Summit Unitarian Universalist Fellowship offers Faith Formation or Religious Exploration for Children & Youth.

Our program is centered on exploring our UU values. This is a child, youth and family centered program that supports all in their spiritual growth during this foundational time. We are values-focused rather than belief-focused. We focus on daily acts of kindness as a spiritual community with an aspiration of supporting justice, compassion, and sustainability in the lives of each individual, our community and beyond.

What is Family Faith Formation? Children ask questions, lots of questions, and we all want to have quick easy answers to offer. Family Faith Formation creates a space for the questions to be pondered and explored in a way that invites children to discover the answers for themselves. Rather than crafting pat answers to life’s big questions, we explore the ideas that we value and use them as a lens to explore the questions together. “What do you think?” rather than “We believe THIS.” We use stories, conversations, role playing, activities and more as a way of experiencing community values in action together. This is a whole family activity as we invite caregivers to be a part of the experience through helping on Sundays or with our community events. By being part of the Faith Formation community, we all build connections of care and support for each other as we navigate complicated times.

What does a typical Sunday look like? We gather with the congregation for the first part of the service until the Invitation for All Ages story is complete. Then we head to our Faith Formation class space or outside for the remainder of the service time for fun activities as we explore the day’s theme together. We discover our monthly themes through activities, games and creative play. New children are welcome to bring their parent or caregiver with them as they get comfortable with the program.

Each week we start our time together with a check in and story that introduces the weekly theme. Then we enter into an activity time that may include conversation, fort building, gardening, crafting or games for all ages. Some weeks have a spiritual component like remembering our ancestors or centering in on a gratitude practice. Other weeks can include silly science experiments, building with Lego blocks or learning about the history of the first people of the land we are on through traditional Kumeyaay games. Come join us and experience our Family Faith Formation in person.

Weekly emails are sent out with the plans for the upcoming Sunday so register your family to receive the current information. Register your family HERE.

Questions? Contact our Director of Religious Exploration, Mary Carter-Vail at SummitDRE@gmail.com.