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Tuesday, May 31, 2005
What Do We Mean When We Say Lifespan Faith Development?
One of the obstacles identified at the Envisioning Lifespan Faith Development retreat earlier this month was language.
Actually, there were a couple of concerns. One was how do we use language to both educate and promote the lifespan faith development
process in our congregations? The other was how do we avoid falling into the TLA (three letter acronym) trap once the language of lifespan faith development was adopted in our congregations?
The one resource I've found essential for dealing with the first concern is Judith Frediani's essay from the Essex Conversations entitled "Making Sure There Is a There There." For example:
People have many needs—intellectual, physical, emotional, spiritual—but the faith community must keep uppermost in its
mind the religious gifts that are no other institution’s primary responsibility or intent. The potential for meaning making
is so great, and our time together so short, that we must constantly ask ourselves, What religious needs can we serve that
secular schools, challenging careers, loving families, and political and social organizations do not fully satisfy? Helping
people develop spiritually and act religiously is our unique responsibility. Facilitating this religious growth and learning
is what we as liberal religious educators can uniquely offer. Together, making meaning of life and living a life of meaning
constitute the there we must make sure is there.
I like this passage because it gives some sense of how lifespan faith development broadens the notion of religious education,
specifically, through "helping people develop spiritually and act religiously" and "facilitating...religious growth and learning."
The Lifespan Faith Development Staff Group at the UUA expanded on these concepts with their Vision Statement, particularly with the four strands of LFD:
- Ethical development
- Spiritual development
- Unitarian Universalist identity
- Faith development
I'll write more about each of these strands in a future post. But for now, I think it's helpful to consider of how these
differ from the traditional "pillars" of UU religious education: Unitarian Universalist identity, our Judeo-Christian heritage,
religions of the world, peace and justice, and our interdependence with nature. The way I see it, the four strands give us
a realistic context for teaching the pillars, living out our principles, and understanding our sources.
As far as faith is concerned, Barry Andrews' essay "Educating for Faith," also from the Essex Conversations, helps broaden that notion as well. I know I've quoted this passage before, but I continue to find it extremely helpful for defining what faith might look like for a liberal religious person:
Wilfred Cantwell Smith, author of Faith and Belief, prefers to view faith as something apart from either belief
or religion. Belief is the holding of certain ideas. One does not have faith in a concept, he insists; one has faith in the
reality about which propositions are fashioned. Nor is faith religion. For Smith, religion represents a cumulative tradition,
including scriptures, myths, symbols, ethical teachings, creeds, rituals, and so forth. Faith, as he understands it, is deeper
and more personal than religion. While it may be engendered by a religious tradition, “it is a quality of the person and not
the system. It is an orientation of the personality, to oneself, to one’s neighbor, to the universe; a total response; a way
of seeing whatever one sees and of handling whatever one handles; a capacity to live at more than a mundane level; to see,
to feel, to act in terms of, a transcendent dimension.”
This definition of faith goes way beyond the notion of religion in religious education. The cumulative tradition that
UUs shares becomes an opportunity do engender faith in individuals rather than just a subject to study in a Sunday School
class. And, of course, this is an never-ending process, which is why it's called lifespan. Both Frediani and Andrews give
a language to talk about lifespan faith development in our congregations. Next week, I'll talk more about how we can keep
from reducing these concepts to a bunch of acronyms (like LFD, which I used a couple of paragraphs above).
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Tuesday, May 24, 2005
The Role of Parish Ministers in the Lifespan Faith Development Process
The Prairie Star District's Envisioning Lifespan Faith Development retreat at Shalom Hill Farm in Windom, Minnesota is over, and the general consensus of the 20 plus people who attended was that it was well worth the
time and effort! I hope to post more about the retreat over the next few weeks, but I wanted to cover right away one specific
issue that was brought up there, namely, the role of parish ministers in the lifespan faith development process.
More and more of our religious educators are having the word "lifespan" added to their title, and no one is really sure
what that means in terms of additional expectations and increased workload. The worse case scenario here is that a congregational
board of directors hears that the latest thing is "lifespan faith development," so they give the current religious educator
a new title and a few more hours (if they're generous) and tell her or him that she or he is now in charge of the
whole cradle-to-grave shebang. And the parish minister says, "This is great! I'm sure you'll do a fine job."
Now if you ask me, lifespan faith development is a pretty tricky concept. It certainly includes more than expanding religious
education offerings beyond programs for children and youth. Let's face it, once you start seriously considering faith development
programming for adults, you're opening the door to the needs of young adults, couples, single adults, families of all formations
and at all stages, and elders. And when you're talking about addressing the differing needs of these groups, even
the most highly-trained, seasoned religious education professional is going to need more than a helping hand from a parish
minister.
In fact, if a lifespan program is really going to be about faith development, ministers will need to participate fully
in the entire process. For example, last week I posted some characteristics of a new ministry to children from Neil MacQueen. One of the characteristics ("All children's
ministry in the future must be equally focused on family ministry, and in particular, encouraging and training parents to
talk about faith in the home and in daily living") elicited this comment from Dan Harper of Yet Another Unitarian Universalist Blog: "This may imply that in most UU congregations, parish ministers are going to have to take charge of training parents, probably
through weekly worship services." To which I say, Amen, brother! I couldn't agree more. "Parish ministers are going to have
to take charge of training parents."
Expanding our notion of religious education to include comprehensive lifespan faith development programs is too big of
a job for any one person. And there are certain areas where the full participation of the parish minister--from planning through
implementation and evaluation--is abolutely crucial. Family ministry is certainly one area. Youth programming is definitely
another. Consider this from the Exemplary Youth Ministry Study, a collaborative effort of seven denominations designed to find out what it takes for congregations to raise mature
persons of faith. According to their prelimary findings, "at least four factors seem to mark...exemplary youth ministries:"
- A concrete sense of the presence of a living God who is active among and through them on behalf of the world;
- A pastor or pastors who knows, understands and supports ministry with youth throughout the life and mission of the congregation;
- A consistent supply of authentic and affirming adults with a transparent faith; and
- A network (family, congregational and peer) of genuine relationships in which young people sense validation and safety,
and through which faith seems to be nurtured.
What it means to have "a concrete sense of the presence of a living God" is up for grabs among Unitarian Universalists
(at the Envisioning Lifespan Faith Development retreat I suggested Brian Wren's hymn " Bring Many Names" as a model), but I think the notion of "a pastor or pastors who knows, understands and supports ministry with youth throughout
the life and mission of the congregation" is pretty straight forward. As I've said elsewhere, "the faith development needs of people that age are acute. And if we can meet the faith development needs of youth, we will
become adept at meeting the faith development needs of all our members, no matter what their age might be."
As we expand the job description of our current religious education professionals to included Lifespan Faith Development,
we must also look at the parish minister's role in the entire process. Two areas that deserve special attention, I believe,
are family ministry and ministry with youth.
Tuesday, May 17, 2005
A New Ministry to Children
As part of my preparation for this week's Envisioning Lifespan Faith Development retreat here in Prairie Star, I've been
searching the web for the latest thoughts on what it takes to raise lifelong members of a faith tradition. Here are some characteristics of a new ministry to children from Neil MacQueen, a Presbyterian minister and one of the leaders of the Workshop Rotation Model movement. I really believe that MacQueen is on the right track here--if we paid this much attention into integrating children,
youth, and families into congregational life, our movement would be growing at a much faster rate than it currently is. Why?
Because we would be much more family friendly, which means we'd attract more families, and more of our children and youth
would stay in the movement because, in the words of George Barna, "In essence, what you believe by the time your are thirteen
is what you will die believing."
- Do less "whole group" programming that is year-round and facility based. This will open up time for other opportunities
to go out and be where the kids are. New venues will create new opportunities for interaction and keep us from offering only
a classroom based model. (Example: a children's group I know pledged to attend events in which each member was already involved.
The group would show up at soccer games to watch individuals play, dances, school competitions, etc.)
- Think beyond Sunday morning. Organize opportunities to meet a variety of options and schedules. Provide opportunities
that have defined start and end dates. Studies show that people find it easier to join newly forming groups, rather than break
in to existing ones, and respond to defined lengths of commitment.
- Create opportunities that include the children's parents at times, rather than viewing parents as "the ride to and from
the program."
- Have a one-on-one component where leaders go where kids live and play. Involve mentors, and youth as role models.
- Seek to match each child with an opportunity to serve/help in the life of the church.
- Expand the number of ritual/rites of passage which children/youth can pass through, rather than lumping it all into one
Confirmation behemoth. Keep these "rites of passage" easy to participate in (no 10 week courses), but special enough to draw
wide interest.
- Individual churches will shape parts of their ministry to children in ways that capitalize on real strengths--not imagined
ones. A real strength in the church might be it's tradition of camping, or service, or the presence of college students, for
example. Such strengths present unique opportunities to those churches.
- Use technology to "data-base" contact information about kids and their activity/interests. No more losing kids through
the cracks.
- Planning meetings will include focusing on the lives and needs of individuals, not just program detail.
- Develop new standards for measuring success and failure. Five quality encounters a year can have a greater impact than
25 weekly attendances in a classroom.
- Recognize that some children/youth are ready for exceptional commitment and provide a track for them to follow. (By analogy,
schools have found that gifted students need gifted/extra approaches or they drift off).
- All children's ministry in the future must be equally focused on family ministry, and in particular, encouraging and training
parents to talk about faith in the home and in daily living.
Sound like a lot? It is. But as MacQueen notes, "in a typical Protestant church, more than four out of every ten people
ministered to during the week are children, yet seven out of every eight ministry dollars are spent on adults." Unitarian
Universalists aren't typical Protestant churches, of course. I know that many congregations spend much more than 12.5% of
their budget on children's religious education. Still, investing more time and money in our children, youth, and family programs may
very well be the single most important thing we can do right now to grow our liberal religious movement.
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Wednesday, May 11, 2005
Some Essential Links and Downloads for Lifespan Faith Development
I'm gearing up for a three-day retreat next week that the Prairie Star District's Committee on Religious Education and
I are hosting. We're calling it "Envisioning Lifespan Faith Development," and we're hoping to get a conversation going among
religious professionals in our district about what it means to have raising lifelong UUs as the goal of our lifespan faith
development programs. For this week's post, I'd like to offer to the participants (and anyone else reading this) some links
and downloads I think are helpful for getting a handle on the issue.
First, there's the UUA's Lifespan Faith Development Staff Group's Vision Statement, online at the Church of the Larger Fellowship's website. That's where we're starting, I think, as we look to the future
of UU faith development.
Second, there are a couple of summaries from the Essex Conversations that help us get a sense of what we're talking about
when we talk about "faith" and "lifespan." The first is a summary of Barry Andrews' essay " A Faith for the Third, Judith mentions that "we must offer lifespan religious growth and learning in an intergenerational community,
resisting our tendencies to compartmentalize people by age," which is an extremely rewarding (and difficult) thing to do.
Here are a couple of articles on what it means to do inter-/multi-/cross-generational programming (including worship) in our
congregations: Ken Brown's " Generational Understandings for UU Congregations," and Terry W. York's " Cross-Generational Worship."
Fourth, putting lifespan faith development into a truly multigenerational context is necessary for raising lifelong UUs.
On one end of the spectrum, we need to support families with young children. On the other end, we need to give adults the
opportunity to develop into mature persons of faith so they can be mentors for youth who are coming of age. Supporting families
and providing mentoring relationships are the two most important factors for raising lifelong members of a faith tradition,
according to Roland Martinson's Eight Key Faith Factors.
Fifth, integrating faith in to family identity and practice takes a little doing. Here's a link to an article that summarizes
Robert Wuthnow's six "deliberate religious practices" that help integrate faith into family life: " Six Daily Routines That Foster Family Faith." Also, here's a summary of the Family Chalice program at First Universalist Church in Minneapolis, where families are working together to develop and articulate their
UU faith.
Sixth, what does it mean to be a mature person of faith? Roland Martinson offers some ideas about what that means in
youth; specifically, a "list of 34 observable criteria found within...seven categories [that] represent evidences of a mature faith." And Dave Sammons' sermon " Mature Faith, Mature Church" has a great list of the qualities of a mature faith.
Finally, most of these resources are from a Christian perspective, so I usually translate them into UU when posting them
on my blog. You can search my blog with key words and phrases if you'd like to see how I've presented some of these concepts from a UU perspective. And, of
course, these links barely scratch the surface. But I think they can give us a common frame of reference for discussing what
it takes to raise lifelong UUs.
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Friday, May 6, 2005
Three Simple Things You Can Do (To Help Raise Lifelong UUs)
I did manage to stop by the Unitarian Universalist congregation in Geneva while I was there and visited with the ministers, one of whom is Dan Harper. Dan mentioned three ideas congregations can
use to help them keep in touch with their graduating youth (and even raise some lifelong UUs in the process). What's more,
Dan's already posted the ideas on his blog, Yet Another Unitarian Universalist Blog. Why not hop on over there and take a look? (They're all good ideas, but the one that impressed me the most was
having your congregation's lifelong Unitarians, Universalists, and Unitarian Universalists be part of an alternative bridging
ceremony.) |
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