fdo-webinar-theme-based-ministry-october-2015.mp4
PAT KAHN: Great. Thank you so much, Alicia. And welcome everybody to the October Faith
Development Webinar on Theme Based Ministry. This is Highlights from LREDA Fall
Conference and I am joined today-- oh, I'm Pat Kahn. I'm the Children and Family Programs
Director in the Faith Development Office at the UUA.
And we are joined with two of the wonderful presenters that we had on our team presenting this in five hours on last Saturday-- but we'll do it in less than five hours today-- Sheila Schuh, who is the Director of Religious Education at the First Unitarian Church of Rochester, New York and
Eric Bliss, who is the Youth Ministry Specialist at the Pacific Western Region.
And as Alicia said, Alicia is the Administrative and Editorial Assistant in the Faith Development
Office. And we greatly appreciate her technical skills in the background. So if you have any questions or anything like that, she'll be monitoring the chat box.
I want to just say that the presentation that was done at LREDA Fall Con was a combination of theme based ministry and full-week faith with Karen Bellavance-Grace. But since we've already done a webinar and a column response blog post on full-week faith, we're focusing only on the theme based ministry portion of the workshop at LREDA Fall Conference.
And so without further ado, we will get started. And we'll start with the chalice lighting that
Sheila led us in at the workshop and I will read the words and Sheila is going to sign it. So here we go. "Life is a gift for which we are grateful. We gather together to celebrate the glories and the mysteries of this great gift." Thank you, Sheila, and I'm going to turn it over to you.
SHEILA SCHUH: Great. So welcome, everyone. I just wanted to highlight a couple of the bigger-picture issues regarding theme based ministry and why we were considering doing it and why I continue to do it.
One is that it's really the grand leveler in my mind of human experience, in terms of the life of the church, that children and adults and people of any age really get to participate in theme based ministry in a way that is rich and deep and really feels to me like it's an equal playing field for wherever you're coming from, in terms of your difference. And the other piece that we spoke about in the keynote was really that relationally, it changes the whole church when as individuals, we're walking down the same path together.
So that's in a nutshell the two biggest ones for me and why it helps the religious educators not feel so isolated on their teams or in their congregations is that we are an equal participant in that.
I'm just highlighting some of the-- going through step by step through the template that I use for theme based ministry. But really, I'm encouraging you all to think about tweaking your program to what your needs are.
So the worship that we did at Fall Con follows this particular template. There's an introduction of the theme in children's language. This would be for a child or family service.
There's a hymn that speaks to the theme, the greeting, which is kind of a fun interactive piece around the theme, of course, the chalice lighting, and a mindfulness practice, which is some kind of breathing or attention practice or compassion practice related to the theme, the moment of inquiry, which is kind of like a fun exercise to get kids to think or families to think outside of the box, in terms of how the theme is relating to the culture--

for example, the one we did on Saturday was choosing two people, putting their hand in a bag, and really having different versions of what might be in there and the acceptance of different people's perspectives and that as a bigger expression of our faith community, in terms of our openness to diversity.
UU source is a story that I tell interactively with the participants. So we co-tell the story using props and drama. And then, the reflection part is, what does this have to teach us or to remind us about in terms of practicing that theme according to our UU principles or the mission of our church or our program? And then, the closing-- so that's kind of like the brief outline of what theme based ministry looks like in terms of worship with children.
But as I was saying on Saturday that any one of those pieces can be used. If you're using a regular curricular program, you can use any of those in terms of choosing an element that you want to have from theme based and even inserting that in your regular workshop for your regular curricular class. An example would be like youth group, like using an opening circle with youth group that's on theme, which is a ritual element to start that off.
So I hope that gives just an overview of how the worship might be theme based and also how you could tweak your program to use different worship elements, even if you're using a more traditional model.
The next part that we wanted to cover is really an overview of an example, really, to get ideas flowing for you, in terms of tweaking your program with regard to parenting groups that may use the theme. So this is an outline of our parenting group called Parenting as a Spiritual Practice.
And it is on a theme every month and runs about an hour and five minutes.
First, we have settling in in silence. We have celebrations and mournings, which is kind of a reflection on last month's theme and how you did as a parent and whether you are able to apply anything that you learned at church last month. We have the theme and how it relates to mindfulness practice and NVC.
So this would be a direct translation of that into the month's theme, like letting go, for example.
We did a mindfulness practice around how to let go of your anger, thoughts, frustration, and just take those few deep breaths so you're more empowered to act from your values with your kids.
Then, we have a mindfulness exercise. We're actually leading them through that.
And then, we have Non-Violent Communication and the theme in Unitarian Universalism, which is Non-Violent Communication is a system for reducing hurtful or not speaking the truth and love and being able to really have a system for understanding how to do that. So we take that practice and we put it through the lens of our principles or our mission and the monthly theme.
And then, we do an exercise, usually in pairs, that gives people an experience of how to apply that in their parenting for the upcoming month. So if the theme was letting go, how do I actually do that with my kids? And then, we have a time for gratitudes at the end for people who may have had aha moments or moments where they feel like they really learned from their partner something.
So that's a basic outline of how the theme could be used in a parenting group. And as I said, this is just one model, but it's to give you ideas of how it might be integrated in something that you're doing with parents or how you might add an element for parents in your program to look at beefing up the parent piece that might go along with your program in some way.

We also have a Soul Matters Parenting Group, which is a different is a group, and we also are trying to highlight some things for parents to figure out how to help them to learn how to fish themselves, to be able to integrate the theme at home in ways that'll work for them. We send home a weekly After-Church Adventure Activity in the weekly newsletter for their child's age group to try to also beef up ideas for them in terms of the theme.
Eric.
ERIC BLISS: Hey, everybody. So at the LREDA Fall Con, we broke into four quadrants during a section of the presentation to act out how a workshop rotation model might incorporate theme based ministry into a Sunday morning. And my quadrant was the youth and technology quadrant.
And so right now in your Chat Box, I want you to type a way that you've used technology in your religious education program. So please take a moment and type in how you've used technology in your religious education program, technology and media. Take a second to do that.
And if you haven't, type a question mark, indicating you have questions about how you might do that.
I'm seeing Facebook, YouTube, Twitter, Netflix, Interactive Bulletin Board-- this is a great group. This is a technologically savvy group. Wonderful. So when we broke up into our four quadrants, my little group, we went downstairs and we acted out a workshop with youth, played by the adult participants.
To start, we used media as our chalice lighting. So I showed a video clip from the movie
Contact. It was the one of the ending clips where Jodie Foster's talking about the grand mystery of the universe. And it was so perfect because that's really what we explore on Sunday mornings or at least one of the things we explore. And I invite you to check out that clip. If you just type in
"Contact ending scene," you can have a good cry when you finish this video.
Then, we did a check-in and we used technology for our check-in. So when we broke up, I asked our group to break into pairs and those pairs recorded using a tablet or a smartphone the question, "What do I have faith in?" for one minute or so. For our purposes, since we can't share videos in this format, please type in the Chat Box something that you have faith in.
Leah says, "The courage of religious educators, the natural world, change, the goodness of humanity, path of consistent learning, seasons, love, the transforming power of love." Indeed.
And so breaking up into our groups or pairs, I should say, we then got our pairs to join with groups of about six or eight and to share one video from each pair. And so each group watched about three to four videos.
So we did that and I know that was painful for some of the participants to watch themselves speak. And what I was going to have y'all do was actually record a video and watch it yourselves, but I think that would take too long in this format.
So what those folks did was then take ideas that they'd gotten from the video, pick one of their colleagues's responses, and then consider the following prompt. "Recognizing that revelation continues to unfold for us as UUs and that we are a living tradition that incorporates new ideas into our theological framework, how has this interpretation"-- meaning the videos that the individuals had just watched-- "their interpretation of faith shaped yours?"

So just take a moment and you can use the scroll bar on the left side of your screen to look through your colleagues's responses. So take a moment and just kind of scroll through your colleagues's responses and pick one that kind of resonates for you, one that isn't your own. I'm going to give you a moment to do that.
Next, we used another bit of technology in our workshop called Poll Everywhere. It's amazing.
It's a great text-to-screen application, it's free, and what happens is, you'll get your-- if you go to
Poll Everywhere, which I recommend you do after this webinar when you get a moment, sign in.
It's free, as I mentioned. And you can set up a screen on your computer which then is projected into the room using an LCD projector.
And folks simply type in a code and can now text directly from their phone to the screen, which makes for a great kind of change of pace in a class. It makes for a wonderful worship experience if people are reflecting on a ritual. It's absolutely terrific. And some of the feedback that we got via the text-to-screen app in this workshop was lovely and transcendent.
Then, folks were encouraged to take the bit of information from the text-to-screen and have a spiritual practice. And it was kind of a variation on Lectio Divina, where you repeat a phrase or a written piece of scripture three times or more, emphasizing different aspects of the scripture.
And so we did that in our group and sat silently for one minute in contemplation. And unfortunately, we didn't have time to ponder or discuss any ahas, but in a classroom setting, you certainly would. Then, we closed with words by Deepak Chopra, which are there.
One of the things that I'd like to close this technology bit with is a couple of thoughts. First, I've talked to religious educators who talk about churches being a bastion away from technology.
And I respect that and understand it and at the same time, I believe part of our role as religious educators is to help our youth, children in youth, learn how to navigate technology so that it can be used as the tool that it is to not only connect information, but also to their highest self. I truly believe that technology can be a way to explore spirituality when employed in thoughtful and intentional ways.
There's a wonderful quote that Peter Bowden shared in the keynote from Sherry Turkle. And her quote was, "Technology isn't just changing how we do things but more significantly, it's changing who we are. Are we ready to be changed?" That's all I've got for this section.
SHEILA SCHUH: So now, I'm going to cover, in terms of workshop rotation or workshop adventure, which we call it in my church, just a basic template for what a workshop might look like. As a religious educator, you could certainly develop your own template based on what your needs are. But here's one that we practiced at Fall Con and that I use in my program consistently.
Opening fun about the theme, then there's-- that could be anything from a game to an exercise of learning-- an introduction of what the workshop is about, a listening circle, which may end up tying back to the theme, depending on the leader-- that's really a joys and sorrows ritual that we have in all our groups.
Reflection on the theme from the worship story-- so this is kind of an important crossover for me because when the children are in worship, it's like 20, 25 minutes and then they go to their smallgroup rooms. And so the leader asks them literally, do you remember the story from worship and what was going on for you in that story? Where were you in the story or what do you remember from it and how does it tie into what the theme is we're working on today?

Then, we do a learning activity of some kind, exploring the theme through a source or a room.
I'll talk about that in a minute. And then, we recap and then close. So the example that we brought to Fall Con was from Superhero City, which is our room that teaches kids about the source of the words and deeds of prophetic men and women. And it's our social responsibility room.
One time in the whole year, one rotation out of the whole year, we always have an interpersonal oppression workshop that deals with either racism or ageism or something like that. And this one in particular was dealing with communication and understanding that all people have needs. So it was a basic step in learning about non-violent communication.
And so the opening fun was the telephone game, where we whispered in the ear, "Everyone is important. Everyone has needs," and see where that went. And then, we had an introduction to-- the Superpower of the Day was really being able to listen and to understand that everyone has needs and there are universal needs that aren't in conflict with each other but are just present in any relationship.
So we didn't do Listening Circle, because it would have taken too long, but we talked a little bit about the story that we did earlier from worship. And then, we did an exercise where people learned that feelings and needs are connected in non-violent communication.
And in terms of practicing the skill, we had some people act out a feeling, other people try to have curiosity about that feeling, and then the people who were doing the charade of the feeling talk about when in the last week they had that feeling and what needs might have been underneath there for them. So that's an example that we brought that's a really skills-based example, in terms of relating it directly to the theme. In this case, it was faith and affirming the inherent worth and dignity of every person.
So a couple of things about workshops in my mind-- the worship workshop framework that is in workshop rotation can be used in many different ways, in terms of the rest of your program. You can have Opening Circle. That's more like a worship experience in a regular curricular group.
You can do planning. Like in our youth group, we have the monthly theme and they slot the different pillars according to what the theme is of the month. but you can also adapt what you're doing.
If you're doing workshop rotation, you can adapt it so that you are covering still the same-- if you have priorities in your program around racial justice or around-- like one of my rooms is the humanist room called the Thinking Cap Lab. And I always make sure that in that particular room, I have something from the "Humanist Manifesto" in there. So the kids are constantly learning about that.
In the Superhero City room, we always have a clip of a video that goes with that learning activity part, which teaches the kids about the outside world in some way. So you can tweak-- even if you have a singular kind of framework that you're using, you can tweak it so that you have elements in each of those rooms that really define it in ways that you want.
For me, I'm running rooms that are the Six Sources. Not just art, music, dance, but each of those rooms is based in the Six Sources. So when children rotate, they're going into the room to learn about wisdom in that area. But you can set it up however you want depending on your mission and what's important to you. But I think identity-wise, that was really important to me.

Anything else that I might add-- I know that some people don't have access or can't-- one of the things that we spoke about was really being careful about your time as a DRE and what you can do in one year. This particular-- if you were going to change to workshop rotation, that takes a lot of time and energy and change, especially because the rooms-- you would want space to really be part of that experience for kids if you can do that.
So that was one of the things we talked about was that changing to a theme based model may be gradual or you may use other Tapestry of Faith and work at not developing your own stuff, but adapting what's already available online for your own use. And you can use a template like this to just plug in activities, even from Tapestry, to make it work for what you need.
ERIC BLISS: All right, participants, quick quiz-- from the technology workshop that we just kind of skimmed the surface of, what was the theme? Please type it in your Chat Box.
Remember, we're talking about theme based ministry. Special bonus points and a gold star, the first person who can name the theme-- Matthew. Matthew [? Shineman, ?] you are the winner.
Well done.
Yes, we're talking about theme based ministry and we've touched on a number of different contexts from worship, parents, groups, technology in a youth group setting, workshop rotation, and now we're going to talk about youth a little bit.
How could we explore a monthly theme using a youth group model? And the model I want to hold up is one that was devised with the adults and youth together at First Unitarian Denver, where I served as DRE for six years. It's called SoUUl Surfing.
And so please type a question mark or-- here, let's put it this way. The number of question marks that you type in the Chat Box is going to indicate the level of frustration that you've had with the following questions, what to do on Sunday with our youth group or if you youth group meets at another time, what curriculum should we use with our youth, and how is the best way to balance the youth and adults' voice in that decision making process? Please type one to a million question marks in the question box to illustrate your level of frustration.
Kathleen-- whoa. That's quite a few. Danielle-- not very frustrated. Anna-- yeah. Dixie-- Dixie's not that frustrated. All right. Well, that's good to hear. It's nice to see that some of you have some frustration because hopefully, this model that I'm going to show you will give you some ideas.
We called it SoUUl Surfing and SoUUl Surfing, as my youth ministry coordinator referred to it, is like Neighboring Faiths on Monster Energy Drink. It starts usually-- and it doesn't have to follow the same format each month-- but as you're probably aware, Neighboring Faiths is comprised of a couple different discrete components each Sunday.
One includes a field trip to a different church. In SoUUl Surfing, the field trip is arranged around the theme. So for the participants at LREDA Fall Con, I could not take a room of 200 religious educators on a field trip. So instead, we went on a mental journey to the UU afterlife. And some folks got a little philosophical with it, struggled-- others had a lot of fun.
And in your Chat Box, please type someone or something you expect to be present if there is a
UU afterlife. And please, this is for fun's sake. This is-- we're having a good time here. So what's in-- oh, "questions," Deborah, love it. What else might we find in the UU afterlife? "Universal love and acceptance-- cartilage"-- I'm not sure, Lee, where you're going with that one. "Love--" of course, Kathleen, yes. "Freedom from pain--" there we go.

So the idea is one of the Sundays-- at First Unitarian Denver, we always typically did the first
Sunday for a field trip. So let's say, for example, the theme is "scripture." One month when we had "scripture" as our theme, we decided to go to the Denver Museum of Art and look at artwork, because the whole idea behind this theme of scripture was anything that has the power to inspire us.
And so we went on this lovely field trip with our youth to the Denver Art Museum and then afterward, stopped off for coffee and snacks and discussed the theme of "scripture" through that lens of artwork, lovely artwork. So the first one's a field trip.
Another example, when we did the theme of "justice," our middle school group traveled-- just around the corner from First Unitarian is an LGBTQ center called The Center and they have an area called Rainbow Alley. And our middle school youth decided-- here's the technology piece-- to interview transgender youth there for a project to learn more about the transgender youth experience.
This video was produced, edited, shown to our congregation, and now it lives on the UUA website. And that was the theme of "justice" that our middle school youth were exploring and the field trip that they took.
The next Sunday is a guest speaker. And for the theme of "scripture," we brought in a local slam poetry group, a national award-winning slam poetry group called Slam Nuba who came in and worked with our youth to write their own slam poems focusing on the theme. Those poems were then recorded and again shown to the congregation in a family chapel.
The third session in SoUUl Surfing the third Sunday is called a reflection session. So the advisors, the advising team, the youth ministry team get together and come up with some activities and prompts that bring back the experience of the field trip-- the art museum-- and the guest speakers-- Slam Nuba-- and talk about and highlight those experiences and explore the concept of scripture more deeply.
Oftentimes, the youth are encouraged to bring their own things from home, whether it's a representative artifact or if it's a piece of scripture that personally resonates for them. That's the third reflection session.
And then the fourth Sunday of the month-- and typically, as you know, we have four Sundays in each month-- the youth attend the worship. And this is key. We want our youth to bridge out having an experience of adult worship so when they return as bridged young adults, it doesn't feel alien or strange to them. The key piece here is a, the staff group at your church work with the youth group to decide which Sunday is the most youth-friendly.
Secondly, the youth are involved in this worship, either as chalice lighters or as presenters for a time for all ages or speakers or song leaders, you name it. This is a key part, not that they're just sitting in the pews keeping them warm, but also participating in the worship and again experiencing the theme in another way. That is SoUUl Surfing in a nutshell.
The next piece that I want to talk about, we didn't just focus on theme based ministry during this day-long presentation at LREDA. We also focused on full-week faith, which is a lovely concept that we Karen Bellavance-Grace has explored through a Fahs Collaborative project and held up ever since. And it's a lovely way to connect with your families outside of Sunday morning.

And I remember being very moved by her presentation on full-week faith and I would be curious to know what you're doing to reach out to families and to hold up either themes or your church's ministry after and between Sundays. So type that in your Chat Box. What are you doing with your families to explore your church's ministry, mission, and/or themes outside of Sunday?
Lovely-- I'm seeing lots of great ideas in the Chat Box. What we did at First Unitarian, it took me a long time to wrestle with this idea of full-week faith. As much as it resonated for me, I just could not find a way to make it work, to integrate it into our infrastructure and family-based protocols-- until one morning I woke up, much as Euripides sat up in his bathtub, eureka, realizing that I could use technology again to help me stay connected with families throughout the week and to ensure that our families were connecting to the theme that the church was exploring throughout the week so that it was integrated beyond Sunday morning into their personal lives and their family's existence.
And so I use this app. It's called Group Me. It's free. It's fantastic. And each day, I would send out different things, different theological prompts, if you will.
Monday, I would send out a blessing that the family would use over dinner, again connected to the monthly theme that was being explored at our church. Tuesday was a bedtime prayer said together as a family. Wednesday was a meditation exploring the theme so the family could sit together and decompress and get spiritually grounded after a long day.
And then, Thursday, a teaching story-- and you can't send an entire story via a text, but you can send a link to a YouTube video or what I often did was I would upload the story to a Google document and then share the link to the Google document so that the family had access to the story in that way. Friday, I would do research during the week to find an interfaith or social justice event that was happening over the weekend and share that, a link to that event via the
Scrutiny app to families.
Saturday was our Sabbath, where we got a day off. And then, Sunday morning, this one was a gem. When I'd get up Sunday morning, I'd send out the text that talked about what was going to happen in the service and a highlight from RE that shouldn't be missed. And I can't tell you how many times families told me that once they saw what was happening, they just couldn't miss it and had to be at church that Sunday.
To give you a little bit more back-story, before trying to implement this with the entire community at First Unitarian, I started with a laboratory group from my RE team. There were about 14 families that participated. I wanted to see [AUDIO OUT].
PAT KAHN: This is Pat. Can you hear me?
SHEILA SCHUH: Yes.
PAT KAHN: OK, good. I just lost Eric's sound so I wasn't sure whether it was on my end or his or if anybody else had lost the sound. But yea, I'm glad that you can hear me. And we'll go ahead and take some questions now. I wrote some of them down and then if you have others, we can address those, as well.

One of the first ones was from a while back. Sheila, it's for you. Someone wanted to know about where or what kind of NVC, Non-Violent Communication, training did you get? And I know it's pretty extensive in your program. So if you could take a minute or two to tell us about that?
SHEILA SCHUH: Yeah. So in Rochester, we have the Gandhi Institute, which is an organization connected also to the University of Rochester. And I went to their director and asked her if she would come and do an in-service for my staff and I also met with her for a few hours myself. She recommended Connecting Across Differences, which is the main book that I use. It has everything in there and it's very basic.
And I also just went to Peace Circle Training through our local restorative initiative organization, which has a lot of NVC in it, as well. And it's something that I've been consistently just reading and practicing. I think that's the main thing is once you understand the model, to have other people to practice with, which has been actually the best training for me.
PAT KAHN: Great. And actually, if I'd thought about it, I would have written down in the
Resources the name of the book that you mentioned at Fall Con, Sheila. It was Connecting
Through--
SHEILA SCHUH: Connecting Across Differences.
PAT KAHN: Across Differences, great. Thank you. And let me go ahead while you're talking on the phone-- and maybe Eric can just double-check his sound because I think a couple of us lost that.
But the other question mark was asking a little bit more about workshop rotation. And I will put-
- there is a description of workshop rotation on the theme based ministry web pages. But Sheila, if you want to go ahead and talk a little bit about that, would be great.
SHEILA SCHUH: So the specific question about it, Pat?
PAT KAHN: Oh, now I'll have to go back up. I think it was more about-- If you asked the question, go ahead and re-post it while I'm looking for it. Well, of course, I can't--
SHEILA SCHUH: I could talk a whole day about workshop rotation.
PAT KAHN: So could I. Why don't you give a nutshell overview of how you would describe workshop rotation as a model?
SHEILA SCHUH: Oh, a model?
PAT KAHN: Oh, there it is. Here is the question. Katie said, "I'd love to learn more about this workshop model."
SHEILA SCHUH: Oh, OK.
PAT KAHN: So just--
SHEILA SCHUH: Yeah, workshop rotation actually came out of the Christian tradition, where in the Christian faith, they wanted to teach kids a Bible story through many different modalities.
So they would say, for example, the story of Jonah. And you would do it one week through art and one week through music and one week through movement and one week through nature.

And that model-- as Unitarian Universalists, we took that on in terms of wow, we can use this to do a number of different things with. So that model for me turned into more-- so it's really-- in the Christian tradition, it was used to learn a Bible story along with Bible verses. But in our tradition, really, in the theme based model, it's used to carry the theme from worship into the workshop.
So for the whole month, the theme stays the same but that story-- for me, anyway, the story is one week and then you have another story on the same theme the next week. So a rotation would be four or five weeks on the same theme, but I have different stories every week, not like in the
Christian model where you would have one story for the whole month. That's not what I'm doing. But some people do principles for a whole month instead of using the theme. There's lots of different varieties of it.
I started off in my program doing art modalities. So I did art, music, dance, nature, social action, and writing and something else. But then I switched to it being our UU sources, because I thought it was more defining for the kids.
But that model is the same structure you have in a large church, right? In church in general, you have the worship and then you have people going to some kind of small groups. And the theme based church for all ages, that's kind of the same thing where you have a worship based on the theme and also a small group experience on the same theme. For the kids, it's squished into one hour. I hope that helps.
PAT KAHN: Great. Thanks. And one of the other questions for Eric was-- I think it was referring to youth in worship or that model of SoUUl Surfing. How did you get buy-in from the youth?
ERIC BLISS: [AUDIO OUT]
PAT KAHN: We're still not hearing you, Eric. You've lost your voice.
SHEILA SCHUH: Maybe he could type it in.
PAT KAHN: Maybe you could type it into the Chat Box. I'm not sure why your-- did you somehow mute your microphone on the-- no. So Deb [? Lander ?] said that was me and it referred to the work the youth were doing in their meetings.
Oh, yes, you could call in, couldn't you? And so while we're waiting for Eric to call in so that we can get his voice back, were there other questions that we might be able to answer for you?
I know that a couple people came in a little bit late so I wanted to remind everybody that we do record all the webinars and they do get posted online. And we also get transcripts these days and post those online. Matthew, what is your question about curriculum?
ERIC BLISS: Hello? Can you hear me?
SHEILA SCHUH: Yes.
PAT KAHN: Yes. Now we can hear Eric so Eric will go to that. And then, Matthew, we'll come back to your question in a minute. So Eric, getting buy-in from the youth.

ERIC BLISS: Yeah, sorry about that issue. So we created a Reimagining Sunday Morning youth group team made up of adults and youth. And so to get buy-in, the youth had a voice in how this was put together.
And so we designed it as a group, taking into account all the different thoughts. We want it to be engaging. We want it to have social, spiritual and faith in action aspects. We want to connect and be a multi-generational community. There are a lot of things that came out of that group.
And then, we did it as a trial run. So we said, OK, look, we're going to try it for the first month and get your feedback. So we did it for a month, got the group's feedback, we tweaked it here, tweaked it there, and then after three months, got more feedback. And after that, it just took off.
From what I understand, there are a number of congregations who picked up this model based on a webinar that I gave last year. And the feedback that I've gotten from these congregations, mostly in the west, have been resoundingly positive.
PAT KAHN: Great. And Eric, there was a second question related to youth. And of course--
SHEILA SCHUH: I can answer Matthew's question while you're looking, Pat.
PAT KAHN: Great. You answer-- great.
SHEILA SCHUH: So the question Matthew's asking is, "If you're running theme based ministry, does your curriculum coincide or do you run curriculum that is separate from the theme implementation, basically?" And the question I'm asking is related to what we had just said.
So for me, I have an interesting experience with this, in that we had three service times running and Saturday night was like having a more small church program. So I was running it in two different venues, really.
In my K through 5 program, I'm writing that curriculum to the theme. Actually, all the workshops are on theme and they're written already over the summer based on the themes that have been selected in that June or July before. So my K-5 program, the curriculum is all on theme and that's posted on the Soul Matters page. And I'm happy to share that with anybody who wants it.
My junior high program does not run on theme. In terms of the curriculum itself, it's Spiritual
Survivor and it runs on its own rotation. It's a three-year program. But I do have theme based worship that happens before that for our junior highers and many, many times, we look at how does that cross over into that curriculum. So I'm with the person who's running that each week and we talk about that. So that's how we do it.
Coming of Age is the same way. That program is really super-defined, but we use the worship component in those elements and tweak on the theme so that all those, you feel like they're also on the theme. I'm hoping that's helpful.
PAT KAHN: Great. And I did realize the other question for you, Eric, was about the Group Me app. And the question was, "Does everybody have to have the app in order to do that?"
ERIC BLISS: No. In order to be a part of the Group Me group, you simply agree to be a part of it. You'll get an invitation from the organizer. And this is wonderful because you can use Group
Me to talk to your advisor teams. You can have a separate group that's all your teachers. Hey,

teachers, there's a training coming up this Sunday. You can use it for groups of parents coordinated around age cohorts that they're with.
And the individuals who receive the text don't have to have the Group Me app. The only person who needs it is the person who's organizing these various groups. And then, the only trick to it that I found was folks have to opt-in. And if they don't opt-in and they don't respond, then Group
Me will kick them out of the group.
And so that's one thing to remember as you're communicating with folks is that they should just send a thanks or a smiley face or something periodically when they get these Group Me texts because if they're not responding, Group Me will kick them out.
PAT KAHN: Great. And I think you, in that answer, just answered-- Danielle's question is,
"How is it different than email?" And I think because it's texts that people actually get-- is that correct?
ERIC BLISS: Yes, it's a text. And I don't know if you've found this, but youth do not read their email. But they tend to stay pretty close to their phones for the most part and I found texting to be the most and best vehicle to communicate.
But I will say as a DRE, I never relied on a form of communication. With the full-week faith stuff, I did just use Group Me but that was a group that had opted in intentionally. For other modes of communication, getting out publicity, I always use Twitter, Facebook, email, text, the whole gamut.
PAT KAHN: Great. And I know that there have been some questions about curating resources to use on themes and all of that. Earlier on, I posted that all Tapestry of Faith programs for children, youth, adults, and multi-generational are all tagged and they're searchable by theme. And by that,
I don't mean "keyword," although you can search by keyword but you don't get as targeted a response.
But if you go to the Search page on Tapestry of Faith, you will see a little box that says Spiritual
Theme. And if you just start typing one, it's over 100 themes that have been tagged. And those have been-- thank you, Alicia-- those have included many of the Soul Matters from previous years-- not necessarily all of them because the 2015-2016 themes were announced after we completed the tagging.
But Tulsa, Oklahoma has been doing monthly themes for years and many congregations also use that same rotation of themes. So we took themes from a lot of the major groups that have been using themes and tagged everything in Tapestry of Faith and also in Worship Web. So it's a lot more straightforward now to be able to pull pieces, an activity or a story out of Tapestry of Faith to be able to use in theme based ministry.
And so there is a series of pages I'm sure Alicia is going to put up. It's basically RE/themes but within that, there are tons of resources on who is doing it, how are people doing it, why theme based ministry is a good idea-- you could just spend a whole afternoon exploring the Theme
Based Ministry pages. So I urge you to do that.
And I'm also trying to figure out a way to do a tour of the Theme Based Ministry pages. Maybe we'll either do some kind of a brief recording or maybe even just a PowerPoint to walk people through, because there's a wealth of information there. We have time for maybe one or two more questions.

So if you asked a question in the Chat Box and we haven't addressed it yet, well, a, I'll first of all apologize and then I'll say, put it again. Ah, the process for deciding themes is as varied as people who are using them. And so what I would suggest, again, is to go to the Theme Based
Ministry pages and look at some of the different groups or sharing circles that are using themes because it's quite different depending on which congregation you're talking about.
One video that I would highlight in terms of choosing things is there was a GA workshop.
Actually, Sheila was one of the presenters in that, too. But in GA 2014, all of the presentations from that are on the Theme Based Ministry pages.
But if you look specifically at the presentation by Reverend Jan Taddeo from the UU
Congregation of Gwinnett in Georgia, her congregation did a really interesting process in going through and deciding the themes. So that is one place to look. But if you go to the link for Soul
Matters or if you go to the Tulsa home page on themes, you'll see different ways that people choose to use the themes.
And I think there's another one. "In the interest of not reinventing the wheel"-- yeah, Soul
Matters we've referred to a couple of times and I'm realizing that we never stopped to describe what that is. But it really sort of came out of First Unitarian in Rochester.
And so Sheila, rather than me paraphrase, maybe you could sort of describe Soul Matters? But also there is a Soul Matters Sharing Circle and there's one specifically for religious educators.
And people are sharing resources right then and there. So can you talk just a tad about Soul
Matters?
SHEILA SCHUH: Sure. Soul Matters is just an adult faith development program which came out of really chalice circles and that whole covenanting back years ago. But it really is about-- you get a packet in advance of the month on the theme and it has all kinds of poems, videos-- all kinds of stuff in it.
And you also have a choice between eight or 10 exercises that you do. So it's a covenanted group of people that select one of those spiritual exercises or adventures for their month and then come back together every month and really share what their experiences have been and do some deepening work together around the theme.
We have a parenting Soul Matters. We also have teen Soul Matters and that system, there's probably over 100 congregations who are yoked together on those same themes. So people are sharing stuff all the time. I share my stuff on that on the Soul Matters Religious Educators page and the Soul Matters page itself, they have a section there that I upload all my curriculum to. So it's kind of ready right there for you.
PAT KAHN: Great. Can I just put a link?
SHEILA SCHUH: Yeah.
PAT KAHN: Thanks, Sheila. I just put a link in the Chat Box. I was so impressed with what I was seeing on that Religious Educators Soul Matters page that I took a couple of different examples and put them all together on that link that's now in the Chat Box so that you can see the creativity. And it really was amazing.

So we are getting close to the end so I want to do a couple of things. First, I want to invite Eric to share some closing words with us. And then, we'll talk about what's coming up next and some resources.
ERIC BLISS: So by means of closing words, I want to just share a very, very quick anecdote.
Our RE team co-chair was participating in this full-week faith exercises lab using the Group Me app and knew the theme was "forgiveness" and they'd been exploring it as a family.
And one day, she was dropping off her son to school and her son snapped at her before he got out of the car and slammed the door and went into his elementary class. Later that day, when he came home and they did the meditation on forgiveness, immediately after, this young man turned to his mom and said, mom, I'm so sorry I was rude this morning. Will you forgive me?
And it's those types of wonderful, transcendent family moments and transforming the family's experience of what it means to be faithful and why we want this kind of integration of themes not just into our Sunday mornings but also throughout our families's lives.
PAT KAHN: Right. Thank you, Eric. I always get choked up when I hear stories like that.
We'll send out an actual document or post it online with these resources unpacked a little bit with a few more. And I wanted to just let you know of upcoming webinars. Next month is Money
Talk with Children and Families and to sign up for any of these, Alicia will probably-- well, it'll be on the next slide, but Alicia will probably also put the link into the Chat Box.
December we'll know very soon. We've got some exciting possibilities for December. And then,
Gail and I will be doing what we hope will be a fun thing on Four Kinds of Fun in January and with lots more great plans coming up for the spring.
And then basically, we just want to say thank you for attending and here is the link. And also in the Chat Box, we post-- after we do the Wednesday night one, we take the recording of either
Tuesday or Wednesday. We post that online. There will also be a transcript. We'll post the slides and any other resources that are there.
So thank you all very much and a special thank you to Sheila and Eric because we did this big long workshop on Saturday and we got to the end. And I said to myself, why did we do this? But it worked out really well and it was wonderful working with them. So thank you both very much.
SHEILA SCHUH: Oh, you're so welcome.
PAT KAHN: And thank you, everybody else. All right.
SHEILA SCHUH: Bye, everyone.
PAT KAHN: Bye bye.