Property insurance challenges are becoming more common, from rate increases to policy terminations. While we can't make these problems go away, we can offer some suggestions.

Tips, tools, and spiritual grounding for each stage of congregational life, from emerging, to membership, to thriving, to renewal, or to decline and possibly dissolution.

In churches with fewer than 30 members, keep your policies simple and practical.

On top of managing the “logistics” of a staff member’s departure, you will need to manage the emotional component. Congregants may have a whole range of feelings and reactions. It’s important to acknowledge all feelings.

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

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.

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

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.

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

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. 

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. 

Congregations, like all organizational systems, need feedback loops.  Regular assessment of the ministry is essential to group self-awareness and growth.

Online moments of radical inclusion, connection, and creativity shared as a litany.

As religious leaders, part of our work is to help our communities hold the tensions between different needs in the congregation, especially around worship.

A letter explaining the UUA's shift toward presenting COVID-19 risk mitigation strategies rather than specific metric-based guidance.

Resources to give you frameworks, starting points, tips and tools to help your congregation serve its mission in today's environment of virtual and in-person connection. 

Are you already livestreaming and want to do more to integrate the online and in person participation? Here are some practical tips!

Rev. Jim Keat gives his Top 10 Tips for Hybrid Worship. As the Digital Minister of Riverside Church he has important wisdom to share for our new world. Most ministers and lay leaders are not trained in simultaneous in person and online presentation, but doing this well is vital for full inclusion.

What does this Multi-Platform era mean for staff? Once again, expectations are changing. We offer some considerations to help you live into our values of equity and compassion so that staff can do their best work in these challenging times.

In the months ahead, many congregations plan to offer a combination of online and in-person programming options. Will there be new budget items? How might staff hours or responsibilities be changing? Here are some considerations.

Once we can meet in person, our communities will need to help members and friends be more mindful about interpersonal interactions, especially around touch. The Our Whole Lives curriculum can give us us some guidance!

A selection of items to include in your visitor's packets.

How wide and warm is our welcome? Here are some assessment questions to help find areas needing improvement.

Here’s some details and examples of how to practice supportive YaEA Ministry in 2020/2021.

This year is hard on everyone, in universal ways, but also in ways specific to age, identity, and life stage. This article focuses on supporting youth and emerging young adults.

As a religious educator, a minister, or a lay leader, here’s some vital family ministry you can support in simple short ways. Here are some simple ways to support your families.

This workshop was given by Evin Carvill Ziemer on September 19, 2020 focusing on safety guidelines and protocols as congregations prepare to launch religious education programming in an online environment.

Practices and tools to provide radical hospitality.

A guide congregational leaders in recruiting, hiring, supporting, and transitioning professional music and religious education leaders.

But what if you’re called on to stage a full congregational meeting, with formal debate on motions followed by auditable voting? Here's a robust sample procedure manual!

When physical presence is not possible, we can still do our best to create time and space to gather in virtual space until such time that a physical gathering is possible.

At a time of physical distancing, when in-person ministry and religious education are on hold, UU leaders have new challenges and new opportunities to bring transformative faith development experiences and vital, supportive connection to families large and small. Explore practical and spiritual...

Physical isolation doesn't have to mean social isolation. Here are a collection of resources to help your members and friends feel connected and cared for.

Today's technology gives our congregations many options to connect our members and friends!...

Spend your leadership development energy on relationship-building and connecting individuals to meaningful service.

Introduction As organizations largely staffed by volunteers who may not have a business or accounting background, congregations will want to establish systems, policies, and procedures to reinforce financial health and vitality. It’s also vital to prevent the opportunity for mistakes or...

Bylaws exist to support and enhance the functioning of the congregation. Good bylaws provide good process. Bylaws are important in laying the groundwork for any organization. Although written in language to satisfy legal requirements, bylaws also encapsulate the vision, hopes, and dreams of the...

Making the decision to add an additional worship service, or even considering such a thing, is a major undertaking in congregational life. As institutions (and even as members of institutions), we don’t always embrace even the smallest changes easily, and alterations in our worship...

No matter the size of your congregation, policies can help to build institutional memory and structure, but can have the flexibility to be changed when needed.