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 those emerging capacities belong in religious life.
Through immersive adventures, role-playing, stories, games, and plenty of movement, Seekers practice questioning, disagreeing, discerning, collaborating, and figuring out what they believe. Rather than asking children simply to absorb our values, we give them opportunities to try those values out in complicated situations and notice what holds up.
This is also the first age at which our children create a covenant rather than simply working within classroom rules. A covenant is an agreement about how we will be together, and at this age children have increasing agency to participate meaningfully in creating, testing, and keeping those agreements.
The promise underneath it all is important: you can test what you’ve inherited here. You can share what’s hard and ask difficult questions. You can change your mind. None of that puts your belonging at risk
What Sundays look like
Seekers begin in the sanctuary with their families and leave together after Time for All Ages.
In Seeker Space, we light our lantern, check in, revisit our covenant, and then dive into immersive exploration. Role-playing adventures, values dilemmas, active games, and wisdom stories from around the world give children ways to explore big questions without spending Sunday morning sitting around intellectualizing them.
The games are fun on purpose. They’re also doing work underneath the surface: practicing deep listening, noticing context clues, honoring other people’s contributions, negotiating differences, making decisions together, and trying out ways of being in relationship.
Relationships matter here
Peers become especially important at this age. Kids are much more likely to want to spend Sunday morning here when the people they consider their people are here, too.Our Guides are becoming trusted confidants as well as teachers. They listen seriously to children’s needs, ideas, struggles, and hopes and offer warm, loving feedback. They shape the program in response to the group while still providing most of the structure and direction.Regular enough participation for acquaintances to become actual friends—and relationships that sometimes extend beyond Sunday morning—helps make Seeker Space a community children experience as their own.
Participation can look different
Children may opt out of any activity. They can watch. They can sit nearby. They can take their time.We believe engagement requires trust, and trust requires time. We also believe that more learning happens from the sidelines than most adults realize. Proximity to learning is often excellent learning.What children may not do is make participation difficult for everyone else. If a child’s way of opting out becomes disruptive or communicates to other children that their participation is embarrassing or “lame,” we’ll first invite them into a more relational way of being present. If that’s simply not possible for their body that morning—which can be entirely developmentally appropriate!—we’ll lovingly reunite them with their family in the sanctuary. They’re welcome to try again another Sunday.
Good to know
Seeker Space children begin Sunday in the sanctuary with their families and leave together for Room 9, at the top of the classroom wing stairs, after Time for All Ages.
Pick-up is at 11:15 AM, or immediately following the service if it runs long.
Helpful links
Register for Childen and Youth for Religious Exploration →