At Shine, we believe that spiritual practices are essential to forming a solid foundation for a life of faith and obedience to God. Spiritual practices are activities that help children and youth—and indeed all of us—to pay attention to what God is doing in our lives and in our world.

So is the flow of a Shine session. As we ease into a new curriculum year, we want to share the image of an hourglass to help us think about how a Shine session welcomes children and youth, forms and shapes them to receive and engage the Bible story, and

Building Community . . . from the Archives The first minutes of a session can set the tone for the rest of the time with children and youth. Everyone arrives with differing attitudes and experiences from their week. Some may be excited to be there, while others may need more

As our faith formation program returned to in-person programming a couple of years ago, it was clear that there were a number of very energetic, active children. These children needed particular attention and structure to help nurture their participation in Sunday school. Teachers of these students began to take their

Build relationships. Your relationship with the children and youth is very important, more important than any planned activity. Children and youth learn best when they are with adults who genuinely like them. They are observing and learning from you—even if it doesn’t always seem like it! They are affected by

Welcome to the Fall 2023 quarter of Shine: Living in God’s Light! The theme for the quarter is “Becoming a People of God.” We begin with stories from Genesis, focusing on the family of Abraham and Sarah. This family has many challenges, as all families do! They struggled to get along and love