Many children want to give gifts to express their love to others. For some, that is their love language. They know the joy or receiving and gift and want to offer that gift to others. How beautiful to let our children know that giving is not just a moral practice, it is a spiritual practice. When we give to others, we are making a visible sign of the relationship and interdependence that exists in our world. I would like you to spend some time as a family during March to work on your stewardship together at home. I envision a congregation where the wisdom of our children and youth is a guiding force so I would love to receive any feedback about how these activities go for your families.
Here are three reflective family activities around stewardship of a faith community:
Use a device to pull up the church website or one of our social media sites and click around. Check out the different parts of our website to recall the programs we are running together and the ways we are really living out our mission: we practice love, explore spirituality, build community, and promote justice. Does anything spark your interest? Did you notice something new as a family that you didn’t know about before?
Think back over the last year, or two if you’re pulling from the pandemic timeline, and remember some of the things that were your favorite. This could be done over a meal or on a walk. Maybe you have some pictures on your phone from beet picking or a Black Lives Matter flash stance, maybe it’s been getting reengaged with RE and OWL and Family Covenant Circle, maybe it was one of the Sunday worships that moved you, maybe it was just being on our campus amongst those tall and sometimes flowering trees. Find a memory of this community and then share it aloud with one another in a story format: “Tell me about a time when…”.
This is a visualization journey into your imagination. Close your eyes or sit comfortably and have one person read this aloud: First, place your hand on your heart. Next, imagine someone you care about at church, it could be a family member, a teacher, a friend, across from you. Reach out your hand now and offer it toward this person who reaches out to greet your hand halfway. Pause here. What do you see passing between your hands? Is it your heart? Is it some money? Perhaps it is water droplets, flowing and abundant. Now imagine that there are ten more people also doing the same thing. Place a string connecting each person and grow the web in a spiraling expansiveness. Close the exercise by placing now both hands on your heart and speaking aloud our mission: we practice love, explore spirituality, build community, and promote justice.
by amanda alice uluhan, Director of Religious Education