Tapestry of Faith: What Moves Us: A Unitarian Universalist Theology Program for Adults

Activity 1: Personal Faith and Your Congregational Life

Part of What Moves Us

Activity time: 10 minutes

Materials for Activity

  • Newsprint, markers, and tape
  • Participant journals
  • Variety of writing and drawing implements
  • Timepiece (minutes)

Preparation for Activity

  • If participants may need journals, obtain notebooks with unlined pages. Gather a variety of writing and drawing implements.
  • Write on newsprint, and post:
    • Have you had an experience of your Unitarian Universalist faith and congregational worship life that helped you stay the course through your own distressful emotions and anxious feelings until you found heartfelt feelings of emotional renewal or peace? If not, can you imagine a way in which your Unitarian Universalist faith and congregational worship life might do this?
    • Schulz calls such experiences the "newborn intimations of possibility, faith, grace, and God." What words might you use to describe the possible uplifting experiences of your faith and your congregational life?

Description of Activity

Introduce the workshop using these or similar words:

This workshop will invite you to use major insights from William F. Schulz's theology-his Unitarian Universalism in a New Key-to examine your own faith.

We will begin by focusing on a personal experience from our own lives.

Read aloud the questions you have posted on newsprint. Invite participants to reflect on the questions and respond in their theology journals. Tell them as the workshop unfolds you will invite them back to these personal reflections, to help keep their work grounded in their own personal experiences. Allow seven or eight minutes for journaling.