How This Started

The UUA curriculum, Signs of Our Faith, guided children to do their best to live faithful lives every day. This activity, originally included there, is an opportunity to engage with our Unitarian Universalists shared values centered in LOVE: Justice, Equity, Transformation, Pluralism, Interdependence, Generosity.

Children and adults come together to talk about and make signs with messaging that reflects and proclaims their understanding of UU theology and faith identity. Following this activity with a procession or parade makes it an act of public witness, whether that takes place inside or beyond the church walls — (or both, as the example below from the field reflects.)

Both the making and the sharing of these UU “signs of faith” help participants explore together what our UU values are, and how our UU theology calls us to actively embody and practice them together, so we can live more faithfully in a complex world.

Faith Development Goals

Justice making, spiritual development, multigenerational experiences, identity formation, living faith, beloved community, pastoral care

How Is This Whole Church RE

Depending on how you adapt this activity for your aims and community, our UU values are explored and engaged through: community making, public witness, joyful connections, sacred stories and faithful conversations.

Participants

Engage a diverse group of people to do this together: talking and deciding together what to say as UUs while making signs and banners, then joining in parade together. Seek input from parents and RE teachers on how to connect programming time with at home conversations, and to plan for inclusion of developmental and safety considerations. Consider how to connect with social justice leaders for potential integration into wider congregational efforts or events.

Setting

Your congregation or a public place where the messages will be seen and appreciated. Some use their sanctuary, playground, parking lot, etc., and some might schedule a more public viewing where it would be safe for children.

Materials

You would organize in-house sessions to brainstorm images and text. Consider Items from recent congregational public witness events. Provide art supplies and (optional) video camera and playback equipment. If you plan an outside activity, a rain date might be pre-scheduled.

More of the Story

Joy Berry writes: I got my whole congregation out the door and down the street for a sacred rite of shock-and-awe sweetness this Sunday! After our neighbor, the Jewish Synagogue down the block, received a bomb threat, I reached out to them and they affirmed they would welcome an act of public witness and support. So we planned a whole church field trip to their location for the next week, just after RE Celebration Sunday.

In this annual worship service, RE students shared verbally about their experiences at church, but also processed into and around the sanctuary carrying flags and signs to share what they had learned this year in RE classes, about living out their UU principles and values.

After the service, we offered an opportunity to make signs at coffee hour for adults who wanted to take part, a pause that also increased the number of participants. This was also an important time to ensure a transition from RE to family supervision of all participating children and youth during the neighborhood field trip.

The kids led us down to the Synagogue, and dozens of people of all ages went. The trip only took a few minutes, but many passersby responded with honks and cheers of affirmation for our messages. Once there, we marched and “protested” in support of our neighbors in faith, We expanded the activity by chalking messages of love and solidarity on the sidewalk around their campus, before returning to the church, once again displaying our signs. (See related activity Neighborhood Love Notes as Sidewalk Theology, for more ideas and information.)

It was an activity that made a few powerful connections we might not have otherwise. The basic activity, meant to take place mostly in an RE space/time, connected kids in age-based classes around what they had learned about being UU. The display of those signs by the processing kids in the sanctuary for RE Sunday intentionally included adults (especially those not involved in RE) with an awareness of our community’s kids’ UU identity and faith learning. By inviting adults to make their own signs and join our field trip at coffee hour, they had a chance to talk with the kids and get help from them, which was a deeper form of multigenerational faith formation and connection-building. Though the threat our Jewish neighbors received was an awful reality, this activity was a great way to engage a congregational response, using RE practices, to side with and center love. In so doing, we deepened the connections between our faith communities, in ways that surfaced our shared UU identity in a community demonstration of solidarity and public witness.