A friend of mine told me yesterday that someone in her congregation said she wasn't sure that Unitarian Universalism was really for kids.  I suppose that if you have a rather narrow idea of what our religion is all about, then perhaps that is true.  If you see us as merely a group of come-outers which have rejected the faith of their childhoods and found like-minded folks who are fellow skeptics, then perhaps I might agree.

But I believe Unitarian Universalism is much more than a place to go when you're running away from something.  At the heart of our religion is the idea of questioning, seeking, wondering, exploring ideas and changing our minds when new things become important.  And isn't that what childhood is all about?

Children have a natural curiousity about the world and about life.  One of the most frequently heard questions is "why?"  And many times they are not likely to take an adult's answer at face value.  There are always more questions. Often times the adult who is being queried can become flustered by the follow-ups, particularly when they believed that they did a good job of articulating a thoughtful response in the first place.

And when it comes to ambiguity, most children handle it quite well.  After all, their world is full of uncertainty.  They learn about divorce and wonder: Will my parents stay together?  They learn about death and are concerned about when they themselves (or their loved ones) will die.  They even wonder what tomorrow will bring -- is it a school day or a weekend?  They live in a reality where much of life is unknown, so while they ask a lot of questions in order to bring what they can into focus, they are used to a certain level of ambiguity about the world that many adults would find difficult to stomach.

Many of our adults come to our congregations for community.  They like the feeling of belonging, of being part of a group where they feel welcomed and their opinions are respected.  Children also feel the need to be in community -- not only with one another, but also with the larger congregation of adults which can support them and their parent(s) as they grow and develop into their full potential.  Ideally, our churches serve the function that our neighborhoods once did -- adults are around who know you and your parents.  Adults in this type of "neighborhood" church can call you on your inappropriate behavior, applaud your accomplishments, and mentor you through the challenging times.

Perhaps the argument that Unitarian Universalism may not be really for children is that our worship services are too intellectual and "heady."  If this is so, then we are also making assumptions -- not only about children, but about adults, too.  Not every adult comes to church on Sunday mornings to hear a lecture or historical perspective on an important issue.  After all, that's what college courses are for.  Many of us seek a greater understanding and a deeper connection beyond an intellectual stirring.  Many of us adults -- like children -- want to feel moved and touched by the worship experience, not just intellectually challenged.

However, if its all about the coffee (as some have been heard to joke), then I'm afraid you've got me there.  The taste of that beverage is just way too bitter for a child's palate -- and they certainly don't need the caffeine.

It's not easy to be yourself when you're in the midst of the emotionally-charged, social pressure cooker that is middle school.  But when you are raised as a Unitarian Universalist, it can be an even greater challenge.

My daughter considers herself to be an atheist.  This is something that she has come to on her own, and as a result of many factors, not the least of which was the tragic death of her best friend when she was 10 years old.  It broke my heart to hear her say that she couldn't believe in a God who could be so cruel as to "kill" someone so wonderful, good and kind as Becky.  But, three years later, she remains a skeptic and can sometimes be pretty vocal about it.

Which doesn't go over too well in middle school.

Now there is a group of girls at her school -- friends, actually, not those who have a tendency to make fun of her for being "different" -- who have decided that it is their mission to get her to be a believer.  They think that if they can only help her to believe in Jesus as the savior of all humankind, then they can "save" her.  You know, alleviate her pain and suffering, not go to Hell or be "left behind" -- perhaps all three.

Because these girls are her friends, I believe that they truly want to help her and are not intending to cause difficulty for her.  She and I have had conversations about the ideas they may have grown up with and the possibility that up until this point, they may have not even fathomed the idea that someone might not believe in God.  After all, when she was in sixth grade, she said in a class discussion that a social organization helping the community with the word "Christian" in its name might discourage people who were not Christian from joining.  Some kids in the class looked at her as if she had condoned Devil worship.  In a culture that equates Christianity with being "good" then being non-Christian surely has to be bad, doesn't it?

However, I'm not sure that knowing her friends think they have her best interests at heart is really helpful.  She would prefer that they accept her for who she is and respect her opinions.  That's what she's been raised to do, and something she believes in very strongly.  But this is different from how so many of her peers are raised, and being different is so hard to do in middle school.

I had an epiphany when flying back from San Antonio after the LREDA conference.  For many years now, I've had a fear of flying.  I thought it was a control issue.  Now I know its a question of faith, and I don't do blind faith all that well.

I recognize that I am much more likely to die in a car crash and the sheer number of flights every day from every airport every hour result in a pretty low likelihood of my going down in a firery airplane disaster.  However, despite my "thinking" brain which mulls over statistics and intellecualizes the low likelihood of such a disaster, my gut would go bonkers whenever I had to fly somewhere.  The phsyiological response could not be denied, no matter how much I tried to reason myself out of the fear.  Now at last I understand why.

Flying in an airplane requires a great deal of faith.  Faith not only in the pilot and the belief that he or she has not had too many drinks, or is stressed out and distracted by an upcoming divorce or lack of sleep because of the newborn who has just joined the family -- but faith also in the mechanics who service the plane, their skill level, their attention to detail and all the other people involved in the technical aspects of the flight process.  Worse yet, I'm expected to have faith in the airline itself -- that it is not overscheduling the pilots, that it is willing to put money behind the needed repairs and is not willing to cut costs by ignoring safety concerns.

That's an awfully big faith leap for me to take.  But take it I must everytime I fly.  No wonder I'm a nervous wreck.  Now I finally understand why airline flight is so difficult for me.  Because no matter how hard I try to rationalize it away, I can't.  And that's because it has nothing to do with the rational mind -- and everything to do with faith.

Here’s one more good reason to bring your family to church with you.

Sociologists with the National Study of Youth and Religion (NSYR) have published a study which reveals that families in the United States with an involvement in a religious community are more likely to have significantly stronger family relationships than those families who are not active in a religious community.

This study determined that for early adolescents (aged 12 to 14), parental involvement in worship services even just once a week produced significant results which strengthened relationships with their parents. These findings were released in the report Family Religious Involvement and the Quality of Family Relationships for Early Adolescents. According to the report, these youth are more likely to:

• look toward their mothers as positive role models
• have fathers whom they aspire to be like and of whom they think highly
• have parents who are aware of who their friends are
• enjoy spending time with their parents
• eat dinner regularly with their family
• participate regularly in other family activities
• not run away from home

Overall, the findings of this report clearly state that early adolescents living in religiously involved families enjoy stronger, more positive relationships with their parents than early adolescents whose families are not involved religiously. Religiously active families are also more likely to create environments where their youth feel supported and teenagers are more likely to seek help from a parent if some assistance is needed.

So, if you’re looking to strengthen your relationship with your kids, bring them to church. It might make a bigger difference than you could ever know.

I have been asked how our Unitarian Universalist congregations can do a more intentional effort toward attracting the families we need to sustain a healthy growth in our congregation. And why is it so vital that we all make an effort to sustain and nurture families with children in the home? According to a study by Dr. Wade Clark Roof, "having children is the single greatest factor in the influx of new adult members in our congregrations."

When it comes to parents, there is an additional level involved because they are not coming to church only for themselves; they are also attending to provide a postive experience for their children as well. In the essay Educating for Faith as part of the book Essex Conversations, the Rev. Dr. Barry Andrews reveals that parents are looking for a religious education program that "fosters religious identity, and a sense of belonging, nurtures spirituality, provides an ethical framework and helps them and their children answer the difficult questions of religion and life."

The Religious Education Committee at a congregation may be working hard to develop a framework which addresses these needs, but providing a quality program for children is more than the responsibility of just the RE committee. The experience that families and children have at our congregations are much more than what happens during the one hour that they attend RE classes. The "sense of belonging" that Rev. Andrews refers to involves all the adults in the religious community – making our children and youth feeling welcome and a vital part of our extended family.

The Rev. Susan Davdison Archer builds upon this idea in her Essex Conversations' essay, Outside the Box, when she stresses that "our congregations have an opportunity to nurture what is often not found elsewhere ... (and) it is important to build a community to carry the lessons, values, and sense of continuity that once were primary in the extended family structure." She goes on to argue that a program which seperates parents and children on Sunday mornings may not meet the needs of today’s busy family which often spend much of the weekday apart, and suggests adopting a model which "might provide for families who don’t often have the opportunity to be together, whose time is so strictly regulated, who don’t often have extended families" living close to them. One suggestion she has is the adoption of a midweek intergenerational program or worship services geared toward families experiencing worship together.

Starr Williams also recognized how hard it is to get the children to church every Sunday morning, and how unsupportive many UU congregations are to family needs. Williams asserts that, "parents have every right to expect their religious community to provide significant experiences of wonder, awe, and joy the whole family can participate in."

And Dr. Jacqui James stresses that "we must find ways to assure that the relatively few hours per year that families spend in church are dynamic and fullfilling ... in particular, we need to address ministry to and with families."

So how do we meet the needs of families and therefore encourage more participation by families of all sizes, shapes and configurations? My answer as both a parent and a former DRE is by offering child care for the many church events that are primarily oriented toward adults, and offering more intergenerational programs where families can participate together.  But perhaps we should ask the parents what it is that their families need from our religious communities.  It might do us good to ask those families with children what brought them to our church, why they stay, and what we could do to make their job as parents a little bit easier.

What do we have to offer our children and youth to deal with the pressures they face on a daily basis – or the myriad of crises they will experience over a life time? What skills do we give our children to help them cope with the world and it’s inevitable bumpy roads along life’s journey.

Our children’s worship includes a chance to practice meditation skills, and many of our curricula stress the importance of taking care of our earth as well as learning about the religious ideas of many people in different times and places so that they can help to formulate their own choices as they begin their spiritual journeys.

However, the essence of what we teach our children is to have faith in themselves – that they are in essence a spark of the divine. Through upholding our first principle – the inherent worth and dignity of every individual – we teach them that they are winners in the competition of life. They don’t have to prove anything to us. They don’t have to recite a creed or profess a belief in something they don’t necessarily understand. We accept them for who they are and love them for their unique individuality.

And that brings me to the second gift that Unitarian Universalism offers our children and youth. The gift of community. The support of friends and an extended family to help them through the worst that life will offer – and to celebrate the accomplishments and success that our youth achieve.

We teach even our youngest members of the congregation that they are welcome in our community because we like to hear their voices, we like to hear their ideas and that we think they are special. We believe children should not only be seen, but heard – and even listened to.

In a world where our children and youth are constantly bombarded with images of and information about people who are better, stronger, faster, smarter and funnier than they are – we welcome them into our religious community and teach them that their ideas matter. We give them faith in themselves and a safe spiritual community where they can celebrate their uniqueness – not strive to overcome it.

My daughter and I were scuplting little bears out of modeling clay today with a kit that she got for her birthday. We had a wonderful time shaping the clay and the colorful bows and buttons for their bear clothes. Then as I slipped them into the oven in order to bake the clay into a permanent, hardened shape – it occurred to me that this is what so many Sunday school programs attempt to do with the children at their church – permenantly shape them into a mold that they insist their children fit.

But there are no ovens in our RE classrooms, and although we do attempt to shape our children in the way of Unitarian Universalism, there is no permanance or molding that cannot be undone. In fact, we feel that even as adults our ideas about the divine and what happens to us after death are constantly changing. Growth means reshaping and rearranging the pieces of the puzzle that may have once fit together quite well but now needs adjusting.

We believe that all throughout life our ideas and the values that shape us must remain pliable and flexible to change. In the words of Sophia Lyon Fahs, "Religion is not like an old suit or dress that we need to cut down to fit the child. It should be a quality that develops naturally as the child’s experiences expand and deepen."

How Unitarian Universalists have been going about doing this over the years has changed with the passage of time. Ideas about what makes a quality religious education program at our congregations means under going a continuous process of examining what we want our children to gain from the experience and what knowledge we expect them to carry away with them. In the past, fear of indoctrinating them with our religion was to be avoided at all costs – in fact, often the case was to impart so little Unitarian Universalist identity to our children and youth that our young people began to understand a wealth of information about other religions without any understanding of our own faith and beliefs.

But in recent years, this fear of indoctrination by teaching UU identity is fading to be replaced by a new movement to strengthen and positively communicate a good feeling about being a Unitarian Universalist to our young people. This is due, in part, to what the Rev. Dr. Barry Andrews claims is the new character of many of the adults joining our churches today who did not have a traditional religious upbringing. In fact, Andrews states, "relatively few come to Unitarian Universalist congregations with the sense of religious rebelliousness that brought so many to our congregations in years past. Newcomers today are curious, open-minded, and intelligent ... Typically parents say they are looking for a religious education program that fosters religious identity and a sense of belonging, nurtures spirituality, provides an ethical framework, and helps them and their children answer the difficult questions of religion and life."

And so it seems that ideas and philosophies about what makes a good religious education program are being molded or shaped in a new way for many religious educators. Because not only what we teach should be constantly examined – but how and why we teach what we do – in light of current needs and changing values.

After all, we’re shaping very malleable human beings here – not bears or modeling clay.