At our Children & Youth Bridging Worship Service on June 7, 2026, you experienced the enthusiasm that our children and youth, parents and teachers have for the Religious Education Programs at East Shore. We invited you to “Lean in” to help us get through the uncertainties of running these programs during the extensive construction activity in the Education Building next fall. Here are the two big takeaways we wanted to leave you with for the fall:
- Volunteers are encouraged to sign up as teachers and teaching assistants, and
- Ministry Teams and other affiliate groups are invited to involve children and youth in your programs.
If your ministry team or affiliate group wants to get involved in the RE program this fall, we invite you to imagine new ways of interacting with children and youth. You don’t necessarily need to offer traditional classroom instruction… we encourage creativity and re-imagining. Here are some different ways you might interact:
- Take part in a service learning project
- Explore ways of creative expression through art, music, writing
- Lead a field trip to an organization that is working in your field/area
- Design a curriculum for a 1 to 3 session mini-course on a topic
- Collaborate with the RE Team to design a mini-course on your field using their vast resources
We invite you to think about topics or activities that you believe would capture the interest of the children and youth. What is it that you work on as a ministry team or affiliate group that would be appropriate for eager learners? What got you interested in your area to begin with? Ideally topics will be solutions oriented and offer hope for a better future. When we ask you to lean in and help with RE, it will be with the full support of the RE professionals who lead our programs. They have experience and skills of working with children and youth here at East Shore. They are ready to work with you and your teams to collaborate on educational offerings.
We invite you to think about which age groups you would like to be involved with:
- Littles (under 5)
- K-5
- Middle school youth
- High school youth
We invite you to think about what month(s) is(are) best for your team to get interactive with the children and youth? You may have a worship service or a special event. Could you involve children and youth in the preparation and presentation for that event? Will you have a special speaker visit East Shore, who could do a separate session with the children and youth? You may want to avoid a crunch time when your team is too busy, and perhaps get involved with kids once things quiet down.
We invite you to think about the ideal timing of the interaction. Should it be during worship, at the same time as worship, a family friendly event after worship on Sundays, on a Saturday morning, or another time of the week?
Once you feel ready, we invite you to submit your ideas, in whatever state of planning they may be. We’ve created this Google Form for you to fill out with as much or as little information as you and your team have. Please feel free to submit multiple ideas by repeating the process using the same form. All of your ideas will be considered by our RE professionals for further, collaborative development with your teams.
by Amanda Alice Uluhan, Director of Religious Education