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When Rev. Dr. Elizabeth Stevens was called as minister of the Unitarian Universalist Church of the Palouse in Moscow, Idaho, in 2012, staffing for religious education had recently been cut by two-thirds.
So she made it a priority, “pretty much as soon as I walked in the door,” to start rebuilding the program, says Stevens, who grew up in the Starr King UU Fellowship in Plymouth, New Hampshire, which “put kids at the center, always.”
The Moscow congregation had it backwards, she gently explained: You don’t cut RE when numbers dwindle, you staff for success.
The UU Church of the Palouse chose to build back up. In 2015, Ginger Yoder was hired part-time to run the RE program; within a year she was full time, as director of Faith Formation, and with another part-time position it has returned to where it started.
“The purpose of serving families is to serve families—not to get new members,” says Stevens.
Sunday attendance—and family participation—has been climbing fast. A beacon of liberal religious values in a deep red region, the congregation now has about 180 members, and it just completed a $2.4 million new building—with the kids’ playground prominently out front for all the world to see.
“The purpose of serving families is to serve families—not to get new members,” says Stevens.
RE programs need to be re-evaluated, even reimagined, on a regular basis, Stevens and Yoder say. Driven in large part by anxiety over their children’s futures, parents spend significantly more time with their kids than was the case forty years ago.
These demands on their time, and other pressures—including financial stress, worries about the dangers of technology on their kids, and their own feelings of isolation—mean parents are exhausted and overwhelmed to the point that it’s an “urgent public health issue,” according to a 2024 advisory from the U.S. Surgeon General, “Parents Under Pressure.” It found that 41 percent of parents say they are so stressed they cannot function.
“We are in a new context that our currently dominant models [of RE and worship] were not built for,” says Rev. Erica Baron, who serves the New England Region of the Congregational Life Staff of the Unitarian Universalist Association.
Building Community by Supporting Parents and Children through Religious Education
It’s unrealistic to expect overwhelmed families to attend traditional Sunday morning worship and RE in the numbers they did forty years ago, she says. Yet overwhelmed parents, caregivers, and families “need us desperately, they need ministry and community,” Baron says.
The key is to serve families, not expect them to show up to save the congregation.
“It’s not, ‘How can we get you to attend on Sunday morning?’ but ‘How can we help you?’” Baron urges.
“It’s not, ‘How can we get you to attend on Sunday morning?’ but ‘How can we help you?’” Baron urges. Responding to those needs with new ideas is resource-intensive, so “give your DREs (Directors of Religious Education) more hours, not fewer,” and religious educators must also be given space to fail in order to innovate freely, she adds.
“In 2015, we were all reading about the ‘death of Sunday school,’” says Colleen Thoele, director of Religious Education at the UU Church of Kent, Ohio. “That made us really look at what our families needed and try to meet them where they’re at, instead of doing it the way we’ve always done it,” with church seen as a place for adults, with kids as an afterthought.
In February 2024 (after a pandemic-induced delay), the Kent congregation began offering two Sunday services. The first is an “all ages, all wiggles” service of just 45 minutes, where kids can participate, including as greeters, or engage in activities in a carpeted area beneath the pulpit.
“Parents are more relaxed because kids can run to that space and run back to them,” says Rev. Renée Ruchotzke, affiliated community minister at Kent and a member of the UUA’s Congregational Life staff, who works in an RE team with Thoele and Emily Hall, director of Music Ministries.
“That’s how we build community,” says Thoele. “Children are not an afterthought—they are the heart of it.”
The early service is followed by RE for children and youth, and reflection circles for adults, which in turn are then followed by a traditional worship service. And no matter the event, there is now an expectation that people of all ages, including and especially children, will be present.
Today, the congregation has seventy-four children and youth registered in RE; seven more children joined in the past two months, bringing them back to pre-pandemic numbers.
“That’s how we build community,” says Thoele. “Children are not an afterthought—they are the heart of it.”
To Foster All-Ages Inclusivity, Meet Families Where They Are
Still, for many families Sunday mornings are one of the few times they aren’t rushing out the door for school or extracurriculars. Worship and community-building options at other times, especially those including meals, so that kids are fed, are very attractive for families; for example, Dinner Church, where people might gather on a weeknight for a meal together (see: “Revelatory, Revolutionary Dinner Church”).
Post-COVID, families “just weren’t showing back up” to the UU Church of Concord, New Hampshire, says Rev. Michael Leuchtenberger, senior minister and choir director, so they asked families to suggest better times. Saturday mornings worked best, they said, so the congregation launched Saturday options including a monthly “Pancakes, Play, and Planting Peace” on Saturdays, with pancakes and a service-oriented project, which regularly draws more than twenty people and is growing, he says.
The 280-plus member congregation has added many other non-Sunday events, including a family covenant group with a shared meal and childcare, and a “Games & Chocolate” one Friday night a month.
“I feel we are flourishing in a way we haven’t seen in my fifteen years here,” he says. Eighteen new members committed at a ceremony in April with “quite a few more” in the pipeline, he adds.
We want to find out: How can we bring something valuable to them as parents and a family? Out of that flows everything else.”
Leuchtenberger offers the same advice as other congregations with burgeoning family and youth memberships.
“Meet families where they’re at!” he suggests. “Find out what are they longing for and what their schedules are like. The last thing we want to do is add another stress point to a family’s life. We want to find out: How can we bring something valuable to them as parents and a family? Out of that flows everything else.”
Speaking of the adults in her community, Thoele says, “The long-term goal is really a whole culture shift, so that children and youth are just in the same spaces we are—period.”
Indeed, the “Whole Church RE” model acknowledges that religious education is about faith development for all ages, including adults, rather than just for kids (see: “A Faith for All Ages”).