A changing, troubled world calls for prepared leaders. With advance preparation, you can meet moments of crisis with more confidence and less anxiety.
These resource can help you develop responsive policies and communication plans, and develop strategies to be both a prophetic and pastoral presence in your community.
Freshen Your Communications Policies and Procedures
Communications Strategy for Leaders Tips for Outreach
Ministers and congregational leaders play a vital role as a voice for Unitarian Universalism in local communities. Here are a few tips for developing a communications/media relations strategy.
Communications in a Crisis Tips for Dealing with Local Media
If your congregation experiences a crisis, You will often finds yourself dealing with local media along withe the crisis at hand. The tips below will help guide you in how and what to communicate.
Additional Communications Resources
- Media Skills for ChangeMakers (2011 GA) workshop by Helio Fred Garcia
- The Power of Communication: Skills to Build Trust, Inspire Loyalty, and Lead Effectively by Helio Fred Garcia
- Anti-doxing guide for activists facing attacks
Hospitality and Boundaries for Newcomers and Visitors
In times up upheaval and crisis, our congregations tend to see an uptick in attendance and visitors. Having a clear path to membership helps them to integrate:
Tending Congregational Life: Guiding the Membership Journey
Learn to work together to reinforce life-affirming and creative frameworks and use practical tools for welcoming and inclusion, connection and belonging, all as foundational to a membership journey in your congregation grounded in mutuality and consent.
We especially want to provide hospitality to members of communities that are feeling marginalized and even under threat:
Widening the Welcome
Our mandate as Unitarian Universalists is to build Beloved Community in our congregations, and learning to draw our circles of welcome wider and wider is a growth opportunity for our churches.
Because liberal communities are open in so many ways, it is especially important set clear expectations and boundaries around behaviors that are destructive to community.
Addressing Destructive Behavior at Church
Guidance for developing congregational policies to address harassment, disruption, violence, threats of violence, and other forms of destructive behavior in the congregation.
Safety Procedures Tune-Up in Troubled Times
Congregational Safety 101
How to prioritize preparation work, what areas to pay attention to, and some basic knowledge on how to respond to everything from fire to a disruptive person to active shooter to protests.
Safety and Security Training for Ushers and Greeters
How to balance the dual roles of greeter and guardian -- both providing hospitality and keeping an eye out for suspicious behaviors or situations.
Additional Safety Resources
- Building Congregational Community Safety - a four-part training offered by the United Church of Christ, featuring speakers from Faith-INFO & Liberating Lineages Collective. Practical skills, psycho-social care practices, planning tools, and analysis of current conditions, all towards practicing new ways of creating safety within our own congregational contexts without relying on policing.
- Courage, Risk, & Safety: Preparing for Right-Wing Threats Against Congregations (2023) Side with Love & Congregational Life Webinar & many additional resources on this page
- Protecting Pride: An organizing guide for successfully and safely celebrating LGBTQIA2S+ joy in these times. Western States Center has created this guide for organizing stronger and safer LGBTQIA2S+ events based on their experiences and interviews with Pride organizers in the Pacific Northwest.
- Cyber Security Best Practices
De-escalation Trainings
- De-escalation and Interventions (YouTube): Responding to Repression and Growing Resistance (YouTube 21:17) Side with Love
- Right to Be Trainings
Planning for Action in Troubled Times
Risk, Courage and Discernment: Spiritual Preparation
Is a planned action is strategic or grounded in collective liberation and accountable partnership? Start with values and principles, then use these tools.
Policies on Public Witness, Actions and Statements
Some of the most volatile disagreements in the life of the congregations have to do with who speaks for the congregation on controversial issues. How does a congregation decide?
Additional Planning Resources
- Community Power & Resource Mapping: A Guide for Congregations. (Google Doc) From Side with Love. A resource guide and assessment tool for supporting congregations in their identifying partnerships when planning actions.
- Developing Accountable Partnerships (webinar) with Rev. Ashey Horan and MidAmerica Region
Tips for Showing Up in the Public Square
- Follow your own safety policies and practices
- Communicate with community partners
- Speak using our shared values