Multi-Generational and Multi-Cultural Learning Community
Multi-generational and Multi-cultural.....In world that is often fragmented and polarized across difference, our church can offer a powerful alternative - a place where real, deep connections are fostered within diverse community, a place where we can build the relationships necessary to do the work that can only be done in partnership, passing on wisdom, sharing energy, transforming ourselves and the world. This vision invites us to imagine all of our spaces as sites of intercultural exchange, and possibilities for building relationships across difference. We become a new people through our shared worship, small groups, education, and social change work. We are transformed through these new relationships, and so we are able to transform the world.
Learning Community..... A learning community is a group of people who share common values and who are actively engaged in learning together, from each other, and through common practice. Learning Communities actively engage their subject through an action and reflection process, immediately applying what they learn to real life needs. They make and lead change through their shared reflection, and through the wisdom that arises in a small group of learners bound by those common values, emotions and beliefs. They value a posture of curiosity over certainty, inquiry over prejudice. They are both the evolution from a church of "committees" and a harken back to our Cambridge Platform roots, where our spiritual ancestors recognized that a church should have two primary objectives: 1) worship and 2) mutual edification (moral learning learning). These two categories are falsely divided, however, as worship is one of the primary ways that today we can grow and learn together. What better way to learn who we are and who we are called to be than through singing together, sitting in silence together, sitting near one another each week, becoming a people?
How this is evolving at Foothills:
Where we might go next:
Learning Community..... A learning community is a group of people who share common values and who are actively engaged in learning together, from each other, and through common practice. Learning Communities actively engage their subject through an action and reflection process, immediately applying what they learn to real life needs. They make and lead change through their shared reflection, and through the wisdom that arises in a small group of learners bound by those common values, emotions and beliefs. They value a posture of curiosity over certainty, inquiry over prejudice. They are both the evolution from a church of "committees" and a harken back to our Cambridge Platform roots, where our spiritual ancestors recognized that a church should have two primary objectives: 1) worship and 2) mutual edification (moral learning learning). These two categories are falsely divided, however, as worship is one of the primary ways that today we can grow and learn together. What better way to learn who we are and who we are called to be than through singing together, sitting in silence together, sitting near one another each week, becoming a people?
How this is evolving at Foothills:
- Creation of the Worship Learning Community
- Increased engagement with youth ministry by professional ministers
- Strengthened involvement with other UU congregations at the cluster, district, regional and national levels
- Inviting youth into leadership positions
- Offering childcare at all church events
- Enhanced sense of collaboration across groups with shared goals (i.e. financial cluster meetings)
- Greater social media presence and use of technology
- Practicing worship as multi-generational
Where we might go next:
- Strengthen our sense of an integrated lifespan faith formation ministry
- Enhance our leadership development practices and integrate these with our notions about faith formation
- Integrate young adult ministry into lifespan ministries
- Increase multi-generational worship and the relationship between Sunday worship and programs for children and youth
- Intentionally reach out to Children's Religious Education Teachers to integrate their involvement in the life of the church
- Enhanced communications plan / strategy
- Continue to strengthen our Worship Learning Community and its role in the church
- Continue to grow our music program and our vision and support for how music can be integrated into the life of the church
- Continue to grow our connections to the wider Unitarian Universalist community and our regular engagement with our history and theology