Comments on: Unitarians and James Fowler

By: Frank Vaughan

Frank Vaughan — Sun, 30 Jul 2006 02:32:26 +0000

In our UU church, the youth are isolated from Sunday worship, and expected to not participate. As a direct result, I have observed 18 year olds leave the church, because they have graduated out of youth classes and don’t know or feel the Sunday worship.
When we express our concern, the reaction (except form our DRE) is that is the way it is done at UU churches.
Now I have insight on why.
Thanks.

By: kim

kim — Mon, 24 Jul 2006 06:40:35 +0000

I learned from Huston Smith’s book the World’s Religions that Hinduism says that there are four main paths to spirituality. They are psychological exercises, love, work, and the intellectual.
Of those four, I think that the personalities that are attracted to UUism are those that would be attracted to the intellectual path in Hinduism, and maybe to a lesser extent, the work path.
People of the “love” or devotional persuation find UUism sparse and cold, those looking for psychological exercises or discipline find us unfocused. Those “for whom ideas dance and sing” find UUism exciting and lively.
I don’t think we can appeal to everyone without losing our character. But we could develop more fully.

By: chutney

chutney — Sun, 23 Jul 2006 22:03:10 +0000

Steve, I wasn’t talking about youth-led worship at youth events. At all.

By: Steve Caldwell

Steve Caldwell — Sun, 23 Jul 2006 19:40:52 +0000

Chutney wrote: -snip- "Youth are too involved with doing IR-faith-ism, Iâ€m led to believe, to do something as extraneous as worship." Chutney, I'm surprised to hear a sweeping generalization like that. I've seen plenty of evidence of youth participation in worship. Every district youth conference I've attended has had a youth-led worship component. When I served as a youth advisor for our district's summer camp in 2002 and 2003, we had a youth-led worship service every night. I know of other congregations in my district where the youth regularly lead their own worship services and also lead at least one Sunday morning worship each year. Locally, we've done worship services during lock-ins. Personally, I would like to see more worship experiences with our local youth programming. However, most of our local youth have not experienced worship except in the context of local church Sunday morning worship. When most of them hear the word "worship," they think of what happens down at the other end of the building and view the word "worship" as being a negative one. I think that my local youth need more resources for worship and I would love to have some of them attend our district's "Spirituality Development Conference" next spring. The UUA Youth Office provides the following description of SDC conferences: "Spirituality Development Conferences are small working conferences for youth and adults. An SDC focuses on ways to design effective, creative & meaningful worship services; ways to integrate spirituality more deeply into youth programming and the lives of the participants. SDCs work to bring youth and adults together to share common worship experiences. Of the Six Components of Balanced Youth Programming (worship, youth-adult relations, community building, leadership development, social action & learning) the first, worship, is often overlooked or saved for Youth Sundays. This training helps youth and their adults put the R back in YRUU. (The 'R' stands for religious.) An SDC can greatly transform the tone and culture of a local youth group and congregation; people return from an SDC inspired to integrate worship more deeply into their program and congregation as a whole." The SDC workshop is designed for youth, adult advisors, religious educators who work with youth, and ministers.

By: Philocrites

Philocrites — Sun, 23 Jul 2006 17:49:38 +0000

Both times I preached at the old UU church in Framingham, Mass., I was flattered and delighted that groups of teenagers sat in the very front of the wrap-around balcony — which meant that they were closer to me, standing there in that tall New England pulpit, than anyone else in the sanctuary. I could almost have reached out and touched them. It was one of the most wonderful preaching experiences of my life.