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Below
you may find the primary articles from the Winter 2006 issue of the
SGM Quarterly. As the general announcements in this publication are
distributed via Covenant Group News and listed on our event and resource
pages they have not been reproduced here. To see the compete contents
of this issue of the SGM Quarterly access the PDF file from our member
page click here.
UU
Small Group Ministry Quarterly
Vol. 2, No. 3, Winter 2006
Published by the U.U. Small Group Ministry Network
Edited by M'ellen Kenndy
ARTICLES
1.
Revitalize Your Congregation's Social Action Program With Small Group
Ministry!
Rev. Calvin
O. Dame, Augusta, ME
2. Praxis-Reflection Small Groups Piloted in Justworks Journey
Rev. Marti Keller, Decatur, GA
3.
Facilitators' Corner: Evaluating the Effectiveness of Your Small Group
Ministry Program
M'ellen Kennedy, Starksboro, VT
4.
Engaging In Service From A Small Group Ministry Base
Rev. Helen Zidowecki, Litchfield, ME
5.
News From Our Members: Soul Expansion, Made Personal
Noreen Palladino Cullen, Glastonbury, CT
1.
Revitalize Your Congregation's Social Action Program With Small Group
Ministry!
Rev.
Calvin O. Dame, Augusta, ME
This may seem at first like a contradiction, but I believe that a vital
Small Group Ministry program that helps members strengthen their connections
to one another and deepen their own spiritual lives, can also help to
energize a congregation's social action program that connects members
to the larger community and world through witness and service. This
happens in several ways.
First, the essential elements of covenant group ministry, as outlined
by Rev. Bob Hill (in his book, "The Complete Guide to Small Group
Ministry") and as recommended by the UU Small Group Ministry Network,
always includes an expectation of service to the congregation and/or
the larger community. While within the groups connections among members
are strengthened and avenues for a deeper spiritual life are opened
up through sharing and the exploration of topics, at the same time the
service component regularly connects groups beyond their own circle.
This provides a reminder that a life of faith is a life of service.
When a small group ministry program includes a covenant with an expectation
of service, it provides a powerful modeling that our lives in religious
community are not just for our own renewal, but require of us an engagement
with the world.
Then, it is important to understand that people come to our congregations
for many reasons. People come seeking intimacy and spiritual growth,
they come hoping to find the warmth of community and they come hoping
for a place where they can explore questions of faith. And people come
hoping for a way to live out their faith, hoping to be able to make
a contribution and to witness and work for justice.
But at the same time, we also come seeking wholeness. People come to
our congregations tired, hurt, lonely, discouraged, dispirited, and
hungry for renewal, hungry for the gifts of the spirit. As we are able
to meet these needs: to feed one another, to encourage healing, to foster
connection, to provide for the renewal of the spirit, then do we find
that we are able to reach out generously, to engage and to serve the
world beyond the walls of our buildings.
In the years since we adapted and adopted Small Group Ministry in Augusta,
our congregation was energized in a number of ways, and our social justice
efforts expanded in a fashion that I could not have imagined before.
Not that we wouldn't have wanted to be more active, but we never seemed
to have enough energy to sustain projects. Following 9/11, we adopted
an Afghan refugee family in collaboration with the local
Lutheran congregation. And in the years since we have created an ongoing
project in Nicaragua called NICA, or Neighbors in Central. America.
We send medical and construction teams twice a year, of congregation
and community members, and recently welcomed a team from another Maine
congregation. It is a great project, involving everyone from Religious
Education classes collecting pencils and reading glasses to seniors
signing up for the trip. Is it perfect? No, but we have learned a lot
about ourselves and our privileged place in the world and have helped
people in real ways.
I
think if you were to ask anyone who has lived through the changes in
this congregation, they would join me in this assertion. It has been
the richness and challenge of our Small Group Ministry that has fed
the generosity and has helped us to imagine new possibilities for ourselves
and to sustain a deeper and wider social engagement.
Suggestions
for Encouraging Social Action in Your Small Group Ministry Program
-
Celebrate
the
service projects of your small groups! In Augusta we've had people
join groups because of the spirited applause and laughter as groups
were recognized and thanked on a Sunday morning. Actual quote: "I
saw all these people laughing together and having fun and I wanted
some of that!"
-
Create
sessions that engage people in issues of justice and social concerns.
These might address specific initiatives in the life of a congregation
or they could explore questions of faith, service, ethics and justice.
-
Form
affinity
groups that have a social justice project as their focus. Often
in our congregational efforts, people just run out of steam or grow
discouraged at the intractable nature of social problems. But in
a group formed to address say, racism or the environment, members
can take the time to explore their own experiences and conflicts,
can look for and try out short and long term projects, and can create
and maintain relationships that can sustain their efforts through
successes and disappointments.
2.
Praxis-Reflection Small Groups Piloted in Justworks Journey
Rev.
Marti Keller, Decatur, GA
Last
summer more than sixty people gathered at an airport hotel outside Atlanta,
Georgia to begin a civil rights journey. The week-long bus trip across
parts of the Deep South retraced some of the marker events of the movement
to secure equal access and voting rights for African Americans more
than 40 years ago. This intergenerational gathering, sponsored by the
Unitarian Universalist Service Committee (UUSC),was designed to educate,
motivate, and inspire its participants to work in new arenas of justice-making
in the 21st century.
For its second annual Justworks Civil Rights Journey, the UUSC designed
small groups using the praxis-reflection model of many religiously based
liberation movements, such as efforts to eradicate poverty and preserve
the rights of native peoples in South America. It is not enough, many
human and civil rights activists have found, to boycott, march and protest.
Without education before hand and intentional reflection afterwards,
social action efforts can be mechanical and soul-depleting. By forming
"cell" groups, workers in the field of peace and freedom find
their spiritual centers and strengthen community.
From the first night, the civil rights work camp incorporated praxis-reflection
groups into the daily schedule. Each group had six to ten people with
facilitators briefly trained and then coached by Rev. Marti Keller,
board member of the SGMN , longtime advocate in reproductive health
and poverty rights, and adjunct teaching supervisor with the contextual
education program at Candler School of Theology at Emory University.
The facilitators were chosen from the UUSC staff and young adult counselors.
The purpose of the small groups was to have a more intimate place for
participants to share experiences, observations and feelings about what
they would see and do along the route from Atlanta to Montgomery to
Selma and then Birmingham, Alabama. The groups were also described as
places to help understand personal and social transformation better,
and to find why and how what would change members over their week together.
Each participant received a journal, and there was time during each
group session for writing, with the choice of sharing or keeping private
what was written.
Each member of the group was encouraged to reflect on what he or she
had learned, what the "ah hahs" were as they walked down Sweet
Auburn street in Atlanta and stood at Martin Luther King Jr.'s crypt
and reflecting pool, or gathered where young people had been set upon
by dogs and hosed down in a city park, or crossed the bridge where Bloody
Sunday had taken place. What was revealed about what it means to be
human, about good and evil, about what it means to be in solidarity
with the oppressed?
Other suggested exercises included reflecting on words such as liberation,
freedom, transformation, righteousness, and justice, especially in light
of the "praxis" or work of re-living the sit-ins, teach-ins,
and voter registration drives that shaped the civil rights movement.
Each day's experiences provided rich materials for group conversation.
A late night walk down a dark country road in the southern countryside
led to the topic of fear. When do you remember being most afraid? How
did that shape your sense of yourself, of personal power or disempowerment?
Scott McNeill, a college senior from North Carolina, remembers that
one night after viewing an extremely moving but complex museum, his
small group had some structured questions and moments of silence to
aid in processing the events of the day. He recalls that some of the
questions asked: what images stuck in your mind today? Were any of these,
they were asked, that were especially gruesome, tragic or otherwise
jarring, or did they bring up other emotions?
"That night, wheels turned and sense was made somehow of tragedy
and pain," Scott observes. This happened for him because there
was time set aside to relive his experiences, and that, along with the
guiding questions, "prompted the consciousness-raising that was
impossible to do with a large group."
Kim McDonald, senior program staff member with the UUSC and director
of the Justworks trips and work camps, says she is committed to forming
small groups again for this summer's journey. She will be consulting
with Rev. Keller, and they will both be looking at ways to provide earlier
and deeper facilitation training, as well as coming up with topics and
discussion questions that meet participants where they are in their
own processes of transformation.
For info on this summer's program, visit www.uusc.org
Facilitators'
Corner: Evaluating the Effectiveness of Your Small Group Ministry Program
M'ellen Kennedy, Starksboro, VT
As
I talk with lay and professional leaders involved in Small Group Ministry
(SGM), a common concern is how do we evaluate the effectiveness of our
programs? In the field of educational evaluation, a distinction is made
by evaluators between summative and formative evaluation. Summative
evaluation is what typically comes to mind when we think about evaluation.
Summative evaluation refers to a formal assessment or judgement, of
whether a program has accomplished its intended goals once the program
is complete.
Formative evaluation on the other hand, is on-going assessing of a program
in process that is used to guide and rework the program as the program
organically grows. In Small Group Ministry, formative evaluation is
likely to be most helpful, at least at first. In fact, in the basic
SGM model there are two already existing opportunities for formative
evaluation.
The first opportunity for formative evaluation is the "check-out"
that is part of the close of every meeting. It is an opportunity for
each member to speak briefly one last time before the meeting closes.
The check-can out take the form of "likes and wishes." This
means that each person is given a chance to say briefly what they liked
about the meeting and what they would have wished for. Each person of
course can pass, that is, opt to say nothing. There is typically no
discussion at this time (since it's the close of the meeting). In the
go-round of "likes and wishes" the members and the facilitator(s)
get a quick read or pulse on the group. For example, several members
may make a comment something like, "I wish we started on time."
This is feedback for the whole group that attention is perhaps needed
to this area of how the group is functioning. "Likes and wishes"
as a check-out offers an organic, informal opportunity for formative
evaluation. Whatever is shared in this part of the meeting can guide
the facilitator and members to celebrate the great things about the
group and also to attend to the areas that need it.
Another natural opportunity for formative evaluation is the monthly
facilitators meetings. The basic SGM model suggests that group facilitators
meet monthly with the professional minister(s) and/or lay ministry team.
The point of these meetings is to uphold the vision of SGM, to provide
ongoing support for facilitators and to offer an opportunity for skill
building for facilitators. Monthly meetings usually include a "group
check-in" where facilitators get to share how they're doing in
their job as facilitator and how they feel the group is going. Successes
get celebrated here. And facilitators also get a chance to talk over
challenges and to brainstorm ways to address them. Groups that may be
struggling can get help to improve their functioning before problems
get too serious and before a facilitator gets overwhelmed by the challenge.
This is part of the beauty of the model. The monthly facilitators meeting
provides an opportunity for a regular, sharing and formative evaluation.
At the end of these meetings facilitators often go away energized and
with new insights to bring back to their groups to enhance the group's
functioning.
I would love to hear your experiences with evaluating your SGM Program,
both formative and summative approaches. At this point I have not heard
of any comprehensive summative evaluation of and SGM Program by one
of our congregations. If your congregation is or has done one, let us
know and we'll share it here so others can learn from your experience.
Wishing You the best with your vital work as a facilitator.
4.
Engaging In Service From A Small Group Ministry Base
Rev. Helen Zidowecki, Litchfield, ME
A
particular small group in our congregation had been meeting for several
years, with some changes in membership over time. The members volunteered
in various ways as individuals within the congregation, and considered
this as their service. Engaging in service, not just as individual members,
but collectively as a group, was an expectation of groups in our Small
Group Ministry Program. What would entice the members to engage in a
group service project? What would be meaningful? It so happened that
group members all enjoyed books. We also were concerned about the rising
costs of fuel, especially for those on a limited budget. Put those two
together, and the Books for Fuel Sale! was held.
The sale itself occurred on a weekend of hard rain that kept people
homebound, and thus was less than a howling success. However, the time
that we spent together engaged in the sale, working on a common project,
raised the bonding in the group to a new level. In fact, the group then
decided, on short notice, to adopt a family from the devastation in
Mississippi after Hurricane Katrina. Again, in putting together a box
of supplies for that family, we learned so much about each other's interests
and how we make choices.
Reflection on these service project activities brought us several basic
insights. First, bonding is the first step in the "Five Steps to
Building Community" that are part of the UU Youth culture. "The
first step in building community is to break down the cliques and barriers
that exist, and to establish a relationship of trust among the individuals
in the group. A problem-solving task or other activity that requires
group members to work side by side can create communal bonds. As they
discuss solutions and help one another accomplish the goal, group members
transcend their diverse backgrounds. Cooperation is the goal."
Although our small group had been meeting for several years, these service
activities provided a bonding that refocused the group. In the group,
we had bonded around our individual needs, but the service activities
created a group bonding. And rather than "transcend their diverse
backgrounds", we "incorporated" our backgrounds that
brought a richness to our very activities. (Deep Fun, http://www.uua.org/YRUU/resources/online/deepfun.html)
Second, the activities that we selected were of interest to the members
of the group. For a project to be successful, the group needs to connect
with the activity on a meaningful level.
Third, there needed to be various ways for our group members to participate
in a project, if they so choose. For example, raising money implies
that everyone is able to contribute financially, which may not be the
case. Writing notes to go with the box for Mississippi, or gift wrapping
or making sure that the items were packaged and delivered is a contribution
that does not involve financial resources.
A reluctant group need not take on a lofty service project. The importance
thing is to begin moving together beyond ourselves to an experience
of our connection with the larger world.
5.
News From Our Members: Soul Expansion, Made Personal
Noreen Palladino Cullen, Glastonbury, CT
Our
Spirit Friends group has been meeting monthly for six years now. This
is the name of our small group ministry. Some of the participants have
changed through the years and some have stayed the same. We have purposely
kept the group small, between six and nine. This allows enough airtime
for each person to take the time to think out loud which makes for the
most meaningful dialogue. Spirit Friends is the centerpiece of my participation
in Unitarian Universalism and a very precious aspect of my own spiritual
expansion.
The meetings cause me to think differently and feel deeply in a way
that informs my sense of being a spirit-wrapped-in-flesh. These are
times to step out of time for a couple of hours and wrestle with topics
that take me on an inward journey to where my spirit meets my human
personality. By being in dialogue with others who are providing an open
discussion space, I can struggle to be articulate and specific in framing
my beliefs and questions and ponderings. I can hear when I am merely
reflecting what I may have absorbed from others and when I have reached
into a deep place that is more purely my own.
The members of the group come with different backgrounds and current
belief systems. Some have done a great deal of inner work and others
have not done as much. This spectrum forces us to be thoughtful and
exacting in the way we communicate, which inevitably enriches the discussions.
The one commonality among us is the belief that we are more than just
physical beings.
Topics are informally offered by various members of the group. Sometimes
the topics arise from an individual member's life circumstance, such
as a death in the family. Other times one of us may have come across
a listing from a book's table of contents. We allow ourselves the freedom
to move through a topic over more than one session or segue into one
that was unplanned. Once in a while a topic springs up spontaneously
from the check-in with which we begin each session. We take turns relating
how our past month has gone, especially what has occurred that has connected
us or reminded us of our sense of spirituality.
We ask respectful questions of one another and share our genuine puzzlement
over statements a member may have made. This provides a kind and yet
clear mirror and causes the speaker to explore ever deeper into her
or his beliefs. Once in a while a member of the Spirit Friends group
is surprised by what they themselves have said. These moments of self-revelation
are treated with high regard and even a sense of celebration. It is
a moment when the spirit seems to reveal itself from the depths of that
person and it leaves the rest of us in awe.
The feeling I get from meetings is that people's souls expand more into
their personalities. This interpenetration of the deep and beautiful
aspect of each of us is such a comfort and such a joy. There is a sense
of witnessing an awakening from a long slumber out of the detailed and
consuming day-to-day world in which we all function. It is both soothing
and enlivening.
I am grateful to be with people who have the courage to question themselves
and the openness to absorb new thoughts and new beliefs. The dialogue
we have once a month gives me solace and hope. I have compassionate
witnesses to my life's journey and to my quest to be a worthy and awake
human being. I have fellow Earth travelers who encourage my wish to
go ever deeper into the places within myself that need illumination
and that inform my humanness with a reminder of its divinity.
Each of my Spirit Friends would describe the sessions differently. They
would tell you a variety of wonderful results they have gained by being
in the group. That, I think, is the best portrayal of the richness and
grace that a small group ministry can offer to one's life.
To
see the compete contents of this issue of the SGM Quarterly access the
PDF file from our member page.
Copyright
2006 The UU Small Group Ministry Network
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