WEAV Training for UU Congregations

WEAV is the curriculum designed for UU congregations for building spiritual community that involves counter-oppressive spiritual engagement.
It incorporates 1) education of systemic injustice, 2) resilience and self-care practices, as well as 3) restorative process for mending and revitalizing spiritual community when and where harm has occurred.

It is an outgrowth of Educating to “Create Just and Sustainable Communities that Counter Oppressions,”(“ECO”) a core course and goal of Starr King’s M.Div. and M.A.S.C. degree programs. It was noted by SKSM alumni serving in congregations that a similar course was needed for UU congregations. Thus, SKSM developed WEAV.

WEAV is a two-semester commitment. It involves the 2-unit course in the fall and the 2-unit fieldwork course in the spring of 2026. The Fall semester 2-unit course takes participants through the actual 10 sessions of the WEAV training for UU congregations with an additional pre and post session class. This experience of engaging WEAV with time for Q&A after each session and weekly reflections lays the foundation. Anyone enrolled in the Fall 2025 WEAV course will then facilitate the WEAV training in a UU congregation during the Spring 2026 semester while enrolled in the WEAV Fieldwork 2 unit course.

The Fieldwork course (offered in the spring of 2026) is designed to support you as a community of leaders to incorporate learning from your own reflections on the process, joys, and challenges of facilitating and also to learn from other religious educators’ and leaders’ experiences.
During the fall semester of 2025 every participant, besides experiencing the WEAV training, will independently schedule a 10 session WEAV training to take place during the Spring of 2026 with a fellow classmate in a UU congregation or faith community of their choice. (Each of the Fieldwork WEAV sessions is 1.5 hours in length and can be done weekly over a couple of months, or 2 sessions per weekend for 5 weeks, or however it works to schedule WEAV that allows everyone to attend all 10 sessions). The 10-session fieldwork experience must occur during the SKSM Spring semester of 2026 between January and the end of April 2026.

We will ask:
Who are UU’s and What is it to be UU?
What is Embodied UU?
What is the Advocacy of UU?
What is the UU Vision?
With two rounds of exploring W, E, A, and V while learning restorative practices participants learn how UU congregations can respond to the multiple and intersecting realities of injustice, suffering, and oppression in our lives and our world. What models of justice organizing and sustainable community invite our commitment? Drawing on the wisdom of SKSM alumni and educational, restorative, and Small Group Ministry processes, WEAV prepares UU congregants for deeper engagement to be bridges from the realities of UU towards the ideals of UU.

Requires weekly participation, mini reflections, and a Final Reflection Essay.

Relates to SKSM Thresholds: 2) Prophetic Witness and Work, 5) Spiritual Practice and Care of the Soul, 7) Educating for Wholeness and Liberation, 8) Embodied Wisdom and Beauty, as well as MFC #4. Social Justice in the Public Square.

This course has a special focus on deepening UU resilience practices, identity and vision, and embodied justice and advocacy work through a restorative framework.
Enrollment max: 20. Auditors excluded.