Religious Growth and Learning

Sunday Classes for Children and Youth:

Nursery: 9-10:10am and 11-12:10pm

Religious Education - Preschool through Grade 9: 9am and 11am

Senior High: 11am

Religious education for children and youth is provided September through mid-June. Sunday morning classes for children are offered from 9:00-10:10 am from 11:00am-12:10pm. High School youth group meets 11:00 to 12:30 pm each Sunday.

We encourage children age three and above to join the congregation for the start of the service. After our opening words, a song, and the chalice lighting, the children are invited to attend class.

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Religious Education Focus
At the White Bear Unitarian Universalist church, our primary emphasis is the learning atmosphere.  For adults and children alike, we provide a safe place where warmth, love, acceptance and joy are invariably found. We strive to model the values that are affirmed by the UUA covenant.  As practitioners of liberal religion, we encourage each individual to formulate a "personal theology" that incorporates acceptance and responsibility and that recognizes the power of symbols.
After discussion with the WBUUC members and friends, these themes emerged for our congregation's learning focus:

• social responsibility
• loving community
• UU history and identity
• religious diversity
• ecological interdependence

Each year in our religious education classes, elements of these themes are the focus. 

All classes are invited to share in our on-going social action project of providing "Birthday Boxes" for children at a local affordable housing project called East Metro Place .

We have four to five intergenerational services per year, which foster our sense of community.

Traditional religious holidays provide opportunity to discuss UU identity and perspectives of other world religions.   Our church marks Thanksgiving, Christmas, Valentine's Day and Mothers/Fathers Day with rituals and celebrations, many of which have grown out of the uniqueness of our WBUUC community

Adult Assistance

All adults, parents especially, are urged to participate whole-heartedly in the children's religious education program. With the exception of our full-time Director of Religious Education and our part-time Youth Program Coordinator, our program is staffed entirely by volunteers.  Our classes are run as a cooperative.  Every parent is encouraged to assist the teachers several times a year. 

In addition we are always anxious to involve parents and members who are interested in special events, children's worship, and other areas of our program.

Nursery Committee

Our nursery has a paid nursery caregiver and a paid attendant at each service. At times when eight or more children are in the nursery, we will invite parents to stay with their children to maintain adequate supervision of those using the nursery.

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Come into this place which we make holy by our presence.  Come in with all of your vulnerabilities and strengths, fears and anxieties, loves and hopes.  For here you need not hide, not pretend, nor be anything other than who you are and who you are called to be.

Come into this place where we can touch and be touched, heal and be healed, forgive and be forgiven. Come into this place where the ordinary is sanctified, the human is celebrated, the compassionate is expected.Come into this place, together we make it a holy place.
-Rebecca Edmiston-Lange