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The Lifespan Faith Development Staff Group’s presentation at LREDA Fall Conference included a breakdown of the various outcomes for each of the “strands”: Ethical Development, Spiritual Development, Unitarian Universalist Identity, and Faith Development. While admitting that the strands are, indeed, overlapping (interwoven), there are some specific outcomes in each individual strand. For this post I’d like to share with you the Goals and Elements of the Ethical Development strand:
This particular strand is built on the fourth and third components of the LFD Staff Group’s Vision Statement, “Nurturing children, youth, and adults who…”
- Realize that they are moral agents, capable of making a difference in the lives of other people, challenging structures of social and political oppression, promoting the health and well-being of the planet, acting in the service of diversity, justice and compassion, and
- Accept that they are responsible for the stewardship and creative transformation of their religious heritage and community of faith.
The Goals are
- To live out one’s values
- To want to make the world a better place
- To be passionate seekers of justice and peace
- To be good stewards of the environment, and
- To have a moral basis for deciding right and wrong
The Elements include
- Values, ethics, character development
- Right relationship/right action
- Stewardship and citizenship
- Acceptance/affirmation/celebration of diversity
- AR/AO/MC understanding and action (anti-racism/anti-oppression/multicultural)
- UU heritage of moral agency
I’ll post more on the other outcomes in the next few days–and I’ll put together a rundown of release dates for future Tapestry of Faith curricula.
For the next few posts, I’d like to share with you some of the information the members of LREDA heard at their Fall Conference in San Antonio last weekend. The presenters were from the Lifespan Faith Development Staff Group at the UUA, and they gave us all a pretty good rundown of what to expect from the new Tapestry of Faith curricula series that’s being rolled out. Here’s something from a presentation they did on outcomes:
Through surveys, focus groups, and other feedback, Unitarian Universalists identified four desired outcomes for children, youth, and adults in religious education programs. These outcomes are four strands woven through Tapestry of Faith. Far from mutually exclusive, these outcomes are interdependent and interactive:
- Ethical Development
- Spiritual Development
- Unitarian Universalist Identity
- Faith Development
Most of the outcomes are built around the Lifespan Faith Development Vision Statement for Tapestry of Faith, so I thought I’d repost it here, then add more content from the presentation in follow up posts.
We envision children, youth, and adults who:
- Know that they are lovable beings of infinite worth, imbued with powers of the soul, and obligated to use their gifts, talents, and potentials in the service of life;
- Affirm that they are part of a Unitarian Universalist religious heritage and community of faith that has value and provides resources for living;
- Accept that they are responsible for the stewardship and creative transformation of their religious heritage and community of faith;
- Realize that they are moral agents, capable of making a difference in the lives of other people, challenging structures of social and political oppression, promoting the health and well-being of the planet, acting in the service of diversity, justice and compassion;
- Recognize the need for community, affirming the importance of families, relationships and connections between and among the generations;
- Appreciate the value of spiritual practice as a means of deepening faith and integrating beliefs and values with everyday life;
- Experience hope, joy, mystery, healing, and personal transformation in the midst of life’s challenges.
I’m skipping out of the LREDA Fall Conference a day early, but I’m bringing back lots of good information about the UUA’s new Tapestry of Faith curriculum series. I’m really excited about how adaptable this series is going to be. First off, most the the components will be free and available online (some components, like the new Coming of Age resource, will be published in book form only). You’ll be able to download individual sessions or entire curricula in RTF format, which means you’ll be able to open them and a Microsoft Word doc and make as many tweeks as you’d like. And I’m all in favor of congregations being able to tweek curricula to fit their individual needs. Adaptability is the second great thing about this series. You can use them in a Rotation Sunday School model, a graded classroom model, a Small Group Ministry model, or whatever other model that might work best for your congregation. The very best news, as far as I’m concerned, is that some of the curricula is designed to be used with multiple ages, opening the door for some genuine multigenerational faith development experiences. I’ll post much more on this once I get back home and catch my breath!
The tag line for the original version of this blog was “So, just what does the Lifespan Program Director of the Prairie Star District do?” And even though the tag line for this version is different, my primary purpose for blogging it to let the folks in Prairie Star know what I’m up to. As I mentioned in my previous post, right now I’m in San Antonio, Texas for the Liberal Religious Educators Association’s Fall Conference. It’s traditional for the Program Consultants of the various UU districts to meet the day before the conference to talk about various issues concerning religious education and faith development. Here are a few of the topics that my colleagues and I (along with Harlan Limpert, the UUA’s Director of District Services, a.k.a. “Fearless Leader”) discussed:
- The changing role of Program Consultants in our districts
- Collecting statistics regarding the effectiveness of hiring religious educators for the first time
- Guidelines for non-LREDA religious educators in our smaller congregations
- An update on last summer’s Youth Summit in Boston, along with possible effects it will have on our district youth programming
- Relationships between UUMA (UU Ministers Association) and LREDA chapters in some of our district
- And a bunch of stuff about the national ad campaign, the “Voices of a Liberal Faith” DVD, and Association Sunday
The conference officially starts today, and it looks like a good program to me. We’ll be learning more about the UUA’s new faith development curriculum series called Tapestry of Faith. I’ll keep you posted!
I just arrived in San Antonio TX for the LREDA Fall Conference, and I have to say that I couldn’t be more thrilled with my room. As opposed to the Denny’s parking lot that I was graced with during my stay in Portland OR during last June’s GA, my room at the San Antonio Doubletree looks out into the courtyard and this beautiful fountain. I think this will make the next few days quite enjoyable, although I miss the family already.
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