Category Archives: Religious education

I’m a felt-board wanna-be

My sister Abby the children’s librarian has been doing some amazing things with felt boards. She has put two posts on her blog about using felt board with Eric Hill’s fabulous picture book Where’s Spot? The first post has photos of some of the felt board creations which she has made — the second post includes a narrative account of how she used actually the felt board in a children’s story hour at her library.

Abby is really good at making and using felt board props. I have to admit that I’m still scared of using felt boards myself, but Abby has got me convinced that a felt board well-used can really add to the story.

Workshop on Small RE Programs, July 11-17

As an act of shameless self-promotion, I’m posting the following announcement for a workshop I’ll be leading this sumer. Please pass this along to anyone who might be interested.

Running a small religious education (RE) program can be challenging, but it can also offer unique rewards for children, teens, and adult volunteers. This week-long workshop will help participants unlock the potential of small programs. The workshop is aimed at RE Committee members, Sunday school teachers, concerned parents, DREs, and ministers. The workshop will benefit small churches with small programs, larger churches that run small mixed-age programs (e.g., summer programs, programs during low-attendance worship services), “one-room schoolhouse” programs, and churches that don’t have an RE program right now but want to start one.

Topics to be covered include: working with small mixed-age groups of children, finding curriculum for small programs, working with tiny youth groups, motivating volunteers, finding classroom space, administering your program, marketing on a low budget, and figuring out what to do when your program grows (or shrinks). If you are trying to run a program with between 0 and 25 young people, this workshop will have something for you! Continue reading →

Jesus and Socrates and UU kids

I got asked to serve as the guest editor for the summer number of uu & me, the four-page insert for children that’s in each issue of UU World, the Unitarian Universalist denominational magazine. I talked the editorial board into devoting this issue to Jesus.

Jesus is a big topic, and we knew we couldn’t cover the topic comprehensively in four kid-friendly pages (and we knew that there will be future numbers of uu & me in which to cover other aspects of Jesus). So we decided to do a general introduction to Jesus, and then focus on the parables. The parables, we felt, are among the core teachings of Jesus on which we Unitarian Universalists tend to place most importance, and the parables present wonderful little moral dilemmas that can get kids thinking about Jesus’s teachings.

Jane Rzepka, the minister of the Church of the Larger Fellowship, is on the editorial board of uu & me. Like me, she was raised as a Unitarian Universalist, and that meant we both learned a lot about Jesus and Socrates in Sunday school. During the course of today’s editorial meetings, we both kept drawing parallels between Jesus and Socrates. For me, the parables of Jesus sound a lot like dialogues of Socrates: they raise more questions than they answer, they are ambiguous, and when you get done reading them you feel as though you’ve learned how to see the world in a new way. Which makes it hard to teach Unitarian Universalist kids about Jesus’s parables: it’s tempting to tell kids what the parables are supposed to mean, but to do so is to bypass the whole purpose of the parables.

Today’s meeting has got me thinking about the parables in a new light. Now I want to go back and re-read them all, and think about how I might present others of Jesus’s parables to school-age children.

Key demographic info. for liberal churches

Executive summary: We’re seeing the biggest birth rate since the Baby Boom. Liberal churches need to pay attention to this demographic trend, by welcoming multiethnic families with young children.

So what’s the biggest news for liberal religion in the U.S.? No, it’s not the lousy economy that’s tempting churches into cutting hours for religious educators and other staff members. No, it’s not the election of Barack Obama as U.S. president, which is already changing people’s perceptions of race and racial boundaries.

The biggest news for liberal religion in the U.S. is contained in a report released this month by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. Here’s the relevant quotation from the report’s abstract:

“In 2006, births and fertility rates increased for most states, age groups, and race and Hispanic origin groups. A total of 4,265,555 births were registered in the United States in 2006, 3 percent more than in 2005, and the largest number of births in more than four decades.” [emphasis mine] Link to full report.

In short, 2006 saw the largest number of babies being born since 1961 — the largest number of babies being born since the Baby Boom. Some of the implications for liberal churches are obvious:

(1) Good child care: We had better have good child care in place on Sunday mornings, so that when all those toddlers born in 2006 show up, their parents see clean, safe, pleasant play areas staffed by professional, friendly child care providers.

(2) Increase DRE hours: Many liberal churches are facing budget shortfalls, and have to cut staff salaries in order to balance the budget. The obvious course of action is to cut the minister’s hours or salary, while increasing the line item for the Director of Religious Education. (I say this as a minister in a cash-strapped church, because I know the long-term solution to our immediate revenue problems involves attracting families with young children — if I want to have a job at all, I had better make sure there are lots of kids in my church.)

(3) Become a multiethnic church: The birth rates of white folks are not rising as fast as some other ethnic groups. To have access to the biggest potential pool of newcomers, liberal churches cannot be limited to being ethnic churches, e.g., it’s not going to be enough to be a white folks’ church any longer. Barack Obama’s election broke the second-to-last big racial barrier, the last one being all-white churches. To survive and thrive, white and other racially limited churches have to break that last racial barrier.

(4) Improve kid’s programming: Liberal churches need compelling religious education programs that make kids want to come to church, that help kids learn more, and (key point) that make parents believe that church is vital for their kids. I think that means going beyond limited models of Sunday school. More of my thoughts on this here, but here’s one key point: “For school-aged children, the mix of programs might include multi-generational activities (common worship experiences, social events, intergenerational choirs) along with mixed-age programs for children (workshop rotation, and special projects such as young people’s choir and plays) in addition to closely graded classes containing only one age group.”

(5) Finally, pay attention to demographics: We all know that there are condo complexes that are limited to “active adults over 55,” and some liberal churches might be able to exploit that same idea to build thriving churches of aging Baby Boomers. But my bet is the most secure demographic niche to target right now is white and non-white families with young children — that’s where the growth is, and that’s where the future of the liberal churches lies.

Bible cheat sheet

I’ve been using the “Bible Study Cheat Sheet” below in my Unitarian Universalist Bible study groups. I’m about to put it through another revision, and thought I’d post it here and see what kind of reaction it gets from you, dear readers….

Bible Study for Religious Liberals ~ Cheat Sheet

Ask: Where are the women? Often, those who wrote the Bible tend to diminish the role of women. Yet often the women are there, if you just look for them. (And sometimes the Bible gives us the actual words women wrote or spoke or sang.) Our assumption: the Bible was not originally intended to keep women down, but later editors and commentators and churchmen have interpreted it that way.

Ask: Where are the poor and the dispossessed? Some of the stories in the bible are about kings, and queens, and rich and powerful people. But frequently Bible stories tell about ordinary people like shepherds, carpenters, and laborers. Our assumption: originally the Bible was written to be meaningful to all people, no matter what their socio-economic status, but later editors and commentators and churchmen have interpreted it differently.

Ask: How are the experts biassed? Various self-proclaimed experts have interpreted the Bible as supporting slavery in the United States, subjugation of women, ongoing racism, homophobia, etc. Such experts include: scholars who translate the Bible out of the original languages; preachers; pundits. Our assumption: any time you come across a person who claims to know something about the Bible (including Unitarian Universalist ministers; including yourself!), that person is going to have some kind of bias.

Above all, ask: What does this have to do with my life? Lots of people claim they have the exclusive right to interpret the Bible. These people will claim their interpretation is the only correct one and then try to shove it down our throats. But there’s no reason to pay any attention to those people. Great literature like the Bible does not have one simple-minded interpretation, because great literature interacts with the specifics of our individual lives. Our assumption: the Bible, like any great work of literature, is supposed to make our lives better — richer, more humane, more grounded in compassion.

Notes for Bible geeks: The first item is basic feminist theology, making the case for a feminist hermeneutic of suspicion. The second item is basic liberation theology, introducing the hermeneutical privilege of the poor to a First World audience. The third item uses tools from critical theory for a critique of domination and power in Biblical studies. The fourth item is standard Gadamerian philosophical hermeneutics. The whole cheat sheet comes out of a functionalist view of religion, and a critical theory perspective.

Miracle birth of Confucius

Below you’ll find the miraculous birth story of Confucius, abridged from the version told by Sophia Fahs in her book From Long Ago and Many Lands (Boston: Beacon, 1948), pp. 193-197.

I changed some minor aspects of Fahs’s story. For example, Fahs calls Confucius’ mother the “wife” of Kung, his father — but it’s pretty clear that this young woman was a concubine at best, certainly not a wife of Kung, so I do not use the word wife. Also, I’m not very happy with this story because I don’t think Fahs used the best sources — some day I hope to do some more research and come up with a more accurate telling of the myths surrounding Confucius’s birth. But in the mean time, here’s a story that’s a little long but suitable for use in UU worship services… Continue reading →

Miracle birth of Buddha

In an old Unitarian Universalist Sunday school curriculum called From Long Ago and Many Lands, religious educator Sophia Lyon Fahs wrote out three miracle birth stories for upper elementary children: the wonder stories of the birth of Buddha, Confucius, and Jesus. I like to present these stories during the worship services leading up to Christmas, during the “story for all ages” (or “children’s sermon” or whatever your church calls it). Each of these stories tells of miraculous events that happen before the birth of these three great religious teachers. Children pick up on the parallels between the stories — angels and prophecies and miraculous animals — and it helps them to better understand the wondrous aspects of the two familiar birth stories of Jesus from the books of Matthew and Luke.

Problem is that Sophia Fahs’s stories are really too long to tell in a worship service — as written, they can last a good ten minutes. Each year, I edit them down by sticking little bits of Post-It notes over the parts I don’t want to read, and then I take the bits of Post-It notes out and forget about it until next Advent season, until I have to do it all over again. This year, I got smart and decided to write out a condensed version of Fahs’s “Birth of Buddha” story and keep it in my files. Then I also took out my copy of The Story of Gotama Buddha: Jataka-nidana, and from that I pieced together a short and fairly coherent narrative of Buddha’s birth.

And as long as I had done all this work, I figured I’d post both stories here, in case someone else might find them useful. Both stories should last a little over five minutes when read aloud. You’ll find the condensed Fahs story at the very end of this post, and my own version immediately below…. Continue reading →

Silent Sermon Bingo

After yesterday’s post about Boring Meeting Bingo, it’s only fair that I tell you about Silent Sermon Bingo. A decade or so ago, I was working as a Director of Religious Education at a Unitarian Universalist church. It was my first year working at that church, and the parish minister asked me to figure out how to better integrate children into the Easter service, which in that church was about the only time when the children were expected to sit through a full-length sermon. Fortunately, I had heard about Silent Sermon Bingo (I think it was Emily Leite who told me about it):–

Every child gets a bingo card upon entering the church. It’s a typical bingo card with a five-by-five array of squares. In each square are words that children might expect to hear during an Easter sermon (making sure there are at least five words in a row that the minister promises to use in the sermon). The instructions on the bingo card give the usual rules for bingo, with this added rule: “The most important rule is that this game is SILENT, so DON’T shout ‘bingo’ when you win!”

As you might guess, this game requires pretty good reading and comprehension skills, so it is really aimed at ages 9 through 12 — we came up with other activities to help out younger children (coloring books, mazes, etc.).

I have a very fond memory of sitting in the congregation about two pews back from a ten-year-old girl who was often rather, um, boisterous during intergenerational worship services. This time she was quiet as a mouse, hunched over her bingo card, listening intently to the sermon. About twelve minutes into the sermon, I saw her cross off one last word on her bingo card, then pump her fist and whisper, “Yes!” After that, the game apparently took so much out of her that she was quiet for the rest of the worship service.

More on TVUUC

The following information resources about the shootings at the Tennessee Valley UU Church cOme from Deb Weiner, the Director of Electronic Communications at the Unitarian Universalist Association. Deb writes:

Friends, information on Unitarian Universalist Association response to this tragedy can be found here. A new document, Making Meaning After Disaster, by Rev. Sarah Gibb Millspaugh, has been linked from this page. It can be directly accessed here.

Additional resources… as well as prayers from international and interfaith communities, will be available soon. The UUA website pages will be updated regularly.

And the following notice comes from the board of the Liberal Religious Educators Association (LREDA):

As educators, we are aware of our responsibility to aid in efforts to understand, or at least survive such an incident as emotionally intact as possible. Questions may arise in your own communities around issues of safety, or crisis management. Two books may be useful to have on hand: Trauma in the Lives of Children, by Kendall Johnson; and Children and Trauma, by Cynthia Monahon. Also, A Terrible Thing Happened, by Margaret M. Holmes addresses the need for children to find a place to speak about their experiences. An additional resource for your adult communities is available here.

Finally, Philocrites, a journalist by profession, has the best blog coverage of the shootings, especially: links to first-hand accounts — more info on the UUA Web site — links to news reports here, here, here.