Church School

Ministries With Children


We believe every child is uniquely created and loved by God. It is our hope and desire that The Redeemer’s Children’s Formation programs would share God’s love with our children, guiding them as they grow in that love and helping them to identify and use the gifts God has provided them.

Our programs are designed to support families as they guide their children in a faith that deeply informs the way they perceive and interact in the world. We believe faith formation is a lifelong pursuit that finds its foundation on Sunday mornings, but flourishes when cultivated each and every day. As such, we encourage families to bring children to Church as often as possible in order to take full advantageous of our Children’s Formation opportunities that happen during and after Worship. We offer Children’s Formation programs for children and youth of all ages.


Formation During Worship

Worship is one of the basic ways people learn what it means to be Christian. By attending Worship Sunday after Sunday, people of all ages are better able to internalize and digest the purpose and intent of Liturgy (structure of Worship). Participation in the Liturgy takes many forms as our children grow.

Children’s Chapel is open to all children during our 9:30am service. Children are invited to follow the cross after the Gospel reading for a short hands-on lesson designed to illuminate particular parts of the liturgy. Older children are invited to take more active roles within the liturgy through the youth choirs or acolyte programs. 

Nursery

The Nursery (Infant to age 3)
9:15 to 11:45 am
Room 202, 2nd Floor, Parish House


Our safe, clean, and inviting Nursery is a great place for napping, playing, hearing a story, or enjoying a snack with our caregivers. These are some of the most formative years in a child’s life, and the Nursery may well be a child’s first experience of the community of faith. We treasure each child as a gift of God and welcome all. 


Click here to register your child(ren) for this class.

Church School

10:40 to 11:45 am


We offer a comprehensive Church School program for children age 3 through middle school and Confirmation. Each week our children and youth begin the morning gather together in age-appropriate large groups to experience hands-on lessons grounded in Biblical narratives or the life of the Church. These large group gatherings provide lesson synergy for families with children spanning multiple age levels. Following these large lessons, the children break into their age level classes for age-appropriate activities and discussions to reinforce and deepen their understanding of the morning’s lesson.

Preschool (age 3-K)

Children this age are capable of great wonder and joy, and they respond positively to the order, security, ritual, and movement they find in our Montessori-based environment. This provides the foundation for all Christian formation at The Redeemer. Knowing the important role consistency plays in enhancing a child’s comfort level (preschoolers in particular), we encourage parents to make church school a regular part of your weekly routine. 

Lower Elementary (grades 1-3)

Expanding on the hands-on environment and materials offered in previous years, our Lower Elementary children are primed to begin to assume leadership responsibilities, forming relationships within the Church community and explore deeper Biblical and theological themes. This class in particular invites our children explore Biblical narratives with imagination and wonder found in the Godly Play approach to formation.


Click here to register your child(ren) for this class.

Upper Elementary & Middle School

Upper Elementary (grades 4-5)

Just as fourth and fifth grades serve as a bridge between elementary and middle school, our Upper Elementary class seeks to guide our young believers through Middle School to Confirmation. This program takes advantage of this age group’s increasing response to the unfolding generosity of God by asking “What is my place in the Kingdom of God?”. This wondering lays the foundation for a life of commitment to the Church’s mission in the world.


Middle School (grades 6-7)

Each Sunday our 6th and 7th graders are invited to a time of Biblical exploration, liturgical leadership and Christian fellowship. Over the course of the liturgical year, our Middle Schoolers make their journey through the big stories of the Bible and move far beyond the “what” conveyed within.

Registration Form

Confirm Not Conform

CnC (8th Grader and above)


At The Redeemer, all youth in 8th grade or above are invited to discern the possibility of Confirmation. Our Confirmation cohort meets each Sunday from 10:40-11:45am. Through interactive sessions, our confirmands wrestle alongside one another and their teachers with the big questions of our faith as Episcopalians. If you, or someone you know is interested in Confirmation at the Redeemer, either this year or next, please contact Winnie Smith.

Formation: The Ongoing Work Of Faith

By Tory Dunkle

Walk into our Level I classroom any given Sunday and you will find preschoolers scattered about the room engaged in their morning’s work. That’s right, work. They aren’t playing. They aren’t coloring. They aren’t pretending. They aren’t creating. They are working. 
 


Why the insistence on referring to their activity in such seemingly grown-up terms? First, it legitimizes and formalizes the important way play functions in the life of children. While grown-ups may quickly look at a child at play and judge them as engaged in a fun but meaningless activity, child psychologists have long touted play as invaluable to the intellectual, mental and social development of a healthy child. It is through play that children make sense of their world, synthesize all that they’ve learned, and process big emotions. Our children are not simply pasting the articles of the Eucharist on a paper altar or pretending as they “walk” figures through the Good Shepherd parable. Their play is purposeful. It is where they internalize parables, prayers and Bible stories.

Secondly, by acknowledging their activity as work, we are subtly signaling to our children the role they must play within their own faith. Faith is not inherited. Faith is not stationary. Faith is not effortless. Faith is fluid, ever growing and changing according to our willingness to respond to God’s grace and to seek a relationship with God. 


 

Faith is work. If we hope to instill in our children a faith in God that grows as they do, we must help them to learn that true faith is not passive. God longs to be in relationship with us, and through God’s grace we are able to daily receive that gift. Prayer, worship, reconciliation, community, love. It requires our attention, our passion, our inquiry, our time. Faith is a lifelong endeavor that calls us to daily seek God’s face. It is work, but it is the most important work we can engage in.

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