Unitarian Universalist Church of Palo Alto

From the Asst. Minister of Religious Education

May 23, 2010
Rev. Dan Harper

It’s approaching the end of the church year. In less than a month, we’ll be switching to our summer schedule of one worship service at 10:30 a.m., instead of two services. This seems to be a good time to review the past year in religious education, and to look forward to future years.

Sunday school is the main children’s religious education program in our church, and the children’s program seems to be doing quite well. Attendance appears to be up slightly this year, perhaps 5-10%, but quite a bit of attendance data is missing from previous years so I can’t be sure. Given the limitations of our physical plant, it will not be easy to increase the size of the Sunday school at the 9:30 service. Based on our mid-year evaluations, most families seem reasonably pleased or quite pleased with the children’s program. The Children’s Choir has become a strong second children’s program.

Youth programming for ages 12 to 18 this year included a Sunday school class for grades 6-8, the Senior High Youth Group (SHYG) for grades 9-12, the OWL comprehensive sexuality education program for grades 7-9. Attendance is up over last year in the Sunday school class for grades 6-8. SHYG attendance has remained flat, but SHYG has taken on an ambitious program, including the upcoming youth service trip to New Orleans. The OWL program had ten teens enrolled, with a typical attendance of 8 to 10. Reported satisfaction has been fairly high for all these programs, though these programs are definitely not serving all teenagers who are associated with our church.

Our adult religious education program was excellent this year. The Adult Religious Education Committee sponsored more classes than most churches of our size. The programs that were offered were typically well received, and of good to excellent quality.

So we have good programming for children and teens, and truly excellent programming for adults. Looking to the future, where do we go from here?

Looking at the demographics of our service area (that is, the area within a thirty minute drive from the church that is not served by another Unitarian Universalist church), I believe we could easily increase the size of our Sunday school. Given how many families with children visited our church this past year, I believe that we would have to do very little marketing to get new families in the door. Instead, I believe we have to figure out how to increase our capacity so that we are able to welcome new children when they come. Right now, some of our classrooms are simply overcrowded at the 9:30 service. I believe if we establish a strong Sunday school at the 11:00 service, we could double the size of our Sunday school within a few years.

This year, we increased participation in our youth programs. Excellent leadership by Sunday school teachers and youth advisors was one big factor in increased participation. Improving our programming (adding the New Orleans trip, offering OWL, etc.) was another big factor. Here again, I see lots of growth potential. I believe we are on track to having a youth group with 50 youth in it within four years. We could also double or triple participation in the middle school age range in that same time period. I believe the only thing that is holding us back is a lack of confidence — we might find it hard to believe that we could have that many teens.

As for adult programming, it is already excellent. It is one of the big success stories in our church. My main goal for our adult religious education is to keep doing what we’re doing.