Being able to name harmful behaviors is the first step in being able to respond to them.

Assemble a team of people with complimentary skills to serve on the Committee on Shared Ministry.

The point of a community of practice is for people who want to get better at something to learn from each other through regular interaction. Even people new to a field can help the group learn. Their observations and questions can identify unrecognized practices and raise awareness of which...

Lay pastoral care expands the caring ministry of your congregation, and enables leaders to deepen their faith development and spiritual leadership.

10/7/2022 - Learning to let go and do less can be helpful as we focus on the quality of community and programs rather than quantity.

The mental model of the "Social Discipline Window" can be helpful in understanding different patterns of how we might respond when someone is causing harm in our communities.

Learn how Sociocracy can use the wisdom of the circle to help our congregations thrive by decentering unhelpful power structures.

Our faith calls us to resist the temptation to weaponize words. This story shows how hard that can be.

Disability advocates remind us that multiplatform worship in real time, with the chance for some interaction, creates a meaningful experience for those participating online.

When you are depending on volunteers to care for your congregation, you will want to keep your ministry manageable, and provide relevant training for those providing the programming.

Right Relations Teams are lay leaders entrusted to help the congregation practice faithful communication and creative conflict based on values of mutuality and consent.

The following (from the Northlake UU Church in Kirkland, WA) is an example of a chater (or charge) for a Right Relationship Team (aka Healthy Congregation Team): Purposes: To facilitate the well-being of the _________ Community by fostering harmonious relations and mediating conflicts within the...

Choose members who are well respected and trusted based on their spiritual maturity and deep listening skills. Conflict transformation requires vulnerability, which requires trust.

Support and accountability for different aspects of right relationship lie within different parts of the congregation. 

Any time someone enters online or in-person congregational space, there are several opportunities for multiple connection points from which a long-term relationship can continue and grow.

A polarity is an interdependent pair of needs, values, or goals. Although the two poles seem to be in tension with each other, both are good and true, and they depend on each other over time. Neither can exist alone. Use Polarity Thinking to reframe competing needs as complementary.

Our existences are intricately woven with all life. When violence, oppression, and marginalization occur elsewhere in the world we are consciously and unconsciously bound to it, and vice versa.

Our covenants articulate our intention, but how do we live into the practice? Right Relations Teams are lay leaders entrusted to help the congregation practice faithful communication and creative conflict based on values of mutuality and consent. 

You can stumble across the small pieces of beauty, wisdom and truth that surround us all the time, but to find them in earnest takes training and intentionality.

Life is full of changes of all kinds. But each change includes some form of loss. This includes changes we face as congregations as well as individuals.