and Grampa Sunday School. These are spaces where instead of the adults planning the “lesson” the kids will learn from the activity, adults and children together are paying attention to find out what we all learn together.

Congregations venturing down this path need to be ready to experiment. Of course, experiments don’t always work in their first iteration, so expect some disappointments, celebrate the wins, and continue to experiment. Consider what spiritual practices you can employ and share that bolster a sense of faithful confidence that your community can withstand disappointments and have compassion through failed experiments.

We need to practice flexibility, not letting fear of change or unnecessary bureaucracy stifle our curiosity and creativity. Giving our lay and professional religious educators permission to try new things – knowing the congregation supports them – will equip them to build the kind of program children and families need.

We need to be ready for some mess, likely both physical and emotional. We may need to stake out room for the mess between gatherings, too, such as designating space to save projects week to week.

Some Cautions

Some creative religious educators have followed the needs of children and youth and experimented with wonderful new ways of doing faith formation only to find the leadership of their congregation wasn’t ready. Leaders may criticize the religious educator because they aren’t leading the programs of ten years ago or because what they see happening seems like it’s “just” play and so the religious educator must not be working. We share this as a note of caution about making change too rapidly and a reminder that resistance to change requires a pastoral response:

If leaders who aren’t currently parenting are making decisions, they need to be extra mindful of consulting with families served by the congregation’s ministry to children, youth, and families. For those whose children are young adults, they may need space to grieve programs that nurtured their children so well, but aren’t serving well now. If parents are pushing for a return to programming that they were looking forward to their children experiencing but is no longer meeting the moment, a pastoral response could be attending to the grief and frustration of unmet expectations without necessarily needing to point to all the reasons why the expectation isn’t feasible.

Another Story

A few weeks ago in the little congregation I attend, toward the end of a multigenerational service, two five year olds noticed the play room at the back of the sanctuary had three wasps. They came to me with the emergency. We found a board member who listened carefully to the kids and asked them to show him what they noticed. Together they studied where the wasps were emerging from the wall.

A little later another member found a ladder, and someone else volunteered to hold it steady. Two adults and three children trooped around the outside of the building to solve the mystery of how the wasps were getting in. Along the way, the kids also found a dead snake which they showed everyone and we talked about. 

These children were taken seriously, were treated as part of the community, including having responsibility for the safety of that community. They had one of those mysterious encounters with life and death. 

Faith formation emerged naturally, right there, no planning needed. 

And then they all played a wild tag game with their new friends that none of them wanted to end.