Providing religious education for children is as important now as it has ever been. But today’s social reality creates new challenges for churches and for families that old models of “Sunday School” cannot meet. Rather than re-stating old answers, now is the time to re-ask the question, “What are we hoping to do for our children and our church community and our society?” and then, being clear on the purpose, invent new strategies to meet the goal. We will welcome new members during the worship service.

            The church year begins in September.

            The year begins with our Ingathering service on the second Sunday of September.  There’s the joy of seeing old friends who may have been traveling over the summer.  There’s a water communion.  There’s the anticipation of the year stretching ahead, the plans we’ve made, and imagining how we will be present and participate as we creep up to the events of the year.

            There are the annual observances of the High Holy Days, and the Dia de Los Muertos holiday.  The Interfaith Thanksgiving service to benefit the Food Pantry.  A December concert.  A Christmas Eve service with candles.  And the new calendar year coming halfway through our own church year.

            An observance for MLK Sunday.  A mid-year congregational meeting to check-in on how we’re doing against what we had planned.  February and March are both the heart of the church year and also the time when we begin to look toward the next year with our budget planning and Stewardship Campaign.

            Winter turns to spring.  There’s a service for Easter.  Maybe a seder for Passover.  A celebration for Earth Day.  A flower communion.  The budget is worked up, and presented, and debated.

            And then, in June, the year draws to a close.

            In the rhythm of the church year, I like to schedule the Sundays in June as an opportunity to look back on the year we’ve had.  We celebrate and show-off our accomplishments.  We thank the people who supported the church with financial gifts, or gifts of time, and talent.  We bless the year we shared, and we set it aside.

            July is a month for taking a break.  Every time of work must be rounded with a Sabbath.  So July is for rest, and vacation.  Our July worship reminds us to relax.  The choir takes the summer off.

            August, continues the summer break, but now with inklings of the year to come.  What have we planned?  How should we prepare?  Where will we find new energy?

            And then, there we are again, the Sunday after Labor Day, with another Ingathering service, and a new year beginning.

            This year, we took a long look at the three major concerns of religion:  Identity, Meaning, and Purpose.

            Religion asks us to think about who we are, as individuals, and as a species.  Are human beings animals like other animals, or are we special in some way?  Are we “spirits” having a physical experience?  Is there a “self” that defines us and lasts throughout our lives?  Do we die when our bodies die or are we truly an immortal soul that perhaps has an afterlife, or a reincarnated next life?

            If you’re thinking about the question of identity, whether your answer is based in Christianity, or Buddhism, or secular philosophy, or science fiction, you’re thinking religiously.

            In the Winter we turned to the question of meaning.  What is life about?  What is life for?  Why does it matter?  And we looked together at several ultimate goals that give meaning to people’s lives.

            In the Spring, we looked at the third religious question, the question of purpose.  Knowing who I am, and what brings meaning to my life, we ask, “What should I do?”  How should I live?

            Not being able to answer that individual question in a general way, I hope you thought for yourself about what you’d like to do to express your unique self, and to make a life that you would consider valuable.  And then in my preaching, I gave some advice about strategies that I think will help to make whatever work you want to do, changing yourself or changing the world, successful.

            I hope it’s been a valuable year for you.  I hope that you’ve had your mind and spirit stretched a little.  I hope you feel that you’re a little different now than you were last September when the year began.  The work of the church is transformation.  We are on spiritual journeys, not spiritual rest stops.  I hope you feel you’ve progressed a little this year, in understanding, in kindness, in compassion, in wisdom, in love.  I hope that you’re a little closer to that life of health and joy for yourself and others and the world we share, which is the goal of Unitarian Universalism.

            Last week we celebrated the church’s music program.

            I thought it was a great Sunday.  We have such a wealth of musical talent in this congregation it’s impossible to give every musician and group the attention it deserves in a single morning.  But, of course, we don’t have just a single morning, we had a whole year of excellent music, from our choir, from our band, from Brian and John, from the guest musicians John arranged for us, and from you all, who sing hymns and liturgical elements of our service every Sunday.

            For today, when I planned this worship year last summer, I set aside a Sunday to celebrate our Religious Education program.  And then, as the year unfolded, it turned out we weren’t able to offer the Religious Education program we had hoped to offer.  We have not yet been able to hire a staff person to lead the program, although we have posted the position and worked on recruiting, and did interview a few candidates.

            Nor have we had the regular attendance of school-age children that would fill our program.  Of course those two gaps go together.  We need a staff person to create a program for kids to attend.  And we need kids to justify organizing a program and hiring a staff person.

            So we can’t, today, look back at the accomplishment of our Religious Education program this morning, the way we looked back at our music program last Sunday.  But rather than cancel the service and replace it; as the year progressed and we got closer to this week, I began to think it might be valuable to think together about the place of religious education in our church life.  To ask some questions like, why is it difficult to find religious education staff?  Where have the families with young children gone, and what can we do to bring them back?  And, given this unasked for pause in our religious education for children program, to go back to the basic question, “Why do we want a religious education program for children?  What’s it for?  And if it is still important, which I think it is, what’s the best way to structure a religious education program for children, in the social environment churches, families, and children, find themselves in today?

            Why do we want a religious education program?

            When I have heard folks in the church talk about religious education for children in our community during this last year, they tend to say the same kinds of things that I say.

            We say, “I miss seeing kids running around the church.”  “I miss the sound of children’s laughter.”  “I used to love seeing the chancel full of children during the Children’s Message, and their bright faces, their wonder, and their joy.”

            I would love to have all of that, too.

            But let’s listen to ourselves talk when we say those kinds of things.  All of those reasons for wanting children in the church are to satisfy us.  We want children’s energy, and laughter, and joy.  Sure we do.

            But what do we want for the children?  They’re not here to serve our needs.  What are we giving to them?

            I have heard, from some of you, a different kind of answer.  Some of us say, “I grew up in a Unitarian Universalist church and the Religious Education program helped me be a better person.”  Or we say, “My children grew up in a Unitarian Universalist church and because of that I see they’re more wise, more open-minded, and more attuned to systems of oppression, and the necessity of serving others and the world.”

            We want a children’s religious education program because we know that Unitarian Universalism makes better people and a better world, and we want to share the gift of our faith with the next generation.  We want to equip them to be the life-changing, world-changing, leaders of justice and compassion, that will keep us all moving toward the lives of health and joy we want for ourselves, each other, and the world we share.

            We don’t want a children’s religious education just because we remember the one we used to have and feel depressed, or because “kids say the darndest things” and will make us smile during the Children’s Message.  We want a children’s religious education program because we want young members of our congregation to have their best possible life and help us make a best possible world.

            Because that goal is important, it’s important that we have a children’s religious education program.  Not to ease our nostalgia, or our melancholia, but because we love children and we know Unitarian Universalism has a great gift to give them.  That’s why.

            Now some of you may have been squirming when you heard me say over and over again, “religious education” rather than “religious exploration.”  They’re both RE.  But about twenty years ago we started calling our programs religious exploration instead of religious education.

            Here’s why I prefer education, although we can call it exploration if you rather.  I’m not going to stop you.

            When people think of “education” they think of old models of school with a teacher who has all the information, and quiet children sitting in rows, obediently accepting and memorizing the facts that the teacher chooses to stuff into their brains.

            But that isn’t the philosophy of Unitarian Universalism.  We don’t think anybody has all the facts.  We want children to find their own truths, not memorize what’s true for us.  We think our Sunday school classrooms should be active, creative places, where kids create art and music, and learn by playing games, and digging in the garden outside, and making lunch bags and hygiene kits for our unhoused neighbors, and going on field trips to other places of worship.  We don’t want to cram religious doctrine into an unwilling mind.  That’s not our intention.  We want kids to discover their own spirituality.

            So we don’t want dry old “education”.  We want “exploration” where students become learners, active agents in their own growth and teachers become facilitators, putting resources in the children’s hands and making way for them to do their own thing.  Where parents are also educators and the classroom is blown open to embrace other learning settings.

            That’s all good, but I have two problems with language that replaces education with exploration.

            One.  We do want education!  There are most certainly facts, concepts, stories, traditions, history, theological questions, and on and on, that we want our children to know, and that they will not stumble upon naturally just by exploring the world and what’s already in their own minds.  In religious theory they call this the difference between “natural religion” and “revealed religion.”  Somebody has to teach you who Margaret Fuller was, or what Universalism means and why that’s different from orthodox Christian beliefs about Heaven and Hell.  You’re not going to know what the seven principles are unless someone teaches them to you.  Maybe you’ll learn them by singing a song, but that’s still education, not exploration.  As Antoine De St. Exupery says, “one hands down and another takes up the heritage of mind and heart, laughter and tears, musings and deeds.

            And two, consider again the list I gave of what we want to have happen in our religious “exploration” classes:  art and music, having fun together, working in the garden, social justice projects, experiencing other world religions.  I want our kids to have all that.  In fact, I want us all to have all that.  In fact, we do have all of that, because religious exploration is the entirety of the church.  Art and music, fun and fellowship, caring for each other, worshiping together, writing letters to get out the vote, and so on.  The whole church is religious exploration.  That’s what all of us do, every Sunday, through every program the church offers.

            So when I first heard the term religious exploration referring to what the RE committee and the RE Director did, I started to feel a little territorial, and a little dismissed.  I do religious exploration.  That’s my job.  Are our worship services not religious exploration?  Is the pastoral counseling I do in my office not religious exploration?  Is the men’s fellowship, and the book club, and the Tuesday drop-in group, and the pastoral care committee, not religious exploration?

            Well it all is.  Which means the exploration label is too broad to clearly define the one program you’re actually wanting to name.  Although education calls up that narrow, but no longer accurate picture, of children sitting in rows listening to a teacher at a chalkboard, at least “education” points to the heart of the particular function of the program.

            OK.  Enough of my pet peeve.

            So, if we can’t, today, look back, at the great year in religious education we just had.  Maybe we could spend a few final minutes looking forward at the program we might create together next year.

            We know why we want a religious education program for children:  because our Unitarian Universalist faith will serve our children, now and in their later lives.  How do we create that program?  And, given we now have an opportunity to create a new program basically from scratch, what should it look like?

            We will start by hiring a staff person to lead the program.  We have money in the proposed budget for next year to hire a Director of Religious Education for 15 hours a week.  The good news is that we are in final negotiations with an excellent candidate.  

            Next, we need a group of church members to agree to consult with this staff person.  The new DRE will need to know what resources we have, what children might be interested in the program, what we’ve done before that worked well or didn’t.  The DRE is there to inspire and organize, but this has to be our program.  We have to own it and support it.  And not just the few people who will directly serve on an RE Committee, or as classroom teachers, but all of us.  Not just when the kids are being cute and charming.  But also when the kids are being loud, or making a mess, or the program needs more space, or more funding, or more volunteers.  We have to own all of it.

            And, to create a brand new religious education program in today’s social environment, will require all of us to lend our imagination and creativity.  Maybe the program won’t be just Sunday mornings.  Maybe it won’t be just in our classrooms.  Maybe it won’t…  Well really it might be anything.

            Here are a couple of ideas:

            What if we imagined our RE program as a program that happens in the child’s home, with the church’s role being to support the parents as teachers?  Imagine monthly kits of stories and activities that go home with the family.  Call it “Parish to Porch” or “Family Faith Formation” with monthly themes that echo what we’re doing in worship.

            What if our RE program happened during intergenerational events?  Like field trips to places of worship, or museums, or the zoo, places that adults and children could enjoy together.  Maybe a Sunday Funday, or a Family Game night.  Call it Pizza church.  Or a kid’s theater program, exploring moral themes through a skit they write and perform during worship.

            What if the RE program put down the pencils and the craft scissors and picked up a phone to make and share Tik Tok videos.  Maybe going to Sunday School, means watching a YouTube video and then texting your thoughts to a friend.  Maybe it means coming in to the sanctuary and experimenting with all of the amazing cameras, microphones, and projectors John has set up for us.

            If some of these ideas are making you squirm, like “I don’t want any part of TikTok videos,” or “I’m not coming to pizza church”.  Or you’re asking, “Well who’s going to put all those take-home kits together every month?”  You can see why I want to emphasize that having a thriving RE program in this new social, church, and family environment, can’t be about addressing our own needs of nostalgia and melancholia.  We have to really want this, because we really want it for our children, enough to get out of our own comfort zone, or our misperception that it will be just like it was, or that a 15 hour a week staff person is going to do it all for us.

            If we can do all that, or some of it, or some better, different things that we will create together, then a year from now, we can have an RE Sunday that celebrates the extraordinary program we were able to offer our children, and ourselves, all year long.

            May it be so.