Together we help children and youth develop a strong Unitarian Universalist identity 

with deep relationships in their church community and nurture their rich and unique spiritual lives. 

~UUC’s Family Ministry Mission Statement

As Unitarian Universalist Religious Educators…we have always been charged with creating a container that affirms people in the fullness of who they are…where we can practice being human…it is our opportunity as religious educators to create spaces to hold people spiritually so they know they are not alone.

~Aisha Hauser, Religious Educator and Member of the Lead Ministry Team for the Church of the Larger Fellowship

Note: Included in the article below are quotes from Amanda Mack’s “Youth Ministry: A Year in Review” article. Indeed, youth ministry deserves its own summary! Please read her full article here. 

Spring Work Party

Two programs which particularly embody this approach to faith development are our Elementary Our Whole Lives class and Parent Night Out: 

Our Whole Lives (OWL) is a lifespan set of curricula, which teach participants about sexuality and sexual health in a comprehensive and values-based way. It is published in partnership between the Unitarian Universalist Association and the United Church of Christ. At UUC, Jr High OWL has long been a staple of our core programs. In the last couple of years we have begun expanding our OWL offerings to include classes for children in Kindergarten and 1st grade and, this year, children in 4th and 5th grade. In this class, children learn about puberty, gender, sexual health, and consent. In addition to the OWL class itself, at UUC we offer a concurrent parent group with childcare provided. This allows parents to engage deeply with the same topic their children are learning about, build friendships and connections with each other, and to reflect on important questions about the messages about sex and sexuality they want to pass down to their children. Providing childcare where siblings of those participating in the OWL class get to play and have fun together not only makes it possible for parents to participate in the parent group, and for our OWL facilitators to teach at all, but it also begins to build a foundation amongst those children in childcare. Some of these children may take OWL together in the future and they will already be coming in with some familiarity with one another, making it more possible to build trust and engage deeply with the topic. 

All Ages Worship about Equity

This year’s Elementary OWL class was full, with 12 children. About half were from UUC and half joined us from University Congregational United Church of Christ and the wider Seattle community. On any given Sunday afternoon anywhere from 3 to 8 children were in childcare and there was a core of about 10 to 12 parents who participated in the parent group regularly. It is hard to overstate the impact of OWL: in a culture which offers confusing and contradictory messages about sex and gender, providing this class where children learn about their own agency and are affirmed in the fullness of who they are is a profound ministry. 

Halloween 2023

Parent Night Out is a fairly self-explanatory, semi-regular event now at UUC. Children ages 6 mos through 5th grade join us for an evening of fun activities, while parents enjoy a night to themselves. These have been extremely popular, with anywhere from 15 to 25 children onsite. Parent Night Out is an event which accomplishes a few different things: first and foremost it gives parents and caregivers time - hopefully to relax and connect, but many parents also use it just to get some stuff done. Meanwhile, we use this time onsite to dive into topics that require more time than we might have on a Sunday morning. For instance, in December longtime UUC member, Roberta Ray, joined us to learn more about refugee crises and how we can help people who leave their homes to come here get what they need to live. You might remember that, at the time, the Riverton Park United Methodist church was providing migrant shelter and services and was overwhelmed by the need. Children learned about this issue, connected it to the Nativity Story - which they heard at church the following Sunday - and picked out several items to donate from a wishlist. 

This kind of program invests in families. By giving this time to parents, we are signaling that the nourishment of their souls is important to us, both as parents and entirely independently of their children. That we see their need for rest and fun, and that we can be a source of support. And, of course, by having this time with their kids, we are developing stronger relationships with them, and getting to explore our values and what’s important to us in a way we just don’t have capacity for on Sunday mornings. Parent Night Out is a fun and exciting addition to our programs and we look forward to bringing it back in the 2024-2025 Church Year.

Camp Huddle

Elementary OWL and Parent Night Out are clear examples of successful and meaningful programs which make our dreams of holistic faith development more real. They are, of course, not the only ways this ministry takes shape. In fact, just as worship is the beating heart of adult congregational life, so are our Sunday-morning religious education groups, the beating heart of Family Ministry. These groups are where we see children and youth most regularly, and each has its own story of successes and challenges:



• Roots (K-2nd Grade) and Wings (3rd-5th Grade): These groups have grown out of the one-room-schoolhouse model we’ve used since returning to the building after the remodel and pandemic shutdown. Most notably, we have experimented with structuring the year in 4-6 week modules, focusing on different topics and ways of exploring together (as opposed to one curriculum all year long). This has been a great model for us because it allows us to incorporate a wide range of topics and be responsive to kids who come on Sunday and to the events that happen throughout the year. In the 2023-2024 Church Year, we anticipate offering an elementary group during the 9:30 service, in addition to Roots and Wings during the 11:15 service. 

World Religions field trip to Valley and Mountain

• World Religions (6th-7th Grade) implemented the use of a new Soul Matters curriculum called Crossing Paths this year. We welcomed two UUCers as guest speakers to share their faith journeys with students. Jonathan Tweet spoke with students about being a humanist and an atheist and Janine Larsen, Director of Ministries, spoke with students about her life as a Zen Buddhist priest. Participants also went on three well-attended field trips this year including: 
• A labyrinth walk in celebration of the Pagan holiday Samhain at Shoreline UU Church in Shoreline, WA. Our two churches co-sponsored the event at which youth played games, did the labyrinth walk, and then shared a pizza dinner (photo below);
• Attending a big band Sunday service at Mountain & Valley Christian Church in the Seattle neighborhood of Rainier Beach; and
• Going to a service at Overlake Christian Church, an Evangelical Megachurch in Redmond, WA.
• Jr. High Our Whole Lives (7th-8th Grade): Sexuality education for Jr. High teens continues to be a vital ministry at UUC. This group prepares teens to make values based decisions about their sexual health and activity, and gives teens the tools for having important conversations about sexuality with their families, peers, and potential partners. New this year was the field trip to Lambert House!



Coming of Age Ropes Course Field Trip

• Coming of Age (8th-9th Grade): This year’s Coming of Age group was small, but mighty! Our four teen participants engaged deeply with big questions about what has made them who they are, their personal beliefs and values, and the people they want to become. We incorporated lesson plans from the Soul Matter’s curriculum, “Becoming,” this year. This helped us create a more experiential, art and activity-driven experience for these participants.This was a great addition to our usual Coming of Age program and we plan to implement more of the “Becoming” curriculum in the coming year. 



Free time at a Youth overnight

• Youth Group (9th-12th Grade): Although Youth Group had only two regular attendees, our mural project saw our numbers spike. We had 12 youth show up to the first Mural Painting Party! Furthermore, we hosted two UUC youth overnights cooking dinner and worshiping together as well as exploring separate curricula in small groups.

In addition to these programs, Amanda Mack writes this about Youth Ministry at UUC: (read her full article here)

Imagine that youth programming at UU churches and beyond was a healthy forest and the pandemic, a forest fire. Youth stakeholders have shown up for the clean up and to steward the regrowth of our forest. Working together, we continue to salvage objects like the Big Ass Chalice that travels between youth cons (short for conference) and traditions like UUC hosting a social justice-themed youth con again; things we have gathered up from the ashen forest floor. We are ensuring that our past won’t be forgotten, but we also understand that we are creating something new from the wreckage. This was made clear in a declaration youth crafted at the beginning of the church year: They wrote, “We don’t know where we are going. We can go anywhere we want. But we can’t go back to where we came from.” 

Strengthening relationships is the centerpiece of youth ministry right now. We are caring for an ecosystem that transcends the walls of UUC and extends to nearly all UU church youth programs in the PNW and beyond. This year, we are tending to the seeds we planted in the 2022-2023 church year such as local cross church programming like talent shows hosted at UUC and the 19-congregation strong Camp Blue Boat last summer near Ellensburg, WA. The result is that in the 2023-2024 church year, youth attended three Youth Cons in UU churches in Vancouver, B.C., in Shoreline, WA and in Port Townsend, WA. Furthermore, we have a con schedule for the PNW region already scheduled for the 2024-2025 church year. This comes through ongoing collaboration with our religious education colleagues in the region.

Youth worship at fall overnight

In the 2023-2024 Church Year we had 90 children and youth registered. This is up from 67 last year and represents about a 25% increase in the size and scope of Family Ministry at UUC since the previous year. On any given Sunday, we see a range of about 54 - 65 children and youth (this doesn’t include programs/events like Elementary OWL, Parent Night Out, and Chalice Camp). This is a pretty remarkable rate of retention, which Amanda and I are very proud of. In addition to the children and youth involved in our programs, there are about 36 volunteers who have committed themselves to the responsibility of faith development in children and youth at UUC, who show up at least twice a month (more, in many cases) to give their time and care. 

This data is helpful for Amanda and I, as we think about resource and supply allocation for the coming year, as well as the kind of volunteer support needed to maintain and continue to grow UUC’s ministry to children, youth, and families in the Seattle area next fall. We are already pushing the limits of staff capacity and thinking strategically about the best ways to use our time. As we look to the 2024-2025 church year, we encourage you to think about how you might be involved in this ministry, so it can continue to flourish. 

UU "Values Stretching" during All Ages worship

These numbers are undeniably exciting, but numbers can never tell the whole story. The story of Family Ministry at UUC is in the small and big moments of discovery and meaning-making throughout the year. It is in the faith statements delivered at the Coming of Age service in May; in the group chalice Roots and Wings made at the beginning of the year; in the church elders who help the youngest in our community with fun crafts at the Holiday Decorating Party; in the creative collaboration behind All Ages Worship; and in the songs learned at Chalice Camp. The story of Family Ministry at UUC is in the connections between us—the fabric of our covenant with one another.

In faith, 

Aria Curtis, Director of Family Ministry


For more information about Family Ministry at UUC, please contact Aria Curtis.