Starting Your Love Resists Team

Groups of UUs pose with signs Love Resists borders at San Diego event, 12/10/2018

Most UU congregations are part of resisting in some way the repressive policies that have intensified under the Trump administration. The goal of Love Resists is to support congregations to be a more effective part of resistance by (1) deepening our collective power analysis of how criminalization – the driving force behind mass incarceration and deportation, Islamophobia and transphobia—is at work in our various locales, and (2) to foster movement building and intersectional organizing that can create safer more just communities.

There are a few ways to start your team depending upon the size of your congregation and the justice ministries already underway in your congregation. First, you will want to familiarize yourselves with the Love Resists Campaign. The Campaign holds monthly webinars and Clergy Calls that you can join. Sign up for Love Resists emails to receive updates about upcoming webinars and calls.

  • Consider holding a Love Resists Worship Service (PDF, 5 pages) to ground your work and bring the congregation on board. This could be held in order to recruit members to be part of a team or after you have formed a team and want to introduce it to the congregation.
  • Host a Love Resists Conversation. See Love Resists Start-Up Conversation—Handout 2 (PDF, 6 pages) for suggested format.
    • Start with your Board and staff and then discuss who in the congregation could be invited to start a Love Resists Team.
    • Invite leaders and members of racial justice, migrant justice, Muslim solidarity, LGBTQ rights teams to come together to develop an intersectional Love Resists organizing team.
    • Invite the whole congregation to a Love Resists Conversation either following a Love Resists Worship Service or before one.
    • Invite a grassroots organizations or multi-faith coalition that is fighting criminalization in your community, or two organizations that are working together, to speak to your congregation about what is happening and what they need. Follow-up that gathering to assess what the congregation can do either as a second half of the meeting without the community leaders or at a following meeting.
  • Have a core group or small group ministry team initiate a partnership and build a congregational partnership over time. See Choosing A Love Resists Partner & Creating Effective Partnerships (PDF, 3 pages) for ideas and considerations.