Part 1: Identifying the Goals of Your SGM Program
We begin this discussion in the December 2018 Covenant Group News with a partial list of goals or ministry objectives for having a small group ministry program.
The goals of Small Group Ministry/Covenant Groups can be covered with five categories: Connection, Ministry, Maturational (and Incarnational) Growth, Strengthening and Enriching the Church, and Transforming the World.
Goals and Possible Benefits of a Small Group Ministry Program
Connection
1. To provide a place for new members to connect to the church and become integrated into the congregation.
2. To provide better connection for current members.
Ministry
1. To extend the work of the professional ministry by providing more ministry--more listening, support, and acceptance.
2. To heal souls through listening and understanding.
3. To extend special care to those who are ill or in crisis, often expanding the work of the Pastoral Care Team.
4. To get people through some difficult times and thru major life transitions.
Maturational (and Incarnational) Growth
1. To teach congregation members the skills of right relationship, caring, and listening.
2. To spread understanding that acceptance is often the first step toward positive change.
3. To teach the art of hospitality, skills that can be used in family, work and other settings.
4. To provide our members with an intense experience of intimacy and ultimacy.
5. To give people an opportunity to serve, through group service projects.
6. To provide a forum for further discussion of Sunday sermon topics in an intimate setting.
7. To provide to "extra care needed" folks a place to belong in the community. Often, the "rough edges" are smoothed and the individuals learn to be in right relationship and become a full member of the group.
Strengthening and Enriching the Church
1. To build dedication and commitment to the church as a whole, thus increasing institutional resilience.
2. To develop church leaders and other committed volunteers.
3. To achieve maturational and incarnational growth of church members and, by extension, of the congregation.
4. To have more right relationship and covenantal behavior at church meetings and in the congregation as a whole, so that the inevitable conflicts are more civil and constructive.
5. To achieve numerical membership growth for the church.
6. To provide bridges and improved communication across existing groups and subdivisions within the church.
7. To get the church through some difficult times.
8. To have a new way of "doing church," where almost everyone is in a group, and issues and church, local and national crises can be addressed institutionally via one session plan for all groups.
9. To organize the entire church into groups so that in a local crisis, there is a natural and up-to-date "contact" structure and leaders automatically contact group members to assess the effect on each member and find out whether anybody needs special help.
Transforming the World
1. To transform society by opposing our mass culture of loneliness, consumerism, and virtual connections.
2. To extend the principles of right relationship, caring, and listening into the larger community.
3. To teach the art of hospitality, skills that can be used in family, work and other settings.
4. To provided collective support for broader social action initiatives in the community and beyond.
Part 2: Achieving the Goals of Your SGM Program
Do the goals you set affect how you implement your small group ministry program? Do your program choices or circumstances limit your ability to achieve certain goals?
Each church makes choices in program structure, both as the program begins and as it continues. This set of choices, together with the basic elements of small group ministry becomes your church's model. Some of these choices are: length of term of the groups, frequency of meetings, format and frequency of facilitators meetings, origin of session materials, and availability of openings to new congregation members. Other characteristics may be beyond your immediate control, like the amount of ministerial support or budget, but still have an effect on your church's ability to achieve program small group ministry goals.
If your church has a minister, that minister's support is essential to achieving all of the goals we listed.
The goals listed under Connection, Ministry, Maturational and Incarnational Growth, and Transforming the World are largely individual; therefore, significant change can be achieved with a program that involves a small percentage of the congregation. And, in fact, more dramatic individual results might be achieved in the areas of Maturational and Incarnational Growth and Transforming the World with a program that is limited in size.
If the goals under the heading Ministry are important to your church, then training and support of your facilitators and leadership from your professional ministry is critical. This is shared ministry and that is most evident when your minister is working with your facilitators, as supporter, trainer, coach, and visionary. If your church does not have a professional minister, then I would advise involving some part of the lay ministry, pastoral care associates, caring ministry, etc.
If the church's goal is to grow numerically, maturationally, and incarnationally, you are more likely to achieve this goal if a majority of your congregation members are currently participating in the program or have had a meaningful experience in the program in the past. This means making membership available to everyone and especially newcomers. Since most of our congregations experience an 8-10% turnover each year, if you make participation available to newcomers, and have a healthy church and a healthy program, in about five years, it is possible that half of your congregation will be participating in the program.
Full achievement of most of the goals listed under Strengthening and Enriching the Church will also require the involvement of about half of the congregation. Some congregations are experimenting with giving more congregation members a short experience with small group ministry to give the whole congregation some understanding of this way of being in right relationship. Small churches may find it relatively easy to involve half of the congregation in a small group ministry program. However, for many of our mid-size and large churches, having half of the members involved in the program is a challenge, because of the amount and level of work involved in coordination. The most critical tasks, leadership identification, training, development, and support, are intensive and continuous in a program of more than about 15 groups, and therefore the kind of work that a church often assigns to paid staff. The program at the Unitarian Church of Baton Rouge has 20 groups. Our Associate Minister, Rev. Nathan Ryan, has responsibility for the program and recruits a trainer and volunteer coordinators, who serve for about two years each. The program at Eno River UU Fellowship in Durham, NC has 16 groups and a 5-member steering team. Our mid-size and larger churches who want their congregations to get the full benefit from a small group ministry program may want to pay particular attention to the leadership structure for the program and explore professionalizing the role of program coordinator. In the meantime, you will likely need a dedicated and skilled volunteer coordinator and a good well-trained steering team, as well as full support and involvement from your professional ministry.
We hope this is just the beginning of a conversation on the goals and benefits of small group ministry programs and would welcome your questions, observations, comments or additions. Send them to us at cgneditor@smallgroupministry.net
December 2018
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In This Issue
Covenant Group News
is an interactive Small Group Ministry and Covenant Group newsletter distributed by the UU Small Group Ministry Network. Visit us online at http://www. SGM Network Publications Team Alan Backler, UU Church of Bloomington, IN Diana Dorroh, Unitarian Church of Baton Rouge, LA Anne Gero, UUs of the Cumberland Valley, Boiling Springs, PA Susan Hollister, Eno River UU Fellowship, Durham, NC Subscriptions Subscribe to CG News via a link on the UU SGM Network website www.smallgroupministry.net or directly: http://www. You may automatically unsubscribe from this list at any time by visiting the following URL: http://www. 
Letter from the Editor
Greetings, Sometimes I think of small group ministry in terms all the wonderful programs across the Unitarian Universalist Association. At other times I think of my church program or my own group and the bonds between the members. However, I think I get the most joy from reflecting on a single meeting of my own group. I hope your group meetings have been a joy and a blessing to you this year. That said, those wonderful meetings don't occur magically, without considerable planning, leadership and organization. To help you assess your congregation's efforts, Susan Hollister, a program leader at the Eno River UU Fellowship in Durham, NC and I have revised an article from the May 2010 issue of Covenant Group News and retitled it: Identifying and Achieving the Goals of Your Small Group Ministry Program. If you are a program leader, you may want to review the goals of your program and think of new ways to achieve them or you might consider setting a new goal. I hope all of you will be excited about the potential of small group ministry to transform lives and congregations and even the larger world. The Wales to Maine Connection is a note from Michael Conley, Unitarian Universalist Community Church, Augusta, Maine about sharing UU Small Group Ministry internationally. Please share your notes, questions, comments, concerns, and visions with us at cgneditor@smallgroupministry.net. We are eager to hear from you. Diana Dorroh, Guest Editor, Member, Unitarian Church of Baton Rouge, LA
Identifying and Achieving the Goals of Your Small Group Ministry Program.
By Diana Dorroh and Susan Hollister Adapted from an article in the May 2010 issue of Covenant Group News
The Wales to Maine Connection
By Michael Conley, Chair, Small Group Ministry Committee, Unitarian Universalist Community Church, Augusta, Maine 2018 was the year that Small Group Ministry at the Unitarian Universalist Community Church of Augusta, ME went international! While SGM has been an integral part of church life here at the UUCC for twenty years, it had been focused in the local area during the past two decades until our minister, the Reverend Carie Johnsen, decided to explore her ethnic roots in Celtic Wales a few years ago. Exhilarated by that journey and the vitality of the Welsh UU congregations, she arranged a ministerial swap with the Reverend Alun-wyn Dafis. This month-long exchange saw Carie spend part of this fall in Wales, while Alun-wyn boarded a British Airways flight and spent a month here in Maine. And what a success that turned out to be on all levels. While Alun was here, one of the Small Groups invited him to a session to introduce him to this very special ministry. He proved to be a delightful participant, and the members had an opportunity to experience his warmth and Welsh charm up close. In the meantime, Carie brought SGM materials to the congregations in Alun-wyn's homeland. In anticipation of the exchange, we had developed a session plan around UUism and SGM internationally. During Alun-wyn's visit, the SGM Committee celebrated the year in Small Group Ministry by hosting the October 21st service. We had reports about UUism from Paris (where a UUCC member and her daughter had introduced SGM), India, Transylvania, New Zealand, historically in Maine, of course, from Wales. The session plan and the transcript of the service are available on the UUCC website at Wales to Maine Connection 2018 The question then becomes: where does SGM in Augusta go from here? With the availability to effectively connect electronically anywhere in the world, it seems clear that our next step will be to establish a relationship with Alun-wyn and his congregation via Skype. Interacting with his folks and vice-versa will enliven our groups here and offer the potential to nurture any incipient groups there. With the bridges built during the past year, 2019 has the promise of being a milestone in the evolution of UU Small Group Ministry, not only here in Augusta, but also in Wales and beyond.
WEB NEWS
www.smallgroupministry.net SESSION PLANS ONLINE The SGM Network invites session plans from individuals and congregations for listing in the Session Plan Directory http://www.smallgroupministry.net/public/sessions/index.html or the new section on Celebrations http://smallgroupministry.net/public/sessions/celebrations.html. Please include a suggested topic and key words with session plan submissions. Send sessions to office@smallgroupministry.net SHOP THE NETWORK'S ONLINE STORE Visit the store: http://www.smallgroupministry.net/sgmstore CONNECT ON FACEBOOK Small Group Ministry Network Group - Now 269 members strong! WEBSITE RESOURCES
UU SGM Network Publications
UU SGM NETWORK PUBLICATIONS - Order online or by mail Implementing Unitarian Universalist Small Group Ministry - A resource for creating Small Group Ministry for your congregation or other setting. Sections include Overview, Life Cycle, Oversight/Direction and Coordination, Leadership, Group Formation and Process, Sessions, Service, Visibility, and Expanding Small Group Ministry. Social Justice Work Through Small Group Ministry - Thirty-four sessions for preparation, action and reflection on topics of multiculturalism, radical hospitality, immigration, racism, marriage equality, and earth justice. Small Group Ministry with All Ages - Implementation strategies, leader training, session development, and session plans for children through elders. Facilitator Training and Development Manual - A guide for training and support plus a handbook on CD to customize for group leaders and facilitators. Spiritual Journeys: 101 Session Plans for Small Group Ministry Programs - Sessions on Spiritual Journeying, Personal Beliefs and Values, Spiritual Challenges, Just for Fun, Being Human, Holidays, and Special Use subjects for life events. Small Group Ministry for Youth - Twenty-five sessions for middle and high school youth.
Who We Are
The UU Small Group Ministry Network is a grassroots organization of Unitarian Universalist congregations, ministers, small group ministry/covenant group leaders and participants. Our mission is to help create healthy Unitarian Universalist congregations and a vital Unitarian Universalist movement by promoting and supporting Small Group Ministry. The purpose of the Network is "to support small group ministry and related shared ministry models in Unitarian Universalist congregations through developing new resources, networking, and training opportunities." In addition to the SGM Journal for members and the free, online Covenant Group News, we publish new resources for program coordinators and facilitators, sponsor a consultation booth and SGM workshops at General Assembly, offer a week-long SGM Summer Institute, help local leaders plan regional SGM conferences, and give workshops in congregations and districts across the nation. The UU SGM Network is a 501(c)(3) charitable organization supported solely by congregational and individual memberships, donations and publication sales revenue. Network Board members donate their time and personal resources to spread the good news of small group ministry. Contact Information
Rev. Helen Zidowecki, President (hzmre@hzmre.com)
The UU Small Group Ministry Network office@smallgroupministry.net
Write to us by email: office@smallgroupministry.net, Attn: Rev. Helen Zidowecki
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