Resources for Liberating Practices

A murmuration of birds fly against a pink sky. Superimposed on the field and tree landscape at the bottom of the image are the words Liberating Practices.

Below you will find all the resources and materials from the gatherings of the Liberating Practices Learning Community. These gatherings served as an intentional time to explore themes that can deepen and enrich our knowledge, skills, and practices.

June 2024 Gathering (final)

Theme: Iteration

...or the process of reflection and adaptation in our activities, programs, structures, etc. How does our experience become innovation rather than a rut?

May 2024 Gathering

Theme: Redesigning volunteering, a case study.

In May, we tried something new. You’ve been asking for us to get more concrete in our conversations, so we used a case study to practice thinking about how to rearrange, restructure, and reinvent “the way we’ve always done it.” The pre-work includes the whole case, with several versions to choose from based on congregation size.

April 2024 Gathering

Theme: Hello, people! Challenges of communication and engagement.

It can be hard these days to get people’s attention - even our own people, let alone potential guests or newcomers. Getting volunteers for our programs and committees also gets increasingly difficult. If we shout louder or beg harder, will people hear us? Or do we need new practices for our current context?

February 2024 Gathering

Theme: We are each other's business: the dimensions and obligations of covenant in daily congregational life.

We are taking a line from Gwendolyn Brooks’ poem, Paul Robeson to explore how we can understand our covenants not just as promises made, but as commitments, obligations, an express affirmation that your survival is tied to mine; that we thrive together. More than words on paper, our covenants connect us to our ancestors, our descendants, to the source of our divinity. What would it mean for our congregations to regularly engage our covenants this way?

January 2024 Gathering

Theme: How do we know how we are doing?

Many of the metrics we have typically used to assess our effectiveness in congregations such as attendance numbers, pledging income, etc. are a bit removed from the core of our purpose. That is especially true in these times. Are there better tools to help us figure out how we're doing?