Let's forgo the pressure of resolutions and spend time in healing community instead.

This training shares the history of covenant, theological and ethical concerns, how to think about accountability and responsibility, and some tools for transformation in your congregation.

When we lean into creative conflict, doing our best to create courageous space, we must understand that it can’t be accomplished without setting boundaries. I would never suggest that anyone should put up with any kind of abuse. In loving relationships people should know one another’s needs,...

Rev. Erica Baron invites us to think about the words as the map to the covenant, and the covenant is the landscape. The covenant is always there and is beyond words.

“Have you been to the bathroom yet?” It’s not the typical pre-workshop conversation my colleagues and I share as we set up projectors, easels, and workbooks for participants. My answer was no, so my colleague proceeded to describe what she found there. There was a beautiful painting in an...

Each Sunday I step into the pulpit and call to worship the congregation sitting in the sanctuary of our 1842 New England Meetinghouse. The sanctuary is simple and elegant. Tall windows line each side, reaching up two stories to the high ceiling, with four chandeliers. The clear panes bring...

Being in community can be challenging. But being in a faith community can give us the opportunity to explore our edges and test our assumptions.

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.

Right Relations Teams are lay leaders entrusted to help the congregation practice faithful communication and creative conflict based on values of mutuality and consent.

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...

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. 

Unitarian Universalists are a covenantal, not a creedal, Faith. There is no belief requirement, or creed, that you have to say to join us in community, even though there are beliefs that we would consider to be outside the boundaries of our faith....

What is a covenant? For most of my time as a leader in Unitarian Universalism, I have understood covenant to be the words we use to describe the agreements we make to each other. What I have learned over time is that the words are more like a map. They help us understand the covenant....

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. 

How might our expectations about year-round berries impact our expectations around our church’s programming? Sometimes we see consumer expectations show up in our faith communities when it comes to Sunday services, religious exploration, and so on.

Trying to figure out how to talk about wearing masks in church? Here are some examples!

When I think about covenant making, I think of Kintsugi.

Do you know about the UUA's Disaster Relief Fund? This fund was created to help congregations who need assistance in times of disaster. The fund assists congregations who have experience floods, hurricanes, tornadoes, wildfires, severe winter storms or any other disaster....

As we have engaged UUs around New England in reflecting on living in covenant, we on regional staff have noticed an assumption so foundational that it is often revealed in storytelling but rarely said directly. That is: We can be either in covenant or in conflict, but not both at the same time....