Elz Curtiss
Acting Director of Religious Education
Burlington, VT

January 2005

How much can worship mean to children? In my experience, the theology behind the rituals makes a difference. In religions that emphasize memorization and obedience, even many adults lose interest in a top-down liturgy. Our liturgy, based on the One Universal Sacred Spirit, gives The People a lot to do. Thought-provoking literature, responsive readings, hymns, sharing of personal concerns and joys. From an early age, many children want to be part of it.

The UU Christian congregations in which I participated the last fifteen years were early advocates of having children attend at least the opening third of sanctuary worship. As a seminary student with RE duty, I discovered that my first little group of six or seven kids set themselves a clear path of milestones during this time. Although it was totally invisible to an outsider, they tackled it with utter seriousness.

For toddlers and pre-schoolers, the big focus was extending the time they could sit still. It was a small congregation, where every adult was also a neighbor. So they were sure of many compliments on that first proud day when they departed, not with a parent, but with the class.

And then there was that hymnal – the old one -- replete with “thee’s” and “thou’s.” At age four or five, the children would start studying numbers on the hymn boards. Sometimes they spent the whole hymn just turning to the right page. Responsive readings were mostly mumbled, but again, they opened their books and held them with reverence. Their reward came when we entered the more familiar territory of Lord’s Prayer and 23 rd Psalm.

Some of this I gleaned from watching, but some of it I learned when one day the minister kindly offered them the chance at an earlier exit. “After all,” he said, “It’s old words. And you can’t read them.”

The looks on their faces said it all. Reading had nothing to do with it.

There were only about six or seven kids there in those days – hardly enough to cause a big disruption either way. The last time I visited that congregation, fifty happy faces beamed out from those young people’s pews in front. And they all looked at home with those hymnbooks.