SGM Quarterly: Vol. 4, No. 3, Winter 2007

The UUSGM Quarterly provides information, explores issues and shares resources on Small Group Ministry or Covenant Groups. It is funded primarily by our members like you. Do you have a SGM experience to share, or a testimonial, or an exciting aspect of the SGM program in your congregation? Please send your submissions, your ideas and requests for topics to mellen@smallgroupministry.net. THANK YOU to our Volunteers from the First UU Society of Burlington, Vermont, who help do the hard copy mailing for the Quarterly to members of our network. Your help and dedication are much appreciated!

Small Group Ministry Quarterly
Vol. 4, No. 3, Winter 2007
Published by the U.U. Small Group Ministry Network
Edited by M'ellen Kenndy

Download this issue as a PDF file.

Reflections On Maturing Small Group Ministry Programs
Rev. Calvin O. Dame, NYC

Covenant Group/Small Group Ministry programs have developed in Unitarian Universalist congregations in a variety of forms. Some are modest, involving a few groups that foster connection and spiritual exploration for a limited number of participants, existing at the margin of congregational life, much like a respectable adult education offering. Other programs are more ambitious; involve a substantial number of adult members; consciously coordinate the lay and professional ministry of the congregation; and are intentionally organized to further the mission and vision of the congregation. Covenant groups almost invariably deepen connections and contribute to the life of the congregation. And the wider the vision with which they begin, the richer that impact may be.

Small group ministry has rapidly spread throughout our movement over the last few years because it so well serves the needs for intimacy and spiritual growth that bring people through our doors. But even good programs, well-conceived, enthusiastically begun and diligently supported, can begin to lose vitality over time. The level of participation can decline, it can become more difficult to recruit facilitators, some of the best leaders move on to new challenges. What gives?

Well, I think some decline in the level of initial enthusiasm is inevitable; otherwise, obviously, it wouldn't be initial enthusiasm. But I also believe that the leaders of a congregation can thoughtfully guide a program from an exciting introductory phase to a healthy maturity. Here is the advice I have to share.

Begin Well
There is now a wealth of material and resources available online and through the Small Group Ministry Network (www.smallgroupministry.net) on setting up an effective and healthy Small Group Ministry Program. I urge congregations to take the time to understand the dynamics and potential of Covenant Groups before beginning and then to launch them intelligently.

Don't Cut Corners
What experience has shown is that the programs that thrive are the programs that embrace the largest vision of small group ministry. Facilitators must meet for training and support, programs that maintain a service component tend to stay fresh and vigorous, groups that are open to new members or regularly reform are regularly refreshed!

Commit Resources
In many congregations the Small Group Ministry or Covenant Groups may be the largest program after Sunday Worship and Religious Education. More adults may participate in small groups than in any other fashion in the life of the congregation, and yet few resources are committed to sustaining the program. The first, key resource is the resource of time. Healthy small groups require both ministerial and lay leadership. A congregation needs to support a minister's involvement and to invest able lay leadership as well. And, sustaining programming takes money! To sustain a level of enthusiasm, invest in training: bring in a speaker, send folks to a regional workshop, create a regional workshop for your area! People leave regional workshops fired up and equipped to make their programs the best!

Renew Your Vision
Small Group Ministry holds great promise, it is a challenging vision of who are and what we might become as religious communities. And it is a vision that needs to be restated regularly, both for those who are new to the congregation, and as a reminder for those who have come to take it for granted. Too many congregations introduce programs with great fanfare, and then allow the program and the vision to recede from sight. Small Group Ministry is a tool by which congregations may help their members to deepen their own spiritual lives, welcome the stranger, to knit the tapestry of community and to strengthen the ministry and service of the church. Small Group Ministry can help us to grow into the congregations that we dream of being!

In Peter Bowden's thoughtful article, "Holding the Vision of Small Group Ministry" in the Fall, 2006 Small Group Ministry Quarterly (PDF), he explains that ministers are often very involved in the SGM program's startup, but can't sustain that level of involvement as the program continues. I was particularly challenged by Peter's last sentence: "It takes a strong lay leader or other staff person to uphold the vision for this ministry when the primary vision caster(s) has stopped broadcasting the message."

An alternative to the approach Peter suggests, is for a lay leader or staff person to steer the professional minister toward what needs to be done to uphold the vision, with specifics about what needs to be said and when and how. This is how the SGM program works at the Unitarian Church of Baton Rouge. It is a large mid-sized church (350 members) with a large Small Group Ministry program (200 participants) but only one minister, Rev. Steve Crump. I am a fulltime volunteer staff person and spend about eight hours a week coordinating the SGM program.

Six years ago, Steve and I worked with the initial set of leaders to launch the program. Since then, he and I have worked together to lead the program. We have been blessed with about 28 committed leaders who share the vision and implement our model. The leaders meet together about eight times a year, breaking into small groups for problem solving. As the only minister, Steve's attention and focus is widely spread among many competing priorities, so the steering role is the one I need to play here. He often has a better idea than me, but it's up to me to take the imitative to suggest actions. These include congregational recognition of the leaders, leaders meetings, and problem-solving session with leaders who have difficult challenges.

It's practically an obsession of mine that the leaders need to hear our minister's vision of SGM and that they need to hear it often, because it's ministry and it's important. The leaders need support and inspiration from the congregation's spiritual leader. This means scheduling the leaders meetings when he can attend and rescheduling when necessary. Steve always does a wonderful job, but he doesn't have to plan the leaders meetings or attend meetings to plan the leaders meetings, He just has to read the agenda in my emails or discuss the agenda briefly with me before the leaders meeting and then to be there.

Obviously, this partnership requires trust between the minister and coordinator and a shared vision of a thriving small group ministry program. But if this trust can be established, it allows the professional minister of the congregation to play the vision casting role.

It was at Convo in Birmingham (the periodic gathering of Unitarian Universalist ministers) that I first experienced small group ministry instead of just resonating with the idea. I was fortunate to land in an excellent small group that had consistent attendance, genuine participation, and effective facilitation. One could call it a minor miracle, I suppose, that eight or ten colleagues sat together for more than an hour with no posturing (aka bragging), put-downs, cynical comments, or any one person dominating the conversation. A minor miracle that religious educators, parish ministers, chaplains, newly fellowshipped and retired colleagues could sit together and drink deep from the well of trust, mutual respect, listening and speaking the truth in love.

It gave me a taste of what I wanted to experience with my colleagues at chapter meetings. I went home inspired and waited for my chance to work a minor miracle. It's a well-kept secret that our colleague meetings often don't serve our deepest needs and longings as ministers. Maybe, I thought, small group ministry could do something about that.

Since my ordination ten years ago, and even before that, I have puzzled over why collegial gatherings feel so often, well, not collegial. Why don't we do together what we work so hard to do with our congregations or community organizations? What is the barrier to practicing with our colleagues the mutual trust, deep listening and genuine sharing of our lives that we encourage our parishioners to do?
The missing ingredients in my chapter seemed to be: a safe environment, an activity that was nourishing to our spirits and our ministries, and a small enough group that intimacy and ultimacy could be glimpsed on a regular basis.

The chance for a minor miracle didn't open up for me until our chapter made the bold move to stop meeting as a large group each month. We broke up the family--we broke up the larger circle into geographically located smaller circles. (Anyone who has grown a congregation from family to pastoral size knows what an accomplishment this is!) Each cluster had a convener and was on its own to create a covenant and mutually agreed upon format for their meetings.

The clusters that are still alive in our district have this in common: a regular meeting date, time and location, a convener, and colleagues who make attendance at cluster meeting a priority in their lives. The format of the clusters includes some combination of worship, check-in, consultation and food. For most of us, this is enough. But not for me, for I had drunk at the well of small group ministry in Birmingham.
Several years ago, our District Executive put the magic wand in my hand when she asked me to be convener of the cluster meeting nearest me, conveniently located at the church I serve. Like any newer minister, I waved the magic wand immediately, asking my cluster if they'd like to try small group ministry. They declined. The next year, I waved the magic wand again, to no avail. The third year, I volunteered to lead our first meeting of the fall and facilitated a small group ministry experience. Ever since, we have been passing the magic wand around the circle, taking turns facilitating small group ministry, and the minor miracle continues its revelation amongst us.

We are a cluster of eight colleagues who look forward to being together once a month, who will cancel something else to be there, who have shared our fears, doubts, joys and sorrows for the last two and a half years on a level I have rarely before experienced with colleagues. We bring our own lunch, we bring our own coffee, we know we are using time that could be spent on sermon preparation or pastoral visits and we still want to be there. Why does it work?

I have my own ideas, but in preparation for this article, I asked my cluster why they thought it worked. They said small group ministry is a straightforward way to speak of deeper things. They said they get to receive and have an experience that they are usually busy providing for others. They said small group ministry is the best way to create a safe place to share, to trust each other and to build the bonds that sustain. The continuity of our group is comforting, and the questions and reflections that we share have helped us get to know each other better and more swiftly than any other format we had tried previously.

On the practical level, we rotate facilitation of the small group ministry experience. The facilitator for the month creates a brief worship time, encourages deep listening (i.e. no interruption) during check-in, and guides us in reflection and sharing on a topic with a few juicy, provocative or profound questions. We usually don't know the topic ahead of time, and that's fine, since it might need to change at the last minute. We meet for three hours, with the last hour devoted to general frivolity over lunch with ample opportunity for consultation about ministry challenges currently facing us.

On another practical level, when we have shared so trustingly and deeply with our colleagues over time, it makes it so much easier to pick up the phone and ask for help when we're in trouble. It is so much more likely that we will make that phone call before we're in trouble, which of course, is even better, and makes my job as Good Offices person so much easier.

It felt like a minor miracle when I first experienced it, but now that my local cluster of UU ministers has adopted a small group ministry format for our monthly meetings, I have come to count on this experience as normal. I have put my magic wand away, because I can trust my colleagues to make their own magic now.

Small Group Ministry at Interweave Convo 2007
Rev. Jonalu Johnstone
President, Interweave Continental

How do you encourage and support deep connection among folks who come together for a weekend and may never see each other again? How do you draw newcomers into an established group that has met year after year? In short, how can you make a weekend workshop or conference better?

With small groups, of course.

For the last twenty-five years, Interweave Continental has held an annual Convo (short for "Convocation"), inviting UU's from all over the continent to come together to consider issues of concern for gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender people. This year, as we reached out to bring in more young people, we added small groups to our schedule as a way to build connections and give attendees the chance to process their experiences. In this experiment, we were following General Assembly and some other groups I've participated in, including Small Church Conferences and Ministers' Retreats in the Southwest District.

The process was designed to deepen people's experience, to increase their connection with others, and to allow them an opportunity to process what they learned. Because we wanted to create a mix, especially across age groups, we randomized the groups, using colored dots on nametags. This meant that people were not in groups with the friends or partners they arrived with. Instead, they had to meet new people. Another way to group people, of course, is to assign them in advance. That's the strategy we use at Ministers' Retreats, creating groups whose members have a mix of time in ministry, type of ministry, and cluster.

For Convo's small groups, board members served as our facilitators. Their job was to keep things moving, to watch to make sure everyone got an opportunity to talk and to listen, and to generally monitor the functioning of the group. I provided them with session plans, including opening and closing words, check-in suggestions and discussion questions. Ideally, facilitators should meet for an hour beforehand to discuss the plans and how to relate in the groups, and once during the weekend, perhaps over a meal, to process how the groups are going.

Groups had three meetings - an hour on Friday evening, a half hour on Saturday morning after a keynote speaker and workshop, and an hour late Saturday afternoon before dinner. In the first session, people introduced themselves and got to say something positive about what was happening on queer issues in their congregations, as well as talked about their hopes and concerns for the conference. The second session allowed reflection on a highlight of the morning, and questions about making Interweave more inclusive particularly of various age groups - a major theme for the weekend. The final session provided a time to reflect on the overall experience and how people would bring their learnings back to their congregations.

Participants wanted more! Next year, we may plan for an additional group Sunday morning, and perhaps more time on Saturday morning. Many folks reported that small groups were the highlight of their weekend, even though they loved the other parts, to! On top of that, people went home with new friends they hope to see again next year.

When I come to services, I listen intently to the service, and try to obtain meaning and understanding that can add to my life. What makes the worship experience different from say my listening to lectures or sermons on my IPOD, or reading a book? There is something unique about the worship experience: we are connected to the people around us with whom we worship. Gaining that connection is the hardest part for new members and visitors to our congregations, I imagine. So the question is, how can we create those connections, and more importantly how can we deepen those connections so that they become meaningful to our lives?

For me, Covenant Groups have created that deeply meaningful experience by giving me the opportunity to explore with a group of people, the deep questions of life in an environment that is trusting and nonjudgmental. I know that once a month those two hours are set aside to explore and share ideas with others on a designated topic. Covenant groups are also a way to share with others where we are in the course of our journey through life. All of these discussions deepen the meaningful connection we create with each other.

After a worship service which I led, a couple of members of my Covenant Group came up and gave me a hug. They said they felt they had a vested interest in my service, and my future (I am currently attending divinity school part time). And that was so true, for they have listened to my story for over a year now, of the ups and downs, the excitement and doubts, of my journey. They have shared it with me and supported me, as I have shared their journeys with them, and that is what creates bonds. Yes, that is what gives me the special connection I feel when I worship here on Sundays.

What is truly unique though is that these bonds are created with people I might not otherwise know without the Covenant Group. I liken it somewhat to having moved to Greenwich Village in Manhattan after growing up in the Bronx in New York City. Walking side by side down the street were business people, punk rockers, young, old, gay, straight, starving artists, and people with trust funds. This diversity of people, accepting of each other, taught me that it is okay to be and think differently and that diverse people can live together peacefully.

What Covenant Groups provide is a means to allow all people, not just to walk side by side together but to meet, connect and develop friendships which each other. It is a way to build the foundation of, and expand our beloved community so that we can create and spread peace and harmony throughout the world. I encourage everyone to participate in and support covenant groups so we can continue to build the ever growing web of our connections.