Growing a faith that can grow with you!
Religious Exploration at UUFC is more than a collection of Sunday morning classes. Across the lifespan, we create opportunities to deepen relationships, encounter new ideas and experiences, and develop spiritual practices and capacities that can keep growing and changing with us.
Throughout our lives, we return to four big questions:
What do I inherit?
What stories, traditions, values, and wisdom have been handed to me from my family, culture, and religion?
Who am I?
What do I believe? What matters to me? What does my own inner voice tell me about what is true?
How do I live in right relationship with others?
How do I care for myself and other people, navigate differences, repair harm, and participate in community?
How do I use my power and values to shape the world?
How do my choices help create the communities and world I want to live in? What action are my values asking me to take?
We explore these questions through the lens of our shared JETPIG values, returning to them at different ages, in different circumstances, and with different answers as we grow.
Relationships take time
We want you and yours to have more than a place you recognize on Sunday morning. We want you to have friends you look forward to seeing, a community of care that you can trust, stories and rituals that belong to you and enrich your daily life, and a spiritual home base that makes room for your questions, uncertainty, joy, mistakes, and growth.
Those relationships don’t happen overnight. They are built through repeated encounters.
We invite you to consider what role you hope Religious Exploration will play in your life. There isn’t one right answer. But whatever your hope is, tell us. Talk about it with staff, lay leaders, and friends. Together, we can consider what fulfilling that vision asks of you and of this community.
Come as you are
Families come in countless configurations. Children arrive with different bodies, brains, communication styles, identities, histories, capacities, and needs. Adults do, too. We each bring different needs, abilities, experiences, questions, energy, and ways of engaging.
Participation doesn’t have to look the same for everyone, and participants of all ages are welcome to take the time they need to become comfortable in our spaces.
If there is information that would help us give you or your child a smoother first experience, we’d love to hear from you.
Ready to explore?
Children’s Exploration
Rainbow Room (new walkers-Pre K)
Belonging begins with being known and cared for. Before children are old enough to wonder what they believe, they are learning whether this is a place where they are safe, known, and loved. Some of the earliest work of faith formation doesn’t look much like religious education at all. Young children are learning to share…
Spirit Play (grades K-3)
Play is spiritual work. In Spirit Play, children encounter stories from our Unitarian Universalist tradition while building friendships, practicing agency, and discovering their own inner authority. This is an age for discovering: I have an inner voice, and I can listen to it. Our Guides create a safe, Montessori-style container, resisting the pull to step…
Seeker Space (grades 4-6)
A practice space for the rest of the world. Seeker Space is where children get to put the stories and values they’ve inherited to the test. This is an age when kids are increasingly able to notice contradictions, hold competing ideas, spot hypocrisy, and ask whether what they’ve been taught actually makes sense. We think…
OMG! (Open Minds Group, grades 7-12)
A faith of their own. OMG! is a place for youth to discover whether and how Unitarian Universalism belongs to them, not simply to their parents. Adolescence brings increasing freedom to decide what they believe, who they want to become, which communities they will belong to, and how they will move through a world their…
Stay tuned… Campus Ministry Loading…
Adult RE
Adult RE
Why Religious Exploration for Adults? Because your spirit deserves more than leftovers!
What’s in store for Adults in Religious Exploration for the 2026/27 Fellowship year? I’m so glad you asked!
These workshops will be offered by the Director of Lifespan Religious Exploration, Skyla King-Christison:
Power, Visibility, and Belonging Workshop: Tuesday evenings, Winter 2026
Spiritual Practices Workshop: Thursday evenings, Jan & Feb 2027
Adult OWL (Our Whole Lives, comprehensive sex and sexuality education) Sunday afternoons in Spring 2027
These ongoig offerings are lay led by amazing facilitators from our RE Teams:
Inquirers Series: the getting to know UUFC series: (Sundays from 11:45-12:45 in Room 7)
Neurodivergence and Mental Health Support Group: (1st and 3rd Sundays at 8:30 AM in Room 9)
Family Breakfast (2nd Sundays, October through May in the social hall)
Elders Thriving in Community (Programs offered on the 2nd Thursday of each month, 3-4:30 pm)
All past RE event listings can be viewed here!
We very much appreciate you taking the time to pre-register so that we can arrive well-prepared to provide you with the best RE experience possible.
If you have a special interest and would like to facilitate an exploration opportunity for adults, email Skyla King-Christison at dre@uucorvallis.org. The RE Council loves it when our members help co-create the gatherings they would like to see, and I’m happy to support you in launching your RE-related ideas.
Religious Exploration Council
The role of the Religious Exploration Council is to provide support, guidance, and coordination of RE programs. The RE Council works closely with the Director of RE to monitor learning needs across the lifespan of our congregation and develop materials and structures to help address those needs through classes, workshops, events, and volunteer mobilization.
The primary tasks of the RE Council include:
~Developing and promoting programs that deepen our community’s capacity for spiritual and faithful living;
~Assessing unmet congregational needs for learning and communicating those with staff;
~Identifying potential volunteers and connecting them with the opportunities best suited to their skills and interests.
RE Council Teams
The Religious Exploration Council is made up of the team leads from each RE Council team. We gather twice a year (usually in September and February) to coordinate the ongoing, behind-the-scenes work that keeps our programs running smoothly. Our meetings are open to anyone curious about the inner workings of the RE Council.
And because even administrative work deserves a little joy, we’ve embraced the unicorn as our council mascot. We show up in sparkly horns, committed to bringing a bit of magic into the life of the Fellowship. After all, a group of unicorns is called a blessing, and that feels just about right.
Got a spark? A dream to try?
A question deep, a wondering why?
A way to help our spirits grow,
Or seeds of faith you’d love to sow?Come join us—bring your hopeful schemes,
We’re here to help you grow your dreams.
With hearts (and maybe unicorn flair),
We’ll build something meaningful together there.
College Ministry
In the meantime, contact Skyla King-Christison at dre@uucorvallis.org for more information or to be connected with other college students or young adult offerings at UUFC!
Inquirers Series
This is a 9-session learning series offered at 11:45 AM every Sunday in Room 7, for the purpose of helping visitors and newcomers feel oriented and answer the most common questions people have while they are deciding whether UUFC is right for them. This series is offered in partnership with the Membership Team and is facilitated by a variety of leaders from a cross-section of Fellowship life. Sessions can be taken in any order, and sessions 1 (or 9), 2, and 8 are encouraged before signing the membership book. Bring your questions and your coffee and join us!
Family Breakfast
Our monthly breakfast gathering for families with children is on the second Sunday of each month at 8:50 AM, one hour before the 10:00 AM service in the social hall. We —a family of 4—cook a hot breakfast (yes—there’s bacon!), and serve coffee and pancakes. Families may bring a dish to share or simply come as they are. While adults enjoy conversation, kids can spend time together getting to know one another in a welcoming environment. All families with children are warmly welcome! Registration is appreciated HERE.
ETC!
Elders Thriving in Community provides resources, information, and social connections to help us thrive as we get older and our needs and abilities are likely to change. We bring in speakers from our congregation and the community to present topics such as home safety, brain health, local senior services, and internet scams, and coordinate social events to bring older people together. Team leads are Alison Meyers and Gerri Buckles.
Neurodiversity Support Group
The Neurodivergence and Mental Health Support Group is a safe, welcoming space for discussions regarding neurodivergence. It discusses topics such as mental health, connection, and sensitivity to name a few. The group meets every second and fourth Sunday of the month at 8:30 AM in room nine upstairs at the Fellowship. For more information, contact neurodiv@uucorvallis.org.
Library
The Rita McDonald Library is a treasure trove of books and resources that you can’t find anywhere else. And some you can, but how convenient is it that they’re already right here? This project has been kept alive for decades by a series of dedicated volunteers, the most recent of whom have been Holley and Eric Lantz, with support from RE staff. We need more team members to keep this project alive. If your flavor of volunteering involves quiet, solo work and tending in a peaceful space that smells like old paper and is bathed in slanted sunlight, this is the role for you! Join the team by emailing Skyla at dre@uucorvallis.org.
Learn more about our library by clicking here!
RE Safe Congregation Support Team
We bolster the safety of all who engage in Religious Exploration environments by supporting uniform policy and procedure implementation and creating consistent processes to invite registered families, RE lay leaders, and RE staff back into covenant when Safe Congregation policies are violated within RE spaces.
OWL & Coming of Age
At UUFC, we offer OWL (Our Whole Lives) and Coming of Age on an alternating annual basis, and encourage 7th and 8th graders to participate in both programs. Together, these two programs serve the whole, developing humans. More information about each of these classic programs can be found below.
2025/26 is a Coming of Age year at the Fellowship! Please contact the Director of Religious Exploration at dre@uucorvallis.org to join the mailing list to be contacted when registration for either OWL or CoA opens.
Honest, accurate information about sexuality changes lives. It dismantles stereotypes and assumptions, builds self-acceptance and self-esteem, fosters healthy relationships, improves decision-making, and has the potential to save lives. For these reasons and more, we are proud to offer Our Whole Lives (OWL), a comprehensive, lifespan sexuality education curriculum for use in both secular settings and faith communities.
Our Whole Lives helps participants make informed and responsible decisions about their relationships, sexual health and behavior. With a holistic approach, Our Whole Lives provides accurate, developmentally appropriate information about a range of topics, including relationships, gender identity and expression, sexual orientation, sexual health, and cultural influences on sexuality.
Because we aim, as people of faith, to never stop growing and evolving, UUFC doesn’t stop offering OWL just because you’ve become an adult. Adult OWL is not a children’s program made available to adults. Instead, we expand the conversation to include information about up-to-date terminology that may have changed in your lifetime and what that means for your conversations about sex and sexuality, as well as discussions around how our identities and challenges shift as we become sexual beings in aging human bodies.
OWL is only taught by teams of background-checked adults who have completed extensive training offered jointly by the Unitarian Universalist Association and United Church of Christ. You can find more information about the complete program by visiting this website.
Coming of Age is a core UU program that asks participants to explore what it means to become an adult in a Unitarian Universalist context. A lot of cultures have this kind of event in the life of their congregation or community. Close to home, our Jewish neighbors have bat and bar mitzvahs where young people are asked to learn a language and be able to reflect on a text. In other cultures, there are walkabouts, solo experiences in the wilderness, or even rounds of combat. In each of these examples, the community is expressing what is important to it. In our faith, we ask our members to reflect deeply on who they are as spiritual people, to be able to think metaphorically, and to express themselves as soulful, connected beings, capable of experiencing a spiritual passion and transforming that passion into service and dedication to a common good.
Because we aim, as people of faith, to never stop growing and evolving, UUFC doesn’t stop offering the Coming of Age program just because you’ve become an adult. Adult Coming of Age invites adults to explore the same themes in a small group setting, where they can reflect deeply on their personal history, current spiritual development, and future aspirations in community and as individuals of faith.
If you have questions about either of these programs, please contact the Director of Religious Exploration, Skyla King-Christison, at dre@uucorvallis.org.
Our Mission
Explore. Love. Act.
We gather as an inclusive religious community to search for meaning, build deep connections, and inspire action toward a better world for all.
