Approximately 300 children and youth, pre-school through high school, participate in All Souls religious education programs.

The Sunday morning RE program offers classes designed to help children develop spiritual values, ethical sensitivity and an understanding of our Judeo-Christian heritage.

Our first through fourth grade classes participate in four second-hour rotating creative workshops: music (where children receive Orff training), art, drama and movement. The fifth and sixth grades participate together in a year-long drama class. As an alternative to the grade-based second-hour workshops, our children's choir offers children in the first grade and older an opportunity for first-class voice training.

Chapel services are led by Lissa Gundlach, with Sunday guests appearances by All Souls ministers. Chapel offers an opportunity to discuss current events, giving children an additional opportunity to process things that are happening in their world.

The Religious Education Committee

The Religious Education Committee oversees the church’s program of religious education for children and youth. Working with the RE Director, the committee addresses curriculum, educational policy, special events, staffing and budget for programs that cover young people from nursery through high school.

Parents' Association

The Parents’ Association supports the Religious Education program by coordinating parent volunteers and organizing intergenerational events such as the Welcome Back Breakfast, Halloween party, the Christmas Pageant, and Christmas toy collections and Easter basket preparation for children at Bellevue Hospital. If you would like to volunteer, please sign-up for events at one of the three PA meetings throughout the year, or contact the Parents’ Association co-chairs directly:

Elaine Kurman (PA co-chair): ewood@kroll.com

Nicholas DuBois (PA co-chair): nbdubois@yahoo.com

Lissa Gundlach, M.Div
Interim Director of
Religious Education

Lissa grew up in the Concord, MA congregation, which is one of our best large churches. She received her BA in religious studies from Vassar College and graduated from Union last fall with an M.Div. She is a minister with training and experience in pastoral counseling and chaplaincy, and she’s completing a year as an intern with Rob and Janne Eller-Isaacs at Unity in Minneapolis, which is another of our best large congregations. (You may remember Rob: he spoke at Galen's installation several years ago.)

Lissa is a lifelong Unitarian Universalist with fifteen years of committed leadership on local and denominational levels. She has worked extensively with children and youth, both within RE programs and in Unitarian Universalist social justice programs. Lissa will see the Ministerial Fellowship Committee in September and then be in search for a parish position for the fall of 2011.