Last year in a conversation with leaders (Google drive video) of First Parish Church of Groton, MA my colleague Meck Groot and I were introduced to their phrase “spacious grace” – an all-embracing term to describe the “breathtaking” quality of welcome, acceptance, trust, kindness and...

To change, you must face the dragon of your appetiteswith another dragon: the life-energy of the soul.~ RumiI remember sitting in the foyer of the conference center of my first ever General Assembly after I was hired to work for Mass Bay District....

Have you ever heard someone in your congregation say one of the following? “We need families to join the church!” “Young people should pledge — or volunteer!” “We don’t have kids in the church anymore!” “People come to visit, but they don’t come back!” If so, you are not alone. We...

My grandparents had a découpage plaque by their front door with President Kennedy’s famous words, “Ask not what your country can do for you; ask what you can do for your country.” A simple collection of words I could read for years before I started to really consider what they meant, and what...

In this seven-part series, participants are introduced to Spiritual Leadership and its five practices: Covenanting, Tending Our Tradition, Doing Our Inner Work, Centering in Gifts, and Faithful Risking. The series centers on questions faithful people are asking: "How can we more actively imagine,...

People of faith who long for a transformed world are called to claim their Spiritual Leadership. Our souls need it. Our congregations need it. Our world needs it....

To change, you must face the dragon of your appetites with another dragon: the life-energy of the soul.~ RumiI remember sitting in the foyer of the conference center of my first ever General Assembly after I was hired to work for Mass Bay District. I watched as someone constructed a tower out of...

A few weeks ago, I joined Joe, Meck, and our Region’s Spiritual Leadership for Culture Change Community of Practice (join anytime!) for a conversation on Tending Our Tradition through Reparations. We were looking at how this practice of Spiritual Leadership invites us to bring forward the gifts...

Do you need some time as a leadership team to deepen connections, orient new leaders, and plan for the year ahead? Would you rather not have to build it yourself? Join our NER Joint Leadership Retreats!

[This post is a follow up to "When We Wonder Together" (Practice Makes Possible - March 7, 2023)] In March, the theme for the bi-monthly gathering for our community of practice Spiritual Leadership for Culture Change (SL4CC) was "Discernment for Faithful Risking." We distinguished discernment fro...

Does your congregation or community center offer OWL? Want to? Are you seeking another congregation to collaborate with, or do you have members curious where they can bring their children to participate in the program? Please fill out this form.

Among the things that has kept regional staff busy lately is conducting transition interviews. When a settled ministry ends, we meet with the departing minister to get their responses to a set of questions designed by the Transitions Office. We also meet with the board and ask them the same...

“Have you been to the bathroom yet?” It’s not the typical pre-workshop conversation my colleagues and I share as we set up projectors, easels, and workbooks for participants. My answer was no, so my colleague proceeded to describe what she found there. There was a beautiful painting in an...

In our experience, most Unitarian Universalist congregations are not culturally predisposed to using discernment as a way to determine direction, focus or action. Our congregations generally use "the democratic process" in which group decisions are made by majority vote....

Each Sunday I step into the pulpit and call to worship the congregation sitting in the sanctuary of our 1842 New England Meetinghouse. The sanctuary is simple and elegant. Tall windows line each side, reaching up two stories to the high ceiling, with four chandeliers. The clear panes bring...

Leadership in our dominant culture tends to evoke images of politicians inspiring crowds with fiery speeches, or breathless heroes leading the charge. But church leadership isn’t a political campaign or an action movie. Many of us engage in church life through meetings — of boards, committees,...

It’s the waning days of 2022 as I write this; it will hit your inbox in early 2023. The turning of the Gregorian year begins with January, named for the Roman god Janus, the god of two faces - one looking ever backward, one looking ever ahead. God of transitions. Of liminal spaces. Of moving out...

In 2020 General Assembly delegates voted to begin a review of Article II of the UUA Bylaws. Article II is the covenant between and among UU congregations. It currently contains our seven Principles and six Sources. It also has language about inclusion and freedom of belief....

Inspired by the Business Resolution adopted by the 2022 General Assembly to create UUA governance that is “dynamic, accountable, flexible, and responsive,” we invite you to consider your congregation’s ways of sharing power and making decisions. Are your systems dynamic, accountable, flexible,...

In a recent post titled Imagine New Patterns, Rev. Erica Baron invited leaders to envisage ways of doing church that are deeply enriching, fun, fulfilling; that reflect and advance core values and mission, unconstrained by long-standing habits, as if you were starting anew. “What would we create...