Congregations and Beyond: Open Source Consultation

By Carey McDonald

Welcome to the "open source consultation" experiment going on in Orlando today around the Congregations and Beyond approach! This group of folks is gathered to delve into the white paper that UUA President Peter Morales recently released, and to help the UUA figure out what its role is in leading and participating in this conversation. Follow the discussion on the UU's Exploring Congregations and Beyond Facebook page, or through the Twitter hashtag #CongBeyond. Implicit in this approach is the truth that the UUA is not responsible for all of Unitarian Universalism, but that it is only one part of a network of leaders, congregations and visionaries. However, the UUA also has more resources at its disposal, and is capable of doing things that few other UU groups have the capacity to accomplish. Holding this tension, between centralized authority and viral participation, is what we're trying to model at this meeting by having our in-person conversation as well as reaching out through social media.
So young adults, please join this conversation! This is all stuff that affects us and our (diverse) needs, and it is a huge opportunity to help shape our faith movement.
In the interest of being open about our process, see the covenant below that we created to agree about how we will interact with eachother and the social network outside our walls:

Covenant

  • Be kind, be generous
  • No comments are stupid
  • Be open-hearted, open-minded and open-sourced
  • Step up, step back
  • Speak on your own behalf
  • Outside these walls, share ideas and questions, not names (no attribution) or conclusions
  • We reserve the right for any individual to go "off the record," or for the whole group to take a "social media pause"
  • Facilitators will help publish updates
  • We will approach this experiment with love, understanding and flexibility

Attendees

Katrina Bergman, Peter Bowden, Heather Concannon, Terasa Cooley, Joanna Crawford, John Crestwell, Alicia Forde, Rick Hoyt, Stefan Jonasson, Naomi King, Harlan Limpert, Phil Lund, Marjorie Matty, Carey McDonald, Sarah Moldenhauer-Salazar, Peter Morales, Kayla Parker, Jeanne Pupke, Meg Riley, Christine Robison, Nate Walker

We will be holding a Twitter chat at 12:30 pm EDT today about some of the questions that emerge in our morning discussion. Check the Facebook page for more info