Spiritual Development Outcomes

Here’s what the UUA’s Lifespan Faith Development Staff Group offered at the LREDA Fall Conference regarding the Goals and Elements of the Spiritual Development strand of Tapestry of Faith. The outcomes for this strand are reflected in the first and the seventh elements of the LFD Vision Statement:

• 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, and
• Appreciate the value of spiritual practice as a means of deepening faith and integrating beliefs and values with everyday life.

The Goals include:

• To nurture a deepening spiritual life and spiritual centeredness
• To cultivate individual and communal spiritual practices
• To develop an alertness to the wonder and mystery of existence
• To feel a connection to a larger reality, and
• To experience the sacred through worship, ritual, wisdom of faith traditions, and spiritual disciplines.

The Elements are:

• Spiritual awareness and centeredness
• Spiritual practices/disciplines
• Spiritual wisdom of other faith traditions
• God, ultimate, transcendence
• Sense of (being part of) something larger
• Connection, with other people, nature, universe
• Wonder, awe, mystery
• Beauty, truth, love, joy, and trust in the midst of life’s suffering, brokenness, loss
• Willingness and ability to engage with issues of ambiguity, good and evil, sin, forgiveness, redemption, atonement
• Worship, rites, rituals, sacred texts.

I have to say that I love the religious “favor” of these Goals and Elements. As persons of faith (and I believe we are), we all need to be able to use words like sin, forgiveness, redemption, and atonement if we’re are going to make our faith intelligible to those who think we’re some sort of cult or New Age group.

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Ethical Development Outcomes for Tapestry of Faith

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.

Tapestry of Faith Outcomes

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.

So Long, San Antonio!

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!