This workshop serves as an introduction to the Harvest the Power program, presenting key concepts and inviting participants to share their own leadership stories. The workshop contains alternate activities for getting to know one another and for exploring individual notions of faith, but do not substitute these for Activity 4, Five Smooth Stones, or Activity 5, Power. These two activities, in the order written, are essential gateways to the workshops that follow.
In This Section
Introduction
From Harvest the Power, 2nd Edition
This workshop serves as an introduction to the Harvest the Power program, presenting key concepts and inviting participants to share their own leadership stories. The workshop contains alternate activities which may be added to help participants get to know each other and explore individual notions of faith.
Opening
From Harvest the Power, 2nd Edition
Gather the group in a circle. Ask a participant to light the chalice as you or another participant read the opening words, “We come to this time and this place,” Reading 436 in Singing the Living Tradition. Invite participants to introduce themselves briefly, sharing their names and pronouns.
Activity 1: Creating a Covenant
From Harvest the Power, 2nd Edition
Explain to participants that covenants are a foundational aspect of liberal congregations, and the practice of establishing a covenant is an essential act of leadership.
Activity 2: Sharing Our Leadership Stories
From Harvest the Power, 2nd Edition
This activity invites participants to reflect on and share their own leadership journey. It has three parts, offering participants an opportunity to consider in turn their early leadership experiences, their congregational leadership experiences, and what they have learned about what it means to be a lay leader.
Activity 3: What Is My Faith?
From Harvest the Power, 2nd Edition
Share this quote from religious historian William Cantwell Smith: Faith at its best has taken the form of a quiet confidence and joy which enable one to feel at home in the universe.
Activity 4: Five Smooth Stones
From Harvest the Power, 2nd Edition
Distribute Handout 1. Share brief biographical information about James Luther Adams from the Unitarian Universalist Historical Society’s online Dictionary of Unitarian & Universalist Biography:
Activity 5: Power
From Harvest the Power, 2nd Edition
Post a sheet of blank newsprint and invite participants to brainstorm words, phrases, concepts, and people they associate with “power.”
Closing
From Harvest the Power, 2nd Edition
Distribute copies of Taking It Home or tell the group when you will email it.
Leader Reflection and Planning
From Harvest the Power, 2nd Edition
Consider and discuss these questions with your co-facilitator: Looking at each activity in this workshop, what worked as well as or better than you had anticipated? What did not work as well as you had anticipated?
Taking It Home
From Harvest the Power, 2nd Edition
Take-home suggestions and resources for participants in Workshop 1 of Harvest the Power, 2nd edition.
Alternate Activity 1: What I Cherish
From Harvest the Power, 2nd Edition
This activity provides an opportunity for participants to share, at whatever level they are comfortable, a bit of their identity by telling others about something they cherish.
Download all of Harvest the Power, 2nd Edition (Word) (PDF ) to edit or print.