Important Announcement About Sunday Services and Religious Education
Beginning Sunday, May 1st and going through at least part of June, we will be experimenting with integrating Religious Education for children into Sunday services instead of having children go to separate programs during the services.
After the service there will be child-directed, adult-supervised playtime outdoors. This experiment will not involve high schoolers.
This means:
- At 10AM on Sunday mornings, high schoolers will go to the club house/youth room in the cottage as usual for their programs, but children through 8th grade will go to service and remain there until coffee hour.
- A section of the Fellowship Hall will be designated as Religious Education space. This space will have activities that children may do during the service (as well as fidgets for those who wish to focus on the service).
- If anyone needs a break from the Fellowship Hall, they can get this break downstairs. The service will be broadcasted on a TV downstairs, but there will be plenty of room for moving around as well as a quiet space for taking sensory breaks.
- During coffee hour, children are invited to come outside as desired for child-directed but adult-supervised play.
- Even though we have been closing out the Religious Education year in early June with the Religious Education and Flower Communion service, this year we will extend the programming through June in order to have a fuller experience with the experiment.
- There are many reasons to do an experiment like this, and it is only an experiment. Let’s give it a try and see, as we get used to it, how it is for us. In the meantime, it will take some getting used to and may at times be uncomfortable (as new things so often are). Thank you in advance for all the patience and openness to trying you can muster.
For a page with links to more information about the experiment, click here.