Below are transcriptions of the first seven of the teacher podcasts.
These podcasts were produced in 2009-2010, and may sound dated in some areas. Each transcription below is followed by brief “Notes from 2026” pointing out how things might be different today.
- Podcast 1: Preparing kids to be UU adults, if they choose to be
- Podcast 2: Teaching religious literacy to support democratic society
- Podcast 3: Teaching skills (public speaking, introspection, etc.)
- Podcast 4: Having fun and building community
- Podcast 5: Doing check-ins with children
- Podcast 6: Tips and techniques for telling effective stories
- Podcast 7: Leading discussions with children
Podcast 1
JOE CHEE: Today we’re going to begin talking about the four big goals of our religious education program for children. Our goals are similar to the big goals at many Unitarian Universalist congregations throughout North America: We want children to have fun and feel they are a part of a religious community. We want children to gain the basic religious literacy expected in our society. We want children to learn the skills associated with liberal religion, skills such as public speaking, singing, basic leadership, interpersonal skills, and so on. We want to prepare children to become Unitarian Universalist adults, should they choose to become Unitarian Universalists when they are old enough to make their own decisions.
Dan, I’d like to start with this last goal. Why should Sunday school teachers and parents be concerned with this goal at all?
DAN: The reason we should all be concerned with this goal is that very few children who are raised as Unitarian Universalist kids grow up to be Unitarian Universalist adults. Our retention rate is unbelievably low.
My friend Reverend Christana Wille-McKnight, a Unitarian Universalist chaplain, has done some research into how many Unitarian Universalist children grow up to become Unitarian Universalist adults. While there have been no longitudinal studies done on this subject, cross-sectional studies conducted over the past four decades have found that we retain only about 10 percent to 16 percent of our children — or to put it another way, we lose 84 percent to as much as ninety percent of our children when they grow up.
Christana looked into how many kids the United Church of Christ, or UCC, retains — UCC is a very liberal Christian denomination that looks a lot like Unitarian Universalism — in fact, my UCC cousin says that “UCC” stands for “Unitarians Considering Christ.” And this nearest religious relative of ours retains about 48 percent of their kids — they hold on to about 4 times as many kids as we do.
These are disappointing statistics for those of us who are doing religious education — we put all this work into our kids, and instead of sticking around, we let them drift away.
JOE: So what could we do to hang on to more of our Unitarian Universalist kids?
DAN: Christana has done a lot of research on exactly this question. In her paper “The Problem of Retention in Unitarian Universalism,” she identifies four key reasons for our low retention rates. Two of these reasons should change the way we do Sunday school:
— First, there is often a big difference between Sunday school programs and the adult church. Christana refers to a 2005 Commission on Appraisal report which states: “The way UUs raise our children seems to prepare them for something completely different than what Unitarian Universalism actually offers.”
— Second, there is often a lack of religious identity in our Sunday school programs. Christana quotes from that same 2005 Commission on Appraisal report, which says: “We have a common desire not to indoctrinate our children, to leave them free to determine their own truth. This is a noble aspiration, but have we taken it too far? Perhaps children don’t get anything to hold onto now and they ultimately find themselves adrift in a confusing and frightening world.”
JOE: You said these two reasons should change the way we do Sunday school. Tell me more about that. What could we be doing differently?
DAN: Well, in our church we’re already doing some things along these lines. For example, we like to have the children attend the first fifteen minutes of every worship service — that’s a great opportunity for our kids to experience what it’s like to be part of the adult community. Children get to sing some Unitarian Universalist hymns, they get to see the flaming chalice being lit, they might hear a reading or a story — our parish minister and our worship associates are very aware that the kids will be in the worship service with us, and sometimes they will explain what they’re doing so the kids can understand.
JOE: …And by the same token, presumably sometimes Sunday school teachers could do some explaining in class.
DAN: Exactly. If something comes up in the worship service that the teachers think might be interesting to the kids, they might take a few minutes at the beginning of class to talk with the children about that.
JOE: What else should we be doing in our Sunday school to help retain more of our children?
DAN: Christana points out that we need to be explicit about our religious identity. One of the things we already do in our Sunday school to cement our religious identity is to light a flaming chalice — which has become an important symbol of Unitarian Universalism — and often we say some words that go like this: “We light this chalice to celebrate Unitarian Universalism, the church of the open minds, helping hands, and loving hearts.” That way our kids know who we are, and what we stand for.
I’m also a big believer in having children attend intergenerational worship services several times a year. We want children to experience what we do in worship, including hearing the occasional sermon. What’s really great is when Sunday school teachers make a point of attending these intergenerational worship services, and make a point of greeting the children in their class. Sunday school teachers are role models, and when children see them at worship, that makes a big difference to the children.
I also like it when Sunday school teachers talk to the children in their classes about the other things they do in the congregation, especially with older kids. I teach Sunday school regularly, and I’ll make a point of mentioning offhand the other things I do at church — things like, I went to the choir concert, or I helped out with feeding the homeless people who stay in our church in September, or whatever. Again, we Sunday school teachers are role models, and we have a lot of power to set expectations for children of what it means to be a part of a religious community.
You know, something else we should consider is that some of our children may have a deeper intuitive knowledge of what it means to be a Unitarian Universalist than do some of our adults. I made this point in an essay which appeared in the book Essex Conversations (1999), which was published by the Unitarian Universalist Association a few years ago — I pointed out then that our older children probably know more than do some of the adult newcomers who come to our church. We have to be aware that kids who have grown up as Unitarian Universalists may have different educational needs than adults who have come from another religious tradition.
JOE: So you’ve been saying that we want our children to grow up to be Unitarian Universalist adults. What does it mean to be a Unitarian Universalist adult?
DAN: That’s the question we should be constantly asking ourselves — what does it mean to be a Unitarian Universalist adult? Now sometimes teachers will have their Sunday school classes memorize the seven principles, but that strikes me as a short-sighted strategy — the seven principles, which are really a part of the Unitarian Universalist Association’s bylaws, are required to go through a revision process every decade or so. We had six principles when I was a Unitarian Universalist kid, and they sounded quite different — I’m glad I didn’t have to memorize them, because I would have had to un-memorize them when I became an adult!
When I say I want a child to grow up to be a Unitarian Universalist adult, I mean I want someone who’s going to be a sensitive, moral, and joyful person — I want them to have both intellectual integrity and spiritual insight — and above all, I want them to realize that being a part of a liberal religious community is one of the best ways to help them maintain their sensitivity, joyfulness, intellectual integrity, and so on.
JOE: One final thing. You know that I’m interested in tracking the progress we make towards our educational goals. How are we measuring progress towards this particular educational goal?
DAN: The best way to measure progress on this goal is to do a longitudinal study — to wait twenty or thirty years, and see if we can hold on to half our children as they grow up. Obviously, we don’t want to wait that long. So we do a couple of things.
First, we try to track how many children we’re holding on to. One way to do this is to compare how many children are in our database with how many children are registered in Sunday school. We actually do quite well retaining children up to about middle school. After that, we start losing kids, and that has caused us to review our programs for adolescents to see where we’re falling short. And the teachers and youth advisors who work with our adolescents are now figuring out how to hold on to more of our kids.
Second, we can pay attention to whether or not our children are willing to identify themselves as Unitarian Universalists when they think no one is watching. I often get good feedback from parents on this — as when a parent came up to me recently to tell me that their seven year old proclaimed to a playmate, “Well, I’m a Unitarian Universalist!” This is just anecdotal evidence, but it’s still an important way to know we’re reaching this goal.
JOE: Dan, I’m going to review that goal one more time. One of our four big educational goals is: We want to prepare children to become Unitarian Universalist adults, should they choose to become Unitarian Universalists when they are old enough to make their own decisions.
DAN: Right.
JOE: And to summarize, right now we retain only about 10 to 16 percent of our children when they grow up, whereas a reasonable goal would be for us to retain about half our children. You said we can work towards this goal by making sure our children know what the adult church is like, and by being explicit about our religious identity. you suggested that Sunday school teachers can serve as role models for children, by attending intergenerational worship services when they can, and by talking to children about the other things they do in church.
You also gave us a good definition of what it means for our children to grow up to be Unitarian Universalist adults. Could you repeat that for me, please?
DAN: Sure. We want our children to grow up to be sensitive, moral, and joyful adults, people with intellectual integrity and spiritual insight; and we want them to know that being a part of a Unitarian Universalist religious community will help them continue to grow in these areas.
JOE: You know, I think I’d like to be one of those adults myself.
DAN: Me, too. It’s a never-ending process. Which is why I keep going to church as an adult.
JOE: Dan, I want to thank you for explaining this first of four educational goals. In our next podcast, I’ll ask Dan to explain another one of our four big educational goals.
Notes from 2026: 1. Today, the ongoing decline of organized religion means there is far less concern about preparing kids to become UU adults, should they choose to do so when they grow up. 2. The point about not bothering to memorize the “Seven Principles” seems especially relevant today, now that the UUA has adopted a completely different set of principles. 3. Rev. Christana Wille-McKnight is now minister in residence at Star Island Conference Center.
Podcast 2
JOE: In last week’s podcast, we talked about the four big goals of our children’s religious education program here at the Unitarian Universalist Church of Palo Alto. Dan, can you briefly restate some of those four goals for us?
DAN: Sure. The first goal, we want our kids to grow up to be Unitarian Universalist adults. That’s the one we discussed in the last podcast. Two, we want to teach basic religious skills like meditation and prayer, public speaking, and so on. Three, we want to build community and have fun. And four, we want to teach religious literacy.
JOE: This week, I’d like to talk to you about the last goal you mentioned, teaching religious literacy. That sounds like a good goal, and I think just about any congregation in most faith traditions would say that’s one of their goals.
DAN: Yeah, and actually I’ve had many, many parents tell me that this is why they want their child to go to Sunday school. They want their kid to have some kind of religious literacy. But that term, religious literacy, has to be carefully defined.
JOE: Yes, because what we mean when we say religious literacy is probably going to be different from what Christians say, or Orthodox Jews, or Hindu temple might define that.
DAN: Right, exactly. And as religious liberals, as Unitarian Universalists, we have something pretty specific in mind when we say religious literacy.
Generally speaking, we want our kids to have a basic level of religious literacy that’s compatible with the society we’re living in.
JOE: So what does that look like?
DAN: Well, broadly speaking, I want children who have gone through our Sunday school program to have some knowledge in four basic components of religious literacy.
First, I want them to know the main Bible stories and characters they’re likely to encounter in Western culture. So at the level of pop culture, for example, there’s tons of jokes and cartoons about Noah’s Ark, right? You know, the animals going on Noah’s Ark. And I want kids to have some exposure to the actual Bible story, which will make those cartoons more funny for them. When our kids hear the great African American spirituals, I want them to know what Jacob’s Ladder was.
And when our kids get old enough to read Moby Dick and they read that opening line, “Call me Ishmael,” I want them to know that Ishmael is a character in the Bible. I mean, when they see Monty Python’s Life of Brian, I want them to get the joke about Blessed are the Cheesemakers. So Bible stories and Bible characters is one component of religious literacy.
Now, a second category is stories and facts about the main world religions they will encounter both in their immediate environment and in current events. For most of us who live in the United States, and particularly for those of us here in the Bay Area, our immediate environment is getting more and more religiously diverse. So from my apartment in San Mateo, I can walk to an Islamic mosque, a Hindu temple, several liberal and conservative Christian churches, a Unitarian Universalist congregation, and a Buddhist temple. And there’s a Jewish school nearby too. That’s all walking distance, right? Now maybe my neighborhood’s a little more diverse than most. But for most of us, this kind of religious diversity is still a very short drive from home. If our kids are going to be good neighbors, if they’re going to be able to participate in our diverse democracy, they absolutely have to have basic knowledge about these other religious traditions they’re going to encounter.
A third category of religious literacy involves some basic knowledge of the history of Western religion. Now, mostly this will be Western Christianity, but we will also want to include Western neo-paganism and Western humanist religion. Now, here again, I want our kids to be good citizens and good neighbors. They need to know how Roman Catholicism split from Eastern Orthodoxy. They need to know how the Protestant denominations split from Catholicism and from each other, and they need to know about newer religious movements such as Mormonism and the Salvation Army. And of course, we’ll also want them to know something about how Unitarianism and Universalism fit into this wider history. So these are many reasons that they need to know the history of Western religion.
And the fourth and final category of religious literacy should be pretty obvious. We want our kids to know something of the main characters and stories of both Unitarianism and Universalism in North America. They should know something of our history, of course, but I also want them to have a sense of who we are. So I want them to know that Tim Berners-Lee, the man who invented the World Wide Web, is a Unitarian Universalist.
Did you know that, Joe?
JOE: I didn’t know that.
DAN: See, you learned something on this podcast! And furthermore, Tim Berners-Lee thinks that the World Wide Web has a lot in common with Unitarian Universalism. And I want our kids to know things like the basic story of how Unitarianism and Universalism started in North America, how the groups merged in 1961, who we are today. In short, I want our kids to know where we came from and what kind of people we are now.
JOE: Dan, that makes sense to me. I can see why we want our children to know those Bible stories that are part of our culture. Of course, we want them to know a little bit about other major religious traditions. We want them to have some sense of history of Western religion. And we want them to know something about Unitarian Universalism. But it does seem like a lot of material for us to cover. Can we really do that in a Sunday school, that class where it’s less than an hour?
DAN: Yeah, I know. It sounds like a lot, doesn’t it? But here’s why I don’t think it’s really that ambitious. I don’t expect children to memorize any of this information. I want to introduce them to all these topics. But I don’t expect total expertise by the time a child is 12 years old, no more than I would expect that kind of expertise from the typical adult in our congregation.
So what I’m looking for is some level of familiarity. When one of our kids grows up and reads Moby Dick, I want them to say, Ishmael, Ishmael. Okay, I recognize that name. Oh, yeah, it’s in the Bible. And I want them to have been taught that the Bible is this fascinating book full of great stories and great characters.
And maybe as a result of reading Moby Dick, they’ll be inspired to go back to read the story in Genesis where Ishmael was Isaac’s older half-brother. And Ishmael teased Isaac. And then Isaac’s mother made Abraham, their father, kick Ishmael out of the house. I mean, wow, this is a story of revenge and wandering and rivalry. It’s such a great story. It’s no wonder that Herman Melville calls his main character Ishmael. But I don’t need kids to know that right away. I just want them to have some familiarity with the names, and I want them to become fascinated with the Bible stories or whatever we’re talking about.
And what I also want is I want to show our kids that they can always plug into the group wisdom of one of our congregations. I would never give one of our kids a test on any of this information, but I would go to a class as a whole and quiz them about material I know they’ve covered. So I’d quiz them while making clear that I don’t want a response from an individual. I want them to respond as a group.
I mean, this is what we do as an adult, right? If I have a question about Buddhism in our church, I know that I can go to Bill, one of our Sunday school teachers who knows a lot about Buddhism and who can probably help me find the answer. And if I have a question about Judaism, our parish minister, Amy, can probably help me find the answer.
So that’s a short introduction to our goal of religious literacy.
JOE: We want to hear what you think. What does it mean to be a religiously literate person in a Unitarian Universalist context? What should children know about religion? On our website, we have a preliminary list of topics that we have brainstormed, topics we think should be included in religious literacy. Please post a comment on our blog and tell us what you’re thinking….
Notes from 2026: 1. Religious literacy is no longer requested by parents, making this post less relevant. However, the amount of religious misunderstanding and intolerance in today’s political debates actually points out the need for more religious literacy. 2. Today, I might phrase this differently, as teaching “cultural literacy” rather than “religious literacy.” Indeed, it can be argued that religion and culture are not really separable.
Podcast 3
JOE: [After reviewing content of earlier podcasts:] Dan, what are the other two goals?
DAN: Well, we want our kids to build community and have fun, and we want to teach some basic religious skills.
JOE: Dan, what exactly do you mean by religious skills?
DAN: Well, that term religious skills is a little awkward, isn’t it? I just don’t have a better term for it. What I mean by religious skills are those skills that are valued by our Unitarian Universalist religious tradition.
JOE: Could you give some examples of this?
DAN: Yeah, sure. For one thing, we Unitarian Universalists love to talk. We’re people who tend to like and value the spoken word. So one religious skill that we value is public speaking.
And related to this, we have long been a religious group that values singing as a way to communicate our religious values. We’ve always had hymns and sacred songs and other kinds of songs, words put to music. So another religious skill we value is singing.
And also related to this, we Unitarian Universalists, we do love our committees, and that means that we need committee skills, which includes speaking well and speaking to the point in meetings, listening well, participating in group conversations, being organized. These are all skills related to communal interaction.
So there’s other kinds of skills that we value. We value introspection. We value looking deep into ourselves and reflecting on who we are and where we fit into the world. And that means we value religious skills like meditation and prayer and reading and study.
We also value social justice work because we want to save the world and we want to go beyond just saving our own selves. And this means that we value a whole set of skills required for social justice work. Skills like coalition building and organizing and practicing humility and so on.
The term religious skills encompasses a wide range of skills, but they’re all actions. They’re acting in the world. This is about doing religion. What do we need to know in order to actually live out our religion in the world? So this is very different from religious literacy, where we want our kids to have familiarity, fascination, and sensitivity towards a body of religious facts and knowledge. And this is also very different from having our kids want to grow up to be Unitarian Universalist adults.
JOE: That makes sense. To clarify this further, perhaps you could talk to me about how we might teach some of these skills.
DAN: That’s a good point. Let’s start with that group of introspective skills, the introspective religious skills, meditation, prayer, reading, study, and so on. Now, some people talk about meditation as a spiritual technology, and I think that’s a pretty good way to think about this particular set of religious skills. Prayer is a type of spiritual technology. Reading and study can be types of spiritual technologies. Thus, although there are many different religious traditions of meditation, the basic underlying technology produces the same result. You learn how to calm your mind while you get in touch with something larger than yourself.
[IMPORTANT: See Note 2 below for important information on possible negative effects of mediation.]
So you might do a Buddhist form of sitting meditation called zazen. And if you learn zazen, you’re probably also going to learn some Buddhist precepts that go along with this specific form of sitting meditation. But really, sitting meditation is just a spiritual technology that can be found in just about every religious tradition.
As a Unitarian Universalist teenager, I had to learn how to do sitting meditation as a way to make it through some pretty boring worship services. So this is really a part of our tradition, too. We place a high value on the skill of sitting still and calming the mind, and it only makes (sense for us to teach this skill intentionally.
We also have our own distinct tradition of meditation. Ralph Waldo Emerson and Henry David Thoreau taught us the value of getting outdoors and stilling our minds and contemplating the vastness of the natural world. And in more recent years, we have adopted other meditation technologies such as yoga and walking the labyrinth. And again, we can be intentional about introducing these skills to our children.
JOE: You’ve talked about meditation. What about prayer?
DAN: Even though it’s not much different from meditation, prayer is another spiritual technology that unfortunately has fallen into some disrepute among us. Some Unitarian Universalists want to have nothing to do with God, and so they absolutely reject prayer. The thing is, prayer is just another spiritual technology. It’s a form of meditation that is often done with words. And so as a technology, it does not require a certain set of beliefs.
Some people do pray by talking to God, but prayer can also be any set of words that you memorize that help you to focus your mind. So maybe you’d memorize a poem by Langston Hughes or Emily Dickinson. Now personally, I do not pray, but that choice has nothing to do with my belief or non-belief in God. Instead, I don’t pray because this particular spiritual technology is not very effective for me. I’m better off with sitting meditation or even better still, some kind of Emersonian outdoors meditation.
And we have to recognize that our children will do better with some spiritual technologies than with others. We don’t want to be rigid about this.
At the same time, I think every kid who comes through our program should be introduced to basic silent meditation, some basic prayer, and some kind of Emersonian outdoors meditation.
JOE: Can you talk a little bit more about the broader range of religious skills?
DAN: Well, that group of interpersonal religious skills we spoke about earlier is very important. Interpersonal skills are essential to our congregations, and we want our children to have some skill in interpersonal matters.
So one of the most important things we do in our Sunday school groups is we train children how to talk in groups. We train them to listen closely to what others are saying. They have to speak up even if they’re a little shy, or they have to learn how to wait to speak if they’re the opposite of shy. They have to learn how to move the conversation forward.
And for our teenagers, we need to give them opportunities to learn how to speak in public, whether that means speaking in a Coming of Age worship service or speaking up in a committee meeting or whatever.
JOE: And you included singing in that, right?
DAN: Absolutely. Singing in large groups, the way we do it in our worship services, requires us to listen to what others are doing and to fit our own voices into that. So when you sing, you have to both listen and contribute. You’re making the whole greater than the sum of its parts.
JOE: What’s another skill that’s important for us to teach?
DAN: We can’t forget leadership development. Our children should absolutely learn basic leadership skills like how to run a meeting, how to organize an event, how to do logistics, and so on. So most of the leadership development is going to take place from the teen years on up.
But we can do a lot with children, too. I’ve done class meetings where I coach children to help me lead the meeting. If a Sunday school class is planning an event like an overnight, I’ll talk over the planning details with the children so they get a sense of how we adults are doing planning.
And I like to do evaluation sessions with children so that they get in the habit of evaluating programs.
JOE: I’m sure we can name a lot more religious skills than these that you talked about.
DAN: Yeah, we could go on at great length about this, but I think we’ve mentioned the most important religious skills. There’s lots more out there, but we’ve hit the high points.
JOE: I like the way you characterize these religious skills as a kind of technology. You get the spiritual technology, and then you apply it to the specific religious content.
DAN: Yeah, and I forget where that idea of spiritual technology comes from, but yes, I have found it to be a helpful concept. And it’s kind of appropriate for being here in Silicon Valley. Maybe you could start up a company around spiritual technology and get a little venture capital funding…?
JOE: So that was a brief introduction to our third big educational goal, building religious skills.
Notes from 2026: 1. If I were doing this podcast over again, I’d want to emphasize how some of the religious skills mentioned are crucial for a functioning democracy. 2. A growing body of research shows that roughly 20-30% of all people have negative experiences while meditating. I am no longer convinced that we should try to teach meditation to children.
Podcast 4
JOE: In the last three podcasts, we talked about four major goals of our children’s religious education program here at the Unitarian Universalist Church of Palo Alto. We’ve already talked about the goal of having more of our children grow up to want to be UU adults. We’ve talked about religious literacy. We’ve talked about teaching basic religious skills. So what’s left, Dan?
DAN: What’s left is our goal of building community and having fun.
JOE: Tell me a little bit more about this goal. How do we measure this? How do we know if children are having fun at church?
DAN: This is a great place to start. We have a really good way of measuring our success with this goal. We simply look at attendance records. We look at what percentage of our children come to church every week. Now, obviously, with today’s complex family situations, with all the sports and other activities that children get involved in, we’re not going to see every child come every week. But a minimum acceptable level is about 50 percent attendance. If we get up to around (1:22) 70 percent attendance, we know that we are doing a great job of kids having fun and building community with our kids.
JOE: So we measure this simply by looking at the numbers?
DAN: Anecdotal evidence is also really important at measuring our success. So I listen for comments from parents and guardians. When I hear parents say, “I didn’t want to come to church today, but my child absolutely insisted, so here we are,” — then I know we have something really good going on.
JOE: We want children to come to church regularly. Does this mean we want Sunday school to look like a big party, a party that children won’t want to miss?
DAN: That’s not a bad analogy, but I guess I wouldn’t say party. I’d say we want Sunday school to feel more like a good summer camp than it would feel like regular school. Summer camp can be an intensely satisfying experience. The best summer camps promote deep friendships and deep emotional engagements.
And I’m particularly thinking of intergenerational summer camps like some of the Unitarian Universalist summer camps I’ve been to. I’ve been going to this Unitarian Universalist summer camp in Maine for more than a dozen years now, and I’ve watched kids in that camp grow up to become adults. And I only see these people once a year, but there’s this deep sense of community, a deep sense of connectedness. That’s the kind of thing that I would hope for in our Sunday school.
JOE: And of course, a lot of learning can go on at summer camps.
DAN: Yeah, it’s not like a big party. It’s more like an intentional community where you have fun, but where there’s also a high purpose.
JOE: Now, when I think of summer camps, I think of all those silly songs and games and rituals you hear about.
DAN: That’s actually exactly it. And the more we can introduce that kind of thing into Sunday school, the better. And ideally, I want every kid in Sunday school to know this whole bunch of silly songs. I want them to have some favorite games that they really associate with church and with Sunday school. Here in the Palo Alto church, we just put up a basketball hoop, and that’s the kind of thing I’m thinking about. It’s really great to see seven-year-olds out there shooting hoops with teenagers.
JOE: A lot of what we’ve been talking about here is having fun, but building community is another part of this goal. Do you have any specific techniques for building community in a Sunday school group?
DAN: That’s a good question. There are tons of good models out there for building community, but the model that I like best comes from the book Building Community in Youth Groups by a man named Denny Rydberg.
Rydberg talks about five stages of building community.
The most basic level is what he calls “bonding,” and I’m going to read you his definition of this stage out of the book. “Bond-building strategies are problem-solving tasks that force young people to work together in an atmosphere that builds cohesiveness.” That’s how Rydberg defines it.
One of my favorite sources for this kind of activity comes from Project Adventure. They have lots of great initiatives and group problem-solving activities. And, of course, Rydberg’s book also has lots of good activities for this bonding stage.
The next stage, the second stage, is what Rydberg calls “opening up.” Rydberg says young people love to talk about themselves when they feel comfortable and accepted. “When a group cares enough to listen intently to what every individual has to say, the group comes alive. A sense of unity surfaces, friendships develop, barriers break down.” So that’s Rydberg’s description of this opening up stage.
Every Sunday when I teach Sunday school, I like to have the kids do a check-in. We go around the circle, and each kid has a chance to say one good thing and one bad thing that has happened to them in the past week, while the rest of us listen without interrupting. If you do this right, you can get the group to this “opening up” stage, where they feel comfortable and accepted when they’re talking about themselves. And, of course, Rydberg’s book has lots more “opening up” activities.
The third stage is “affirming.” This goes beyond “opening up.” At the “affirming stage,’ the children learn how to express appreciation of each other.
Rydberg’s book goes on to describe two more stages, “stretching,” and then the final fifth stage is “deeper sharing and goal setting.” But the “affirming” stage is about as high as I would expect a Sunday school group to get. The other two stages can wait until youth programming.
JOE: I like that idea of an affirming stage. One of our core UU values is affirming the worth and dignity of each individual.
DAN: Yes, and what’s most important here is that this is taking place in a group setting. This isn’t just you, Joe, affirming me, Dan, or vice versa. This is the whole group of the children affirming each member of the group. And it’s a very powerful feeling.
JOE: Why do you say that you don’t expect Sunday school groups to go beyond “affirming”?
DAN: Partly it’s because younger children aren’t at a developmental stage where they are ready to go beyond the “affirming” stage. In fact, if you look at preschoolers, I do not expect them to get beyond the bonding stage. You know, it’s like a real accomplishment to get a preschooler to the point where they can cooperate together on a project.
On the other hand, when I’ve done Sunday school with teenagers, I do try to get them through the five stages. So a lot of this depends on the age of the kids in your group.
JOE: Where can we find more activities to move groups through these stages of community building?
DAN: I like to start with Rydberg’s book primarily to understand how he defines the five stages of community building. And we have a couple of copies of this book in the church library, and we also have a handout that summarizes the five stages. But one of the weaknesses of Rydberg’s book is that he was aiming his book at youth groups, at groups of teenagers. A lot of his activities just don’t work with younger children.
So I like the book called Win-Win Games for All Ages. This is a book by Josette and Baa Lovemore. Win-Win Games has some of the same activities that appear in Denny Rydberg’s book, but they’re adapted for children.
And you’ll find suggested age ranges for each activity and each game. You’ll have to fit the games and activities into Rydberg’s stages of community building yourself, but that’s not too hard.
The other thing is once you’ve worked with this model for building community, you begin to see how to adapt many activities and games into the stages of community building to help build community in your group.
JOE: When we talked about this earlier, you said something about integrating new children that I thought was very helpful.
DAN: Right. When we were talking before we started recording, I said it’s really important to remember that every time you get someone new in your group or someone returns to your group who’s been away for a while, you do have to start all over again with the first stage of community building, with that “bonding” stage.
I like to keep that in mind as a group leader. Every time a new child joins my Sunday school group, I try to think about how to get the whole group to that “bonding” stage and then work up from there. When you do this, you find that it’s much easier to welcome new children, to have them come into your class and be welcomed and find a place for themselves.
And then I try to think ahead about how I’m going to get the group back up beyond the “bonding” stage to that “opening up” stage and to that “affirming” stage. So you see, I’m being very intentional about building community, about making sure that kids want to come back to Sunday school every week.
JOE: And that’s what this goal is really about, isn’t it?The only way we can teach children is if they show up. So let’s figure out a way to make sure that they love coming to Sunday school.
DAN: Right, exactly. If we build community and have fun, kids are going to want to come.
JOE: That’s a quick introduction to our goal of community building. Now, using this model, how can we do a better job of fostering a sense of community among children and with children? That’s it for this week’s podcast on children’s religious education at the Unitarian Universalist Church of Palo Alto. Thanks for listening….
Notes from 2026: Most of this podcast is still pretty useful. However, Denny Rydberg’s book is long out of print, and it now sounds very dated. The same is true of the other books and resources mentioned. BUT this website has tons of great games which can be used to build community.
Podcast 5
JOE: Today we’re going to talk about how to do a check-in with children. Here in the Palo Alto Unitarian Universalist church, many of our Sunday school classes start with a check-in. Dan, maybe we should begin be telling our listeners what a check-in is.
DAN: At its most basic, a check-in is a time when everyone in the group gets time to talk about what is going on in their lives right now. The neo-pagan thealogian Starhawk describes check-in like this:
“Begin each meeting, or a family dinner, by going around the circle, giving each person a chance to share how she or he is feeling, what important events have occurred, and so on.”
That’s from Starhawk’s book Truth or Dare. And you can see that this is the sort of thing that can be done in any smallish-size gathering of people. Check-in was one of the group process techniques used by second wave feminism, and it works so well that we continue to use it.
JOE: You said check-in comes from “second-wave feminism,” but what do you mean by that?
DAN: Second-wave feminism was the feminist movement from the 1960s and 1970s, and it played a central role in Unitarian Universalism. The second wave feminists had quite a few group process techniques that made sure we valued every person for who they are, that got past sexist bias that devalued women and girls. Starhawk puts it this way:
“To be valued, we must first be seen. In a nurturing family, children are seen and valued for being who they are, not for fulfilling their parents’ fantasies or desires. Groups that restore immanent value provide a process by which we can be seen and known for who we are, not for the roles we play or the achievements we can count.”
That’s what Starhawk said back in 1987. As Unitarian Universalists, we might put it a little differently. The “Principles and Purposes” of the Unitarian Universalist Association say that we covenant together to affirm the inherent worth and dignity of every person – that of course includes children. Doing a check-in is a way to make sure that each child is seen and heard for who they are – not as a member of a class, not as a name on an attendance sheet, but as a real-live human being just like ourselves.
As a side note, I should add that our “Principles and Purposes” grew out of a process that was started by second-wave feminists back in the 1970s. So I don’t think it’s coincidence that our “Principles and Purposes” align so well with the group process technique of check-in.
JOE: Not only did you answer my question, but you also provided a theoretical justification for doing check-ins in our Sunday school classes.
DAN: Yeah, that was a long answer, wasn’t it?
JOE: Yes, but it was important, too. Now that we have that theoretical background, tell us how to lead a check-in with children.
DAN: Well, in our Sunday school classes, we have to do a check-in a little differently than the method Starhawk describes. She assumes check-in takes place in an existing group or in a family where everyone already knows each other. But in our Sunday school classes, we often have new children joining the class. This year, I’m teaching Sunday school during our 11 a.m. service, and I think we have had new children join our class two out of three weeks!
So the first thing I’d say is that everyone should say their name during check-in. I usually tell the children that we will go around the circle – I always have them sit in a circle to do check-in – we’ll go around the circle, and when your turn comes, first you say your name. Then you can say one good thing and one bad thing that’s happened to you in the past week. Or you can pass, which means you don’t have to say anything – except I do ask that everyone says their name.
JOE: Do the adults participate in the check-in as well?
DAN: Absolutely. The adult Sunday school teachers help to set the tone, and set a good example for the children. When I start teaching a new group, say at the beginning of the church year, I’ll often go first during check-in for several weeks to help set the tone.
And I plan what I’m going to say in advance. I want to share something of myself with the children, but I also want to be appropriate. So for example if I were leading a check-in right now, I’d say to the children, “I’ll start check-in this week. My name is Dan. The good thing that happened to me is that I got to have lunch with my old friend Mike that I’ve know since I was a kid. And the bad thing that happened to me is that I had a sore throat earlier in the week.” That’s how I’d check in, and then I’d turn to one of the children next to me, and say, “OK, it’s your turn.”
JOE: How do the children respond to check-in?
DAN: Well, if you’re starting to do check-in for the first time with a group, they will usually be a little tentative at first. They may not know what to say; they may never have done anything like this in their lives. That happened to me with the Sunday school class I was teaching this past fall – many of them had never done check-in at first, and they were very unsure about this new thing. Some of the children passed, and said nothing but their names, for six weeks.
But when they come to understand check-in, kids really like it. They love having the chance to talk about themselves. It may be the one place in their lives where an adult who is not a parent or grandparent listens closely to their hopes and dreams and successes and failures. It may be the one place in their lives where they can talk openly about themselves to other kids without worrying about being judged.
JOE: You say it may be the one place where children can talk openly about themselves to other children without being judged. But children can be cruel to each other, so how do you make that happen?
DAN: That’s one of the reasons we adults have to check-in along with the kids. If we’re willing to make ourselves a little vulnerable, it makes it easier for the children to allow themselves to be a little vulnerable.
And we do have a major rule when we do check-in, a rule that says only one person may speak at a time. That rule makes it very difficult for another child to belittle or make fun of the child who is speaking. I’m friendly but very firm about enforcing that rule. One child will be checking in, and another child will start to speak, and I’ll smile at them, and say firmly, “Remember, the rule is only one person at a time gets to speak.” I’ll say, “You’ll get your chance to speak later,” or, “You’ve already had your turn.”
Usually, the only time I have this problem is if there are two siblings in the same class. I just stay firm about maintaining the rule that only one person speaks at a time. I might even make a joke about how I don’t want to deal with siblings fighting in this class because it reminds me too much of fighting with my sisters.
JOE: What other problems come up when you do check-ins with children?
DAN: Check-in can be hard for shy and timid children. This is especially a problem with younger children – some younger children may be so shy they don’t even want to have to say their own names out loud. I smile at these children, don’t make a big deal out of it, and move on to the next child.
Check-ins can be hard to mange with young children. 3 and 4 year olds simply may not have the patience to listen to one another. So I keep it brief, and just ask them to say one thing that happened to them this morning, and I don’t worry if the other children aren’t paying attention. It’s still good for the young child to be listened to seriously by an adult.
Check-ins can be hard for newcomers. If there are new children in the class, I try to set things up so several of the regular children check in first. What I have found, though, is that if I do check-ins regularly with a class so that the other children are used to it, and look forward to checking in, it’s much easier for newcomers to participate.
JOE: It sounds like check-ins help build community in the Sunday school class. Is that true?
DAN: I think that is indeed true.
JOE: We state that one of our four big learning goals is “we want children to have fun and feel they are a part of the community.”
DAN: Right, and I believe that check-in is one of the best tools we have to help children feel they are a part of a community. I know some kids look forward to it, and will even ask to do check-in if they think I have forgotten it. And doing check-in at the beginning of the class time sets a nice tone for the rest of the class, which makes it possible to deepen that sense of community as the class progresses.
JOE: One way we measure the goal of having fun and building community is by tracking attendance as a percentage of enrollment. If you do regular check-ins, will that increase attendance?
DAN: I don’t have any firm data on that, and because there are so many variables it would be difficult to prove that check-ins actually increase attendance. However, I do feel that weekly check-ins contribute to higher attendance. I would say it’s far and away one of the best tools I have in my teacher’s toolkit for building community in Sunday school classes.
Let me put it this way. Check-in can take as long as ten minutes, or twenty percent of the typical fifty minute Sunday school class. I would only devote that much time to an exercise that I feel is really worth it.
JOE: Dan, thank you for that overview of how to include check-ins into Sunday school classes.
Notes from 2026: This podcast is still pretty much entirely relevant.
Podcast no. 6
JOE: Today we’re going to talk about storytelling techniques to use in Sunday school. Dan, let me begin by asking you why it’s important for Sunday school teachers to be good storytellers.
DAN: So many of the curriculums that we use include stories as an essential part of the curriculum that most Sunday school teachers will almost be forced to tell a story to a group of children at some point. In fact, storytelling turns out to be one of the central acts of religious communities. We’re constantly telling stories from our tradition.
JOE: What makes a good storyteller?
DAN: A good storyteller makes a story come alive. It’s almost like we’re living out the story. Actually, I don’t like some professional storytellers because I’m too aware that they’re Storytellers with a capital S. Instead of making a story a performance, the best storytellers turn the story into a shared experience, they draw me into a community feeling. The best storytellers I know are all amateurs.
JOE: So maybe it’s better that most of us Sunday school teachers are amateur storytellers.
DAN: I think so! It’s more real.
JOE: Tell me how we amateurs can become good storytellers.
DAN: It’s a three step process. First, get to know the story. Second, learn the story so you’re comfortable with it. Third, tell the story and make it come alive.
JOE: How do we go about getting to know the story?
DAN: You should read the story over at least a couple of times. As you read the story the first time, read slowly and picture each scene in your mind’s eye, as if you’re watching a video. As you read the story a second time, picture your audience in your mind’s eye, run a little mental movie in which you imagine how the children in your Sunday school class will respond to the story.
This way you get to know the story in of itself, and you get to know the story as you imagine it will be heard by the children in your class.
JOE: The second step is to learn the story so that you’re comfortable with it. How do we do that?
DAN: I think there are at least three approaches to learning the story. One, you can memorize it. Two, you can figure out how to tell the story from notes. Three, you can learn how to read it from the text so it’s engaging.
Probably the best way to learn a story is to memorize it. I have a lousy memory, and I’m pretty much unable to do this, but I’ve talked with people who do memorize stories and this is what they tell me.
Let’s say it’s Sunday and you want to memorize a story for next week’s Sunday school class. You read the story out loud over and over until you can recite it out loud. Then you review it an hour, and try to recite it again. You review it again an hour before you go to bed, and try to recite it again. Then you review it just before you go to bed. By now, you’ve probably got it memorized, and you make sure to recite it at least once a day for the rest of the week, and every time you recite it you will gain confidence and your telling of the story will become more natural.
Now that I put it this way, I think that if I had the self-discipline to actually follow this advice, I could memorize a story myself. And I’m told that once you get used to memorizing things, the whole process goes much more quickly. It’s great when you can memorize the story because you can make eye contact with the children, and it feels to them as though you’re just speaking to them.
The second approach is to tell the story from notes. I have done this, and it works quite well. Again, let’s say it’s Sunday and you’re getting ready for next Sunday’s class. You go over the story, and break it down into scenes, just as though it’s a play, or a movie. You figure out who’s in each scene, and what happens in each scene, and you sketch out an outline. you reduce this outline onto a 3 inch by 5 inch card. You tell the story out loud from the outline on the card, and then you check yourself against the printed story. Tell the story out loud from your 3 by 5 card a couple more times. Next day, do it again. If possible, do it every day that week. You’ll go into Sunday school that week with a firm grasp on the story.
This second approach probably takes more time at the beginning than the first approach – it takes time to make up a decent outline. But you don’t have to be quite as disciplined for the rest of the week.
The third and last approach is to read the story from a text. This is my preferred approach, and it’s really quite time consuming to do it well. First, you read over the story, and I mean read it out loud. Keep reading it out loud until you’re comfortable with the phrasing, until you know which words you want to emphasize, where your voice is going to rise and fall. Now go back over the text, and mark out every little pause, and every longer pause, and underline where your voice gets louder, and figure out how to mark where your voice gets softer. One of the best preachers I know is Jane Rzepka, and she always reads from a text, and when you see her text it’s got all kind of marks all over it.
I think it’s quite hard to make a story come alive when you read it from a text. Often I wind up rewriting the story, and putting it into my own words. Even if I just mark up an existing text, I always have to make little annotations with changes in wording. And then when you’re reading, you have to be very conscious of looking up from the text so you can make eye contact. You have to be willing to improvise from the text if you see the children are getting bored, or if you see they aren’t sure what you’re talking about. It’s actually quite time consuming to prepare to tell a story by reading it from a text.
JOE: So which story preparation technique would you recommend to a new teacher?
DAN: Whichever one makes you feel most comfortable. Just be sure not to skimp on preparation time. Allow yourself a good long time to prepare the story.
JOE: Lots of Sunday school curriculums have us read stories from picture books. How do you prepare to tell stories from picture books?
DAN: Reading a story from a picture book is actually quite hard. Picture books are mostly meant to be read aloud to one or two children. If you’re reading it to a group of children, you have to keep turning the book towards yourself so you can read it, then turning it around so the group can see the pictures. If I have to tell a story from a picture book to a group of children, I’ll photocopy every page of the book, and then I might ask my co-teacher to show the pictures while I read from the photocopy. Or if the picture book is too small, I might photocopy the illustrations, blowing them up so they fit on 11 by 17 ledger-size paper so the whole group will be able to see the pictures.
My younger sister is a children’s librarian, and she has to read aloud from picture books all the time. She has made beautiful felt-board replicas of the illustrations from picture books so she can create the illustrations while she’s telling the story. They’re really beautiful, and you can find them on her Web site, www.abbykingsbury.org. This is obviously a fabulous way to tell a story from a picture book, but it takes hours to make felt board illustrations, and you have to be artistically talented like my sister. It’s much easier to just make really big photocopies of the illustrations.
JOE: OK, now you’ve prepared the story, how do you go about telling the story?
DAN: The main thing is to make the story come alive. And the way you do that is pretty straightforward.
First of all, be sure you talk slowly. A well-told story has a rhythmic feel to it, it goes along roughly at a walking pace: dah-dum, da-da-dum, dum-de-dum-de dum, da-da-da-da-dum. Musicians call this “andante.” If this is your first time telling a story, you’re going to feel like you’re going way too slowly – but you really want this soothing walking pace, it will almost mesmerize the children in your group.
Second, it’s great if you can have different voices for the main characters. Most of us know the story of Little Red Riding Hood, and Joe, if I ask you how what kind of voice the big bad wolf has, what would you say?
JOE [in a deep gravelly voice]:
The wolf would sound like this!
DAN: And Little Red would probably have a high squeaky little girl’s voice like this – grandma would sound sweet and put upon like this – and so on. It’s usually easy to make up voices, and voices for the different characters really makes the story come alive.
The story also comes alive if you leave dramatic pauses, like this: There he was, standing at the edge of the cliff, when he felt someone behind him push [beat] – and you leave a little pause or beat of time to build suspense. You can pause after funny bits to give the kids time to laugh. Pauses in the right places can make the story come alive.
Then there’s all the obvious things. Be dramatic, use appropriate gestures, you can even act the story out a little bit. Maybe you can use props. I’m not particularly good at this sort of thing myself, but I admire it in others.
And above all, maintain eye contact with the children. When we talk to each other in our culture, we like to look each other in the eye. A well-told story feels as though someone is talking to you the way a friend would talk to you.
JOE: Have you ever completely lost the attention of the children while telling a story?
DAN: Oh sure, that happens. It usually happens when I haven’t done enough advance preparation. If I don’t know a story well enough, I lose the rhythm of the story, and when that happens you can just see the children’s attention drift away – I hesitate a few too many times because I don’t really know the story, and next thing I know the kids are fidgeting, and then someone hits someone else, and then I’ve lost them. Sometimes you have to just abandon the whole thing, and go do something else. It happens.
JOE: Would you mind telling us a story so we can get an idea what a well-told story sounds like?
DAN: Sure. I’m not the greatest storyteller in the world, but I can at least demonstrate some of the things I’ve been talking about.
[Dan tells the story of “the Fox and the Fish”]
JOE: I can hear how you set the rhythm, and I heard the way you made different voices. I’m looking at the text you read from, and I can see how it’s all marked up. And Dan, I have to say that was a pretty strange story!
DAN: Yes, I guess it is. It’s one of those stories that really needs to be followed by a discussion afterwards.
JOE: You’re right, it is. That being the case, let’s talk about how to lead a good discussion in the next podcast….
Notes from 2026: If I were redoing this podcast, I’d place far less emphasis on spending a lot of time preparing the stories. Sadly, we all have far less time for that sort of thing than we did fifteen years ago. Some people have turned to online videos of stories — but my own experience has been that it can take just as long (or longer) to find a good video than it is to simply tell the story myself!
Podcast no. 7
JOE: In this podcast, we’re going to discuss discussions. That is, we’re going to talk about how to lead a good discussion in a Sunday school class. Dan, I see you’ve brought in your Sunday school teacher’s tool box. What teaching tools do you have in your tool box that would help us lead discussions?
DAN: Well, I’ve got lots of tools here that will help us lead discussion in Sunday school. But in this podcast, I’d like to talk about four tools: the Conducive Classroom, Discussion Starters, Turn and Buzz, and WNWSW.
JOE: I recognize some of those teaching tools, but not all of them. What’s “WNWSW”?
DAN: I want to save that one for last. How about I start with the Conducive Classroom?
JOE: OK, tell us about the conducive classroom.
DAN: I got that phrase from a book for Christian educators called Creative Teaching Methods by Marlene LeFevre. Let me read to you what she writes in that book:
“The success of a discussion depends on the people involved and the topic they are discussing, not on external variable such as room arrangement. Even so, the leaders should try to make the classroom as conducive as possible to discussion. Circles of semicircles make the best seating arrangements because they eliminate the seat of authority. [Children] react directly with each other. No longer is the teach the central figure in the room through whom all comments and questions must pass. Also, in these arrangements, each person is able to see all classmates’ expressions and reactions. This adds an additional dimension to the discussion….
“Be aware that if [children] are comfortable, they are more apt to enjoy interacting. Make sure the room is as comfortably furnished as possible, well-lighting, and moderately warm.”
That’s how Marlene LeFevre describes a Conducive Classroom.
JOE: That’s mostly just good common sense, isn’t it?
DAN: Yes, but it’s easy to forget nevertheless. We’re so used to standing up in front of groups when we’re teaching that sometimes you find yourself standing in front of a group of children who are all seated on the floor, all looking up at you, and you suddenly realize that they can’t have a discussion where they talk to one another because they’re craning their necks to look up at you.
I feel that leading discussions is one of the most important things I do as a Sunday school teacher, so I always try to get into the classroom early so I have time to set things up so the children will be sitting in a circle.
JOE: Let’s go on to the next tool, which you call Discussion Starters. Tell me about this teaching tool.
DAN: This phrase also comes from Marlene LeFevre. She puts it this way:
“The question or comment a teacher uses to start a discussion is very important because it set the direction for what lies ahead. Discussion starters that begin with the words why, explain, and what do you think are usually good because these words indicate that there is something to discuss.”
JOE: Again, this is good common sense. Can you give me an example of a good discussion starter?
DAN: Sure. In the last podcast, I told a story about Rabbi Akiva who was executed by the Romans for teaching the Torah. The story ends with the sentence, “And when Rabbi Akiva was killed by the Romans, he died in peace with the words of the Torah on his lips.” So a good discussion starter might be something like, “Why do you think Rabbi Akiva died in peace?”
JOE: Any other hints of using discussion starters?
DAN: If I’m planning to include a discussion in a Sunday school class, I will spend a substantial portion of my lesson preparation time thinking up good discussion starters. Even if the curriculum I’m teaching from has discussion starters in the curriculum, I carefully review them and think about whether they will work well for the children in my class. It helps to know the children, because if you know their interests you can include their interests in the discussion starter.
JOE: Could you give me an example of what you mean?
DAN: Right now, you and I are both teaching a comprehensive sexuality class for young adolescents, and we have already found out that at least some of the young people in the class want to talk about dating and relationships. If I’m going to lead a discussion in that class, I’ll think about how I might relate the discussion topic to relationships.
JOE: Tell me about the next tool, Turn and Buzz.
DAN: Actually, I suspect you know more about Turn and Buzz than I do. But here’s a brief description. The leader proposes a discussion topic, then asks the children to pair up with another child, and first discuss the topic in pairs.
JOE: [section not transcribed, sorry]
Now at last we come to the mysteriously-named WSWNW. What does this teaching tool do, Dan?
DAN: “WSWNW” stands for “What, So What, Now What.” It’s a tool that you can use to shape and guide discussions. It works like this:
You begin by introducing the topic for discussion. Let’s say you want to have the children discuss a story – so to begin, you tell the story.
Once you have introduced the subject, the first step is to ask “What happened?” Going back to the example of the story about Rabbi Akiva, I might ask the children, “What happened in the story? How did the story begin?” And you guide them through the story: “What happened first? Then what happened? What happened next?” In this first, preliminary stage, the children wind up retelling the story in their own words, until they have a good grasp it. When you first try this with a group, the children will mostly just respond to your questions – although if you use this technique often enough, the children will guide themselves as they rehash “What happened?”
Next step is to ask, “So what?” So what’s important about this discussion topic? What meaning does it have for us? By now the children have warmed to the discussion, and they’re usually raring to go. Using the same example, I might ask, “What do you think is important about this story?” I might ask something like, “Do you think you will ever face a situation like this in your life?” By now, the children should be expressing their own opinions, and talking directly to each other. Instead of asking questions, you will be acting more as a moderator. Your role is to keep the discussion on track: so what’s important about this discussion topic?
The third and last step is to ask “Now what?” In other words, I want the children to apply this discussion topic to their own lives. Using the same example, I might ask, “What would you do if you were Rabbi Akiva, and the Romans ordered you to stop teaching the Torah? Would you stop? Why or why not?” This is when you get the really interesting discussions.
One last thing that I should mention is that in my experience you can have some pretty amazing discussions with children as young as five and six years old. Sometimes the teacher winds up being the center of the discussion with younger children, because they don’t quite talk to each other, but that’s fine.
JOE: Now I know what “WSWNW” stands for – it stands for “What? So What? Now What?” So you’ve given us four tools to help in leading discussions in Sunday school: Conducive Classroom, Discussion Starters, Turn and Buzz, and WNWSW….
Notes from 2026: This whole podcast is still pretty much relevant today.