SPC Youth Program

Our young people welcome you to SPC!

SPC's Youth Program offers your child a progressive Christian education. Your child will learn Bible stories, learn to pray and meditate, and learn to apply the insights of Christian tradition for everyday life. The remarkable artistic and musical skills in our congregation are shared often with and among our children, in worship and in our Sunday morning church school. In our Youth Program, we take the Bible seriously without having to take it literally. We teach pluralism to our children: we tell them that Christian faith is precious and powerful for us, and that other faiths can be equally precious and powerful for their adherents. Every Sunday, one of our children or teens does a Youth Reading in worship: it is fantastic public speaking training for our youth! And Rev. Jim Burklo's creative stories for kids in worship are an important source of inspiration for youth and adults alike.

YOUNGER YOUTH: Preschool-4th Grade class is taught by our new teacher, DOLORES NICE-SIEGENTHALER, MDiv

5th-7th Grade YOUTH: led by Patti Oji

8th-12th Grade YOUTH: led by Dan Thatcher

CONFIRMATION program for youth age 12 and up will be offered in spring 2007.

"The great end in religious instruction is not to stamp our minds upon the young, but to stir up their own; not to make them see with our eyes, but to look inquiringly and steadily with their own; not to give them a definite amount of knowledge, but to inspire a fervent love of truth; not to form an outward regularity, but to touch inward springs; not to bind them by ineradicable prejudices to our particular sect or peculiar notions, but to prepare them for impartial, conscientious judging of whatever subjects may be offered to their decision; not to burden the memory, but to quicken and strengthen the power of thought; not to impose religion upon them in the form of arbitrary rules, but to awaken the conscience, the more discernment. In a word, the great end is to awaken the soul; to bring understanding, conscience, and heart into earnest, vigorous action on religious and moral truth, to excite and cherish spiritual life."

-- Wm Ellery Channing, 1780-1842