Lifespan Religious Education
Our Religious Education (RE) program is one of the major points of focus in UUCCH. Indeed, one of the primary driving forces in our "Building Our Dream" expansion program was to provide enlarged facilities for our RE classes.
Unitarian Universalist religious education is unique because, in addition to teaching about our Unitarian Universalist faith, we help our children build an openness to the richness of other religious traditions. We encourage our children to develop a reverence for all life and a sense of interdependence with the universe. Our goals are to provide each child with opportunities for personal and group religious experience, with exposure to the range of diversity of religious activity, and with support for their ongoing personal religious development. While introducing our young people to the place of religion in human experience, we help them learn to think and respond affirmatively for themselves.
Our program offers instruction in Unitarian Universalism, Jewish-Christian Heritage, and World Religions. Each theme is explored for a full year, rotating on a three-year cycle. Social Justice and Diversity topics are interspersed throughout the year and reinforced with hands-on service projects. The focus is on experiential learning at the younger ages, moving gradually to a more discussion oriented, didactic approach at the higher grades.
Weekly volunteer-led classes are held for children and youth age three to grade 12.Preschoolers through eighth graders attend the first part of the worship service, called "Message for All Age"with their families. Teachers and children will be sung out by the congregation. Pre-School parents should, when possible,escort their children to class or make arrangements for the teachers to meet them in the commons area outside the sanctuary.Youth in Senior High or it's equivalent begin in the bottom level of the Hillside Building next door to the church, sometimes they will attend whole services and once a year they will lead the service.|
Parents of young children are always welcome to attend their child's class, until the child is comfortable being there without them. For safety reasons all children must either be in the appropriate class or with their parents in the sanctuary during Sunday morning services.
In addition to the religious education classes you will see listed below, we attempt to introduce the experience of communal worship. On all but the first Sunday of each month, children join with the adults for the beginning period of our main church service, which includes a special story for the children. On the first Sunday, the children have their own worship service.