Children, Youth, & Families Advisory Council Update

I’m holding gratitude in my body, specifically my heart, as Reverend Ashley taught this past Sunday, before I seek connection with you and share the latest update on our Children, Youth and Families programming. In gratitude I hold the volunteers who continue to step up and volunteer for the first time, and those continuing their years of volunteering with youth, often while pulling double duty as parents. In deep appreciation, I hold the team ready to cover for Allison as she steps away for parental leave. I’m overjoyed for the growing closeness of our middle school and high school youth groups. I’m grateful for the adults showing up in our youths’ lives because it matters more than anything else we do. 

Two Sundays ago, about 30 members from First U attended a workshop about Gen Z and their faith and spiritual practices. In case you didn’t know, Gen Zers currently are between the ages of 13 to 28. Two of the key takeaways from Sunday’s workshop:

1. Authenticity matters! More than half (55%) of young people don’t attend religious or spiritual services because they don’t feel they are free to be who they are in those spaces.

2. Relationships matter the most to Gen Z. When young people said they had zero trusted adults in their lives, their proportions of feeling completely alone, feeling misunderstood, feeling left out, and feelings of stress and overwhelm ranged from of 59-73%. Remarkably, as young people identified more trusted adults, those percentages fell and kept falling with 1 trusted adult, 2-4 trusted adults, and finally the sweet spot of 5 trusted adults- where percentages receded to 9-39%. That’s a sizable difference from no trusted adults to five trusted adults. This is why I said earlier the showing up in our youth’s lives matters more than anything else we do, when we show up youth feel less alone, they feel understood and connected, and their feelings of stress and overwhelm decrease.

Can you to pause for a minute and count how many trusted adults you have in your life? People you could go to for unconditional love, compassion, understanding and acceptance. We all could do with 5 trustworthy adults in our lives; and our youth and young adults need that even more during a time in life defined by change, transformation and growth. 

Last weekend our Youth Leadership Team led YouthCon at First Universalist for 45 youth from UU congregations around the metro area for the first time since the pandemic. The Youth Leadership Team took their job of building community seriously and wrote a “get to know you” quiz to pair each participant with a partner. Their efforts minimized feelings of “I don’t know anyone” and helped build a sense of community from the very beginning. “Kids who attended YouthCon got to know UU youth from other UU communities and realized they are a part of something bigger, a much larger faith community,” said Allison Connelly-Vetter about the success of the event.

We continue our commitment to providing supportive spaces for our community’s single/solo parents. Starting in January, for four months we will offer two opportunities a month for a single/solo parents group meeting with childcare. One group will meet after Community dinner on the second Wednesday of the month, and one group will meet during Saturday Sprouts on the fourth Saturday of the month.

Our Children, Youth and Family Advisory Team is undergoing a transformation of its own. We are looking for new points of view and would love to include youth, masculine, BIPOC, single/solo parenting, and actively grandparenting folks. Commitment is one 90-minute evening meeting per month and having a passion for building our children, youth and family community. If you are interested, please send an email to our lead co-chair Samantha White at samanthar3099 [at] gmail.com. 

There are multiple events for families to find community coming up in the month of December including the Blue Holiday service, the Christmas pageant, and our next Community Dinner on Wednesday, December 10 at 6 pm—RSVP here. After community dinner, breakout groups run from 7-8:15 and include:

• Childcare (for children ages 6 months – 5^th grade)
• Middle School Youth Group (6^th-8^th grades)
• High School Youth Group (9^th-12^th grades)
• Parenting as a Spiritual Practice (for all parents and caregivers)
• Low-Contact/No Contact: A Group for Adults Choosing Estrangement 

Our breakout groups are places for parents and caregivers to discuss the challenging parts of parenting and families and find support. When we have values based, low stakes, safe third spaces to experience beloved community and feel loved, we are giving our youth (and ourselves) permission to explore the world with a safety net. We are practicing showing up as our authentic selves even in hard moments. And I don’t have to tell you how much less of these spaces there are right now. I’m grateful we are offer spaces of love, with acceptance for showing up as enough just as we are, with acknowledgement we’re doing our best as messy humans, and living our shared values as we do.

I end this update as always, with encouragement for you to reach out to any member of your Children Youth and Family Advisory Team with questions or concerns, especially while Allison is away. Co-chairs Samatha White and Kirk Cozine, Sarah Heuser, Troi Ferguson and I would love to hear your feedback and suggestions for building grounded, loving spaces for our children, youth and families. Members can find our contact information in the church directory.

I look forward to seeing you at church,

Annie Holtzclaw