A is for Anxiety

worry and the religious educator

A word, if you don’t mind, about religious education. Faith formation. Lifespan faith education. Whatever it is you call it, there are changes afoot, for oh, just about a thousand reasons.

And if you’ve been reading here, you know that I’m a proponent of change and more, being prepared for it. We can’t avoid change – you can see it coming and it just won’t stop and there’s nothing you can do about it.

Religious education is changing.

More, religious education ALWAYS changes.

Here’s the thing: even before the pandemic, religious education was changing. It was already changing because our living tradition keeps on living, which means it keeps growing, which means it changes.

It was already changing because every generation of children needs different things from educational models, so the pedagogies keep changing.

It was already changing because our growing awareness of neurodiversity means changing those models further to support all children in a classroom.

It was already changing in the last decade because of, in part, the devaluing of Sunday morning by schools, which put sports and music programming on Sunday mornings.

It was already changing because teachers and coordinators were light on the ground and the ones left were exhausted.

And then the pandemic hit.

Everyone went online, including our children.

And those who don’t have kids forgot that those children spent hours and hours online each week learning, so they probably weren’t inclined to spend Another Hour Learning.

Families were exhausted from having to work and help their kids adjust to a new way of learning (and sometimes participate in the teaching).

Now because the lockdown portion of our pandemic went on so much longer than expected, this just continued until finally schools started opening up again. Which meant activities opened up again. Which meant Sunday mornings got consumed again.

And still our religious educators – and the staffs/leaders who love them – have been trying to revitalize your programs. Some of these programs are thriving again, but they don’t look much like they did before the pandemic. Many of them are not thriving.

And it’s not because the religious educator or the staff/leaders who love them aren’t doing their jobs. It’s because the landscape is really hard.

Programming for a few children doesn’t work, because often the ‘one room schoolhouse’ includes kids of widely varying levels, and what keeps the littles entertained bores the older ones.

Programming for various age groups often doesn’t work either, because there’s only one or two in a class on a given Sunday.

It’s hard. And our religious educators are exhausted from trying to figure out what to try next, where the teachers are coming from, and heck, where the families are coming from.

I don’t have the solutions here (although I bet some readers do, and I’d love to hear them).

What I do have is a big ask: don’t push your religious educator (or coordinator, or minister, or RE committee) to do more than they can right now. They can’t manufacture families or teachers out of thin air. They can’t make changes on a dime. They need your grace and your support.

They need you to understand that when you want more kids in RE, those kids come with adults, who also need support from the worship, pastoral care, and programming of the congregation.

They need you to understand that – much like everything else in ministry – fewer children does not mean fewer hours; much as it takes the same time to prep worship for 20 as it does for 200, it takes the same time (or maybe more?) to prep for 5 kids as it does for 50. (And what that really means is that work hours should not be cut because of the number of children in classes.)

They need you to understand that the anxiety that leads to filling a calendar with tons of programming (events, potlucks, seminars, etc.) to see if any of them will attract families will exhaust your staff and be unsustainable – it is better to pick the couple of things you do well and focus on them.

And if you’re still anxious about your congregation’s religious education program, here’s one thing you can do: HELP.

When the call comes out for teachers, help.

When the question of outreach comes up, help.

Not by criticizing, or taking over, or Monday morning quarterbacking.

By helping.

By asking what can be done.

By supporting the work.

By taking on a role in the education of your congregation’s children.

Remember when they were dedicated to the congregation, in a ceremony, with a thornless rose, and words spoken by the minister, the parents, and the congregation? You promised to support them, help them, guide them. This is the kind of thing that ceremony had in mind.

Come with a loving heart, and inquisitive mind, and a willingness. Your religious educator will appreciate it.