Joe Sullivan

Joe Sullivan

Joe was the District Executive for the former Northern New England District from 2012 to 2023. Prior to coming to the UUA Joe worked in a variety of consultancies to support congregational health and vitality including as a volunteer leadership consultant in the UUA Southern Region, as project manager for the UUA-UUSC post-Hurricane Katrina Gulf Coast Relief Fund, and as a consultant in affiliation with Unity Consulting working with congregational boards across the country on governance matters.

From Joe Sullivan

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Last year in a conversation with leaders (Google drive video) of First Parish Church of Groton, MA my colleague Meck Groot and I were introduced to their phrase “spacious grace” – an all-embracing term to describe the “breathtaking” quality of welcome, acceptance, trust, kindness and...

By Joe Sullivan | September 1, 2023 | From NER News

[This post is a follow up to "When We Wonder Together" (Practice Makes Possible - March 7, 2023)] In March, the theme for the bi-monthly gathering for our community of practice Spiritual Leadership for Culture Change (SL4CC) was "Discernment for Faithful Risking." We distinguished discernment fro...

By Meck Groot, Joe Sullivan | June 21, 2023 | From Faithful Risking

In our experience, most Unitarian Universalist congregations are not culturally predisposed to using discernment as a way to determine direction, focus or action. Our congregations generally use "the democratic process" in which group decisions are made by majority vote....

By Meck Groot, Joe Sullivan | March 7, 2023 | From Faithful Risking

In 2020 General Assembly delegates voted to begin a review of Article II of the UUA Bylaws. Article II is the covenant between and among UU congregations. It currently contains our seven Principles and six Sources. It also has language about inclusion and freedom of belief....

By Erica Baron, Meck Groot, Joe Sullivan | November 21, 2022 | From Practice Makes Possible Blog

In a recent post titled Imagine New Patterns, Rev. Erica Baron invited leaders to envisage ways of doing church that are deeply enriching, fun, fulfilling; that reflect and advance core values and mission, unconstrained by long-standing habits, as if you were starting anew. “What would we create...

By Joe Sullivan | November 16, 2022 | From Practice Makes Possible Blog

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...

By Meck Groot, Joe Sullivan | October 20, 2022 | From Practice Makes Possible Blog

Wisely, many faith leaders, writers, and activists have offered a more reflective third dimension between the tensions of before-times nostalgia and new world futures. They invite us to seek and reflect on insights and lessons wrought from a year of altered time.

By Joe Sullivan | March 19, 2021 | From Tending to Tradition

I imagine you, too, saw the unique holiday cards from the incomparable year just completed with messages like “Just say no to 2020,” “OH OH OH,” and “Merry Christmas from a distance.” Just some of the G-rated messages. We might as well laugh. Humor can be one of our more benign coping...

By Joe Sullivan | January 4, 2021 | From Practice Makes Possible Blog

Purpose-filled people are misson-driven. Workshop participants will explore discerning congregational core values, how to articulate them as mission, and how to make a mission "portable" to provide alignment for all of its ministries, strategies, and resource allocation.

Webinar | By Joe Sullivan, UU Congregation of Binghamton, Binghamton, NY | June 26, 2014 | From LeaderLab

Purpose-filled people are misson-driven. Workshop participants will explore discerning congregational core values, how to articulate them as mission, and how to make a mission "portable" to provide alignment for all of its ministries, strategies, and resource allocation.

Webinar | By Joe Sullivan, UU Congregation of Binghamton, Binghamton, NY | June 26, 2014 | From GA Presentations

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