scrubbed March 2009, Vol. 1 Newsletter from Second Unitarian Church

December 2008 survey results

Church communities, like all communities, are always changing, always reinventing themselves. Sometimes these changes are dramatic, sometimes more subtle. It is almost always the case that people within the community have varied reactions to these changes.   In the Summer of 2008, the Second Unitarian community experienced a change to the way families with children start their Sunday morning, which also changed the order of worship for everyone in the community. Our children now go directly to their own Sunday faith development programming rather than joining the adults for the first part of worship in the sanctuary. These changes were made based on where the community is at this time, and means that we are currently in a transition period to the next generation of multigenerational worship and community (to read more about the reasons for this change, read Rev. Jennifer Owen O'Quill's article in the December, 2008 Anvil.

Second Unitarian has long been committed to creating a vibrant multigenerational community and that value remains strong as evidenced by the almost eighty people who responded to the multigenerational community survey in December, 2008 and the members, including two former Second Unitarian Directors of Religious Education/Faith Development, who have come forward to help shepherd our community through this time of change and work on creative ideas for ways to include people of all ages into our various ministries. We are excited to share the results of the survey with you online and in hard copy at the "What's Happening" table in the Palmer Room as well as our interpretation of the results and what we plan to implement over the next few months and beyond.

As we reviewed the results of the survey, a few themes came to the surface:

1.       People want everyone in the church to have a meaningful worship experience and this doesn't necessarily mean that all ages need to be in the same room in order to make this happen.
2.       Most people want young people to worship in the sanctuary sometimes, but rarely for the full hour. There was a positive response to several of the ideas about ways to incorporate families and older children into regular worship services.
3.       In general, the positive energy generated by the children is missed during the service and there is excitement for the creation of the "next generation" of multigenerational worship.
4.       The demographics of our church have changed dramatically over the past five years. We no longer have a middle school or high school group on Sunday mornings and half of our children are four or younger. There are only sixteen children over the age of seven and one teenager. This means that most of the families are not at a point where their children are able to participate in all ages worship, nor is there a strong desire by those families to have their infants and toddlers with them in the service. There are a few families with older children and other congregants without children who really miss having the children in the sanctuary every Sunday.
5.       There is a strong desire to nurture the few older children in ways that are meaningful to them spiritually and help them explore their own beliefs and what it means to be a Unitarian Universalist. Because of our current demographics, this will most likely mean more one on one mentoring and participating at an earlier age in Sunday worship services.
6.       Regarding whether the community wants to worship with young people, the results are varied but most of the responses fell in the middle. Most adults would like to worship with young people sometimes, but not all of the time. Some people never want children in worship and some want children in worship every Sunday.
7.       It is difficult to successfully offer full hour multigenerational worship services, but important to do this well about four times a year.

So where do we go from here? Starting in March, families will be invited to light the chalice and share a chalice lighting reading at the start of the service. We are also exploring ways for children to be involved with playing and singing music with our many gifted musicians. In addition, we will be eliciting feedback from our older children to find out how they want to participate in worship and what they find most meaningful. We are also planning a multigenerational worship workshop for later this spring that will be open to the whole community. We feel it is important to be clear about our vision and goals for the times when we do worship together with our young people. Devising meaningful all ages worship is challenging but also can be extremely rewarding so we want to be intentional about the planning for next year and beyond.

A group of members (Jenny, Jill, Keeley and Andrea) have been meeting with Gabrielle Parra, Director of Faith Development, and will continue to serve as advisors and implementers of the many good ideas that have been and will continue to be generated. Continue to send your feedback to faithdev_2u@att.net or call 773-549-0260 x12.

Blessings,

Gabrielle Parra, Director of Faith Development