Safety policies are especially important to have in place before you need them, so they can be thoughtful without the anxiety of a current safety situation.

Many congregations are at a financial crossroads, but are our annual budgeting and financial planning processes up to the challenge? Build your congregation’s roadmap for a sustainable – thriving -financial future.

How committees and staff can create a dynamic and engaging stewardship element in a family’s spiritual life.

In UU congregations, conflict avoidance, a sense of urgency, and either/or thinking can make it difficult to engage conflicts well. We will learn to engage conflicts of various kinds in ways that lead toward Beloved Community.

Someone has just reached out to you with some critical feedback about the minister. What should you do next?

When your congregation has staff but no staff member is in a supervisory role, you will need to find a volunteer lay leader to fill that role. 

Ensure that staff recognize the unique responsibilities and relationships inherent to congregational employment. 

11/04/2022 - When a congregation has no clear head-of-staff, the board needs to ensure that good staffing and supervision practices are in place.

You may be coming back into more active congregational life and reacting to all that has changed. What’s next for your congregation?

Here are the latest insights, ideas, tools, and permission to do the work of the Committee on (Shared) Ministry effectively from Congregational Life Staff.

Help your people learn how to give helpful evaluations and so we can be much better ministers.

Conflict engagement requires engaging in healthy communication and modeling healthy boundaries.

One evening at a Board meeting, we came to a question about our definitions of membership....

The work of the Committee on Ministry (CoM) is shared ministry, which includes attending to the vitality of the congregation.

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.