Children and Youth Religious Education Program
An Invitation to Exploration:
"Children, though natural questioners, are not skeptics for whom doubt is an end in itself. Children are as open to belief and faith as they are to questioning. They are looking, as we are all looking, for things on which they can depend, values they can faithfully live by, ideas that make sense, things to believe in."
Rev. Earl Holt Religious Education at Home
Give us an hour-and-a-half each Sunday, and we’ll give you the future. On Sundays, our children and youth leave the sanctuary for their classrooms where their covenant of care and nurturing guides them to a deeper understanding of the Unitarian Universalist mission.
We identify with our children’s newness to the world and their joy at discovery. We remember the lightness of childhood, the ease of carrying our short histories and simple responsibilities to the here and now. Great hopes for the future unfurled before us.
This is the mindset we foster in our RE classes and projects. We remind ourselves and the children that the work never ends to know ourselves, to know one another, to seek wholeness through forgiveness of ourselves and others, to learn again and again to speak with a softer word, to look with a softer eye, to hear with a softer ear, to be kinder. Some of us, in our uniting faith of diversity, call this holiness while others call it wholeness.
As Unitarian Universalists we join together in our goal to achieve this holiness/wholeness of spirit and to share joy in our relationships with all beings. What does our faith mean if not that we strive to look beyond ourselves to realize our oneness with all?
This oneness then is the aim of our lessons. The children study us as role models. Daily they are imprinted by us. We guide them to alternate ways to think, to act, to speak, to love. This is what it means to truly be a Unitarian Universalist.
Yours in fellowship,
Jane Edwards
Director of Religious Education
Religious Education Registration
All children and adolescents involved in any Religious Education program at UUFG, including Youth Group, must have a current, updated, registration form filled out and on file. A new registration form needs to be filled out annually or whenever a child’s living situation changes. Any time new people wish to attend UUFG Religious Education classes, they can register. Parents, children and youth do NOT need to be members of UUFG to register for and participate in UUFG Religious Education and Youth Group programs. The registration form is available at the link below.
RE Registration Form (Word Doc) or Registration Form (PDF)
Youth on Campus Form (Word Doc)
We ask all parents to be involved. There are many opportunities to volunteer. Children benefit when parents become involved!
Volunteer Opportunities
It takes many volunteers to make the Religious Education Program at UUFG a success. We do need parental involvement, but since it takes a village to raise a child, we also need all UUFG adults to volunteer. Here is a partial list of how you can help the RE Program.
Our Religious Education/Exploration Classes
- Teach Religious Education classes
- Become a Warm Heart and assist Religious Education teachers in classroom
- Substitute for Religious Education teachers when they are absent
Our Special Celebrations and Traditions
- Help with our Halloween Haunted House
- Help with Winterfest
- Help with our Spring Egg Hunt
- Be a Secret Pal to a young person in the spring
Our Greater Community
- Mentor youth, especially for Coming of Age
- Attend Youth Advisor training and become a Youth Advisor
- Attend Children and Youth Religious Education Committee (CYREC) meetings
Become a Volunteer: Volunteer Application form (Word Doc)
Volunteer Application form (PDF)
A Safe Community
At UUFG, we continue to work to make all our programs for Children and Youth safe and nurturing. Two teachers are assigned to every classroom, and background checks are performed on all volunteers, staff, and ministers, anyone who works with our children. No photos of a child will be published without written parental consent. While children wear nametags in their classrooms, nametags are removed before they leave class. Children may play on the playground after Religious Education classes if they have parental supervision.
We will continue to look for ways to improve our safety and welcome your feedback. At UUFG, we feel the time and money that UUFG a safe place for all our children are well spent.
"Journeying with the Stranger: Growing to Love Our Neighbors as Ourselves."
"Journeying with a Stranger" will provide our youth, grades 6 through 12, with the tools to grow into an authentic life guided by UU principles and faith, to work with adult mentors, to become leaders, to do something extraordinary all year long, and to travel as a group to Guatemala to witness first-hand the devastating effects of injustice on humans, non-humans, and the earth.
Our focus will be action since, ideally, much of the history of bigotry is touched on in schools. One Saturday a month we will devote ourselves to social justice action followed by reflection, films, and speakers, and then engage in more authentic action.
This program will be open to youth outside our congregation who are prepared to covenant with us.
We are an OBGLTC-certified 
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