Youth and Family Ministries

Our YFM rooms are in the upstairs part of the building and Sunday School resides from 11am-12:10pm. Please be sure to sign your child in using the clipboard on the door. Near the end of service, the children will be brought downstairs by the Youth Ed teacher to give a brief announcement about what they did and what they learned and to receive a special UCP blessing by the minister and congretation. We currently do not have a program for teens (Y.O.U). Teens are encouraged to sit in the Sunday Service with their parents at this time. 

We envision young people growing up with a clear grasp of their spiritual nature and power, living from their ability to make a difference in the world, to express love, to choose kindness, to relate authentically, and to model spiritual values.

For more about our Youth Education Director (YED), Shannon Preto, see the page: Minister, Board Members, and Staff

Contact Email: shannon.p@unitychapelhill.org

Week of August 2
This past Sunday , we had four wonderful students start their lesson on the Power of Will.  We talked about the components that make up the Power—Choice, Commitment, Willingness—and how we can use these ideas in our everyday lives.

We then started a new project where the students will be making flowers “grow” from their will, each week adding Powers and affirmations (in the form of “petals”) that connect to their Power of Will. This week they added the Powers of Release, Understanding, and Love. We had a short discussion about the impact each of these has within the scope of ‘willingness’.

Join us next week as we continue our discussion about the Power of Will and how we can enact these ideas using the Powers of Life and Faith. We will be continuing our flower project as well.

Come and share what you know, so that together, as a commUnity, we can continue to strengthen our Powers! A wonderful week ahead, for all of us :)

YFM Assitant, Kai Kaizen

Week of July 19
On Sunday, we continued exploring the Power of Understanding through a number of thought-provoking conversations.

We introduced the children to Dr. Marshall Rosenberg’s use of the Jackal and Giraffe metaphors to describe different ways of responding to misunderstanding. Dr. Rosenberg wrote Nonviolent Communication: A Language of Life, which the adults studied together in the spring of 2024.

The Jackal represents responses that attack, blame, or rely on right-versus-wrong thinking—speaking from a judgmental mind. The Giraffe, with its large heart, represents responses grounded in empathy: making clear observations, identifying feelings, recognizing underlying needs, and making actionable requests.

We explored this distinction through a real-life example. If a friend who had asked to eat pancakes with us didn't show up for Sunday lessons, would sending them a picture of us eating pancakes be a “Jackal response”? Or could we send a picture expressing that we wished they were with us—something that felt authentically loving, or came from the Giraffe heart?

There was no single “right” answer. Instead, we explored how we might look toward God, the Divine, or the Christ within to help us know how to respond to and support our absent friend.

Our other happenstance conversation arose from the question: Is there a Power within misunderstanding? What power or potential might emerge from a misunderstanding? Again, there was no one specific answer—but there was certainly an invitation to sit in Divine curiosity and embrace the “unknowing.”

Next week, we will conclude our monthly exploration of the Power of Understanding by continuing our collage. This ongoing project invites us to spiral inward, finding greater understanding of ourselves so that we can come to a more intentional and Christ-like understanding of those around us—and, perhaps most importantly, the world around us.

How can we seek to understand those with whom we disagree socially or politically? How might curiosity open the door to greater compassion?

Join us and share what you know, so that together, as a commUnity, we can continue to strengthen our Powers.

Week of July 12
This past Sunday, we continued our study of the Power of Understanding, which is to learn, to perceive, and (ultimately) to connect with another through curiosity.  We also continued working on our spiral collage by looking through magazines and other material for images that remind us of Unity' 5 Principles.  AND we talked about the Divine Spaciousness between Affect and Emotion.  This topic was a heady and hearty one.

"Affect" can be defined as the bodily sensations of an experience.  "Emotion" is the culturally specific word or phrase describing that sensation.  "Affect" is the individual's nervous system - as well as the "energetic" co-regulation between two or more people - responding to the environment.  "Emotion" is the phrase or word attributed to the sensation by that individual's culture.  For example, we looked up the english word for the feeling of "nostalgia" in arabic (حنين للماضي / "hanin lilmadi") and koren (노스탤지어 / "noseutaeljieo").  We shared that in Brazilian Portuguese, there is the word saudade, or "an emotional state of melancholic or profoundly nostalgic longing for a beloved yet absent someone or something."  

From this thesis of affect <=> emotion, it was posited that the distance between the sensation and the logical word are connected by a spaciousness of Understanding.  The other ways we have talked about this are "resonance", "attunement", or "co-regulation".  But today, specifically in the YFM's lesson, we called it "Divine Understanding."   For if we can sit "in between" the sensation and the word, or in the distance between the Affect and the Emotion, we can invite God in; and we can witness the Christ within; AND we can honor the communal experience of our Diving Understanding.  

[ I will admit this language you've read above wasn't spoken aloud to the children.  But there was a palpable feeling in the room, which resonated with Understanding. ]

Join us every Sunday in the YFM program to experience the Power (and joy) of Understanding. 

Week of July 5
We started the exploration of the Power of Understanding for our third year.  Our YFM program is based upon a yearly schedule of studying the 12 Powers for each of the months.  It is an interesting challenge to continually study the same topic repeatedly.  Yet it is also a methodology for developing the Understanding of each Power.  Sometimes we dive a bit deeper on the Power and something we step sideways to look at it differently.  Which is all a process of Understanding.  This year, we again are using the symbol and practice of a spiral.  Because by following the spiralic path inward we can gain more Understanding of ourselves and our relationship with God and the Divine.  Then we can walk that same pathway outward towards connecting with others through Love, Curiosity, Playfulness, and Gratitude (LCPG).  We can use this same cyclical process of LCPG to work through a misUnderstanding of another.  

This year we are completing a collage all month long by seeking and finding images or words that help us dive deeper into Understanding while also considering the 5 Principles of Unity Church.  It's a complex set of parameters to think and feel through in order to collage a spiral.  Join us to dive deeper into Understanding ourselves in the context of Unity with each other and with God/Divinity.