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Three Pillars Of Stewardship

         This year we will spend our time together exploring the concept of Stewardship - taking care of ourselves, our neighbors and our planet.          The first of our three Pillars for the year is titled Stewardship: The Joy of Giving. It explores what stewardship means (taking care of something we value and helping it grow) and how we can find joy in giving our time, effort and possessions to encourage growth around us and within us.         The second Pillar explores what our responsibilities are for the planet that sustains and nurtures us, and how we can utilize it’s resources while protecting and cherishing it.         Our third Pillar involves discovering ways in which we can help our fellow travelers to build better lives for themselves. It recognizes our responsibility to ACT on things which are or could adversely affect the lives of those around us. It is about reaching out to discover the needs in our community and finding ways to fill them.         And running through all these pillars we will have a special guide to help us along the way - The Lorax. If you don’t know who he is - you will by the end of the year. We will also have the help of the Social Justice Committee and many other adult members of the community who will guide us through a series of projects to help put our principles into action. Each class will decide on a service project related to each of the three Pillars to carry out during the year.And there are a number of other ways (both inside and outside the classroom) in which we will explore our relationship with each other. We will gather for sleepovers, movie nights, Family Fun Nights. We will work with the adults to raise money for our new church by helping at the Marketplace, the Auction, Music Concerts, the Capital Campaign and other Fellowship fundraising events.             We will even try our hardest to get as many adults as possible involved in our activities. We will learn about the Green Sanctuary program with them. We will share our ideas, our projects, our enthusiasm with everyone during worship services throughout the year. We will use OUR eagerness to generate their enthusiasm.             Above all, we will share what it means to really CARE about the world around us. From lots of HUGS, to picking up trash (that darn Oobleck just seems to get into everything!), to handcrafting items for the Auction, to making music, to helping make our Homeless Overflow guests more comfortable, to …, there are endless possibilities.            As I have said on a number of occasions over the past year, the Children’s version of the Seven Principles differs from the Adult version in one very important respect: - the Children’s versions are ACTION statements. We don’t study the Seven Principles, we DO the Seven Principles. So no more talking about it. This year, we intend to show you what we mean by that.

YRUU

Young Religious Unitarian Universalists

         YRUU is our group for High School aged youth to explore their world as young UU’s. The group will develop its own curriculum each year drawing from the six basic components of Balanced Youth Programming: Worship, Community Building, Social Action, Learning, Leadership Development, and Youth-Adult Relations. Our basic belief in youth empowerment will encourage them, with the support of our DRE and our youth advisors, to create a program for themselves which emphasizes their own leadership skills and assists them in exploring our faith.

         It is also the strong belief of our Director that their continued growth as individuals and as Unitarian Universalists is dependant on their ability to maintain UU connections as they make the transition from high school teenager to young adult. This group needs the support of our ENTIRE community. Their vitality as a group is OUR vitality as a Fellowship. As they grow, we grow. Our resources are here to support their unique quest.