Covenant Calls Us In: The Why of Covenant (Training)

By Safe Congregations Team

a red felt heart, stitched back together up the center with blue thread and a needle

When you’re a member of a vibrant congregation, you hope for a deep and radical welcome there. You want to be able to bring your whole self, and feel called to be your best self, accountable to the vision of beloved community the community shares. In these congregations, when actions, words, or behavior arise that are destructive to the community’s well-being, Covenant can help call us all in.

Dealing with destructive behavior is some of the hardest (and most important) work that a congregation has to do. Addressing breaches of covenant well is essential to creating a beloved community where people can hope to bring their whole selves to the congregation. It provides the possibility for a radical welcome, and more well-being for the members.

The online training Covenant Calls Us In: The Why of Behavioral Covenant (109), is the first part of a two-part on-demand series that helps congregations understand and move more deeply into covenant. This first course helps us learn the history of covenant and why we would bother with behavioral covenants. It sets the stage for dealing with destructive behavior. A second course, Part 2, Covenant Calls Us In: Living Into Behavioral Covenant (209), will cover how to create policies and procedures, and how to engage the congregation in adopting a behavioral covenant.

The Why of Behavioral Covenant will provide you with the necessary background to engage in creating (or reviewing and revising) your own behavioral covenant. We will cover the history of covenant in UUism, the difference between our Associational UUA covenant and behavioral covenants, theological and ethical concerns, how to think about accountability and responsibility, some tools for transformation in your congregation, and some outlines about how to begin thinking about creating your policies. We view it as a necessary prerequisite to part 2. Each topic will contain videos and readings and prompts for questions/activities for you to do to make the material more “alive” for you.

We recommend that you have a small group of people take the course together—they will then be able to share videos and articles with the larger congregation (though not their log-in information).

If your congregation has already created your policies and procedures, we recommend another course, Tending Covenant: Training for Right Relationship Teams (330), as a way to keep your team up to date!

As the name implies, this course is designed to be taken by partners or teams who will work it together in conversation and practice. Go at the pace that works for your group — 7 days, 7 weeks, 7 months. You can also take it on your own if that’s your only option. (More about group registration here.)

Training fee: $15 per participant

Access the Training Covenant Calls Us In: The Why of Behavioral Covenant (109)

How to Take Trainings from the UU Institute

(Note: You will redirected to a separate website, UU Institute, an online learning management system [LMS] managed by the UUA.)

Register to create an account at the UU Institute. Once you register you will get an email with a confirmation link that you need to click to activate the account. (You may need to check your spam folder. Please add uuinstitute.org to your safe senders list.)

The “Help” dropdown menu includes FAQs, Group Registration information, and full video tutorials on how register for the site, how to purchase a training, and how to navigate the trainings. There is also an email address and helpdesk link if you experience technical difficulties.