Harvest the Power: Developing Lay Leadership Second Edition

By Gail Forsyth-Vail

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS Paula Cole Jones, “The Practice of Reconciliation,” excerpted from

We gratefully acknowledge use of the “Reconciliation as Spiritual Practice,” following copyrighted materials, listed in an article in UU World, March/April the order in which they appear in the 2004 program: Lynn M. Baab, “Health Versus the Push

Renee Ruchotzke, “A Theology for to Accomplish Things,” excerpt from Leaders,” UUA LeaderLab blog post Beating Burnout in Congregations (The published March 1, 2019 Alban Institute, 2003)

Beth Zemsky, MA, ED, LICSW, “Types Ric Masten, “Burnout—A Misnomer,” of Power” handout from Ric Masten Speaking (Watsonville, CA: Paper Mache Press, Orlanda Brugnola, “As we move 1990) through life,” published as part of the dedication of Centering: Navigating Manish K. Mishra-Marzetti, “The Race, Authenticity, and Power in universe sings no less,” from Ministry, edited by Mitra Rahnema Becoming: A Spiritual Guide for (Skinner House Books, 2017) Navigating Adulthood, edited by Kayla Parker (Skinner House Books, 2015) CB Beal, excerpt from “Centering the Marginalized: symphony and triptych,” Theresa I. Soto, “To the people who a post on Medium have mistaken freedom for liberation,” from Spilling the Light: Meditations on Laila Ibrahim, “A Prayer for This Hope and Resilience (Skinner House Gathering,” published in Bless the Books, 2019) Imperfect: Meditations for Congregational Leaders (Skinner Nancy MacDonald Ladd, “Tapping Out House Books, 2013) of ‘Fake’ Fights,” excerpted from a sermon delivered at the 2016 UUA Gregory Pelley, “A Path Diverted,” General Assembly published in Wrestling with Adulthood: Unitarian Universalist Men Talk about Thanks also to the review team for this Growing Up, edited by Ken Beldon edition, Rev. Marisol Caballero, Rev. (Skinner House Books, 2008) Jonipher Kwong, and Rev. Renee Ruchotzke, whose thoughtful William Sinkford, excerpt from “Rise in observations and suggestions made Body or in Spirit,” from Landscapes of this a much stronger program. Aging and Spirituality, edited by Kathleen Montgomery (Skinner House Books, 2015)

Harvest the Power, 2nd Edition © Unitarian Universalist Association 2020 | 2 INTRODUCTION leaders engage with congregational conflict as a way to grow in capacity to This new edition of Harvest the Power, respond faithfully and live out the like the 2009 original, asserts that congregation’s mission and values in leadership in a congregational setting the world. can and should be a deeply spiritual experience. The program was created This edition comes at a time of rapid not only to strengthen the skills of those change in our world and in our faith. A who have accepted the responsibility of commitment to congregational life leadership in our congregations, but competes with many other priorities for also to offer intentional faith time on people’s calendars. People development as a way to help form struggle to manage the day-to-day integrated leaders who model healthy demands of family life, work life, and personal and leadership practices. interests, hobbies, and volunteer work.

In the midst of today’s changes, it is This 2020 edition reflects new truly remarkable that so many people understandings gained from faithful come forward and agree, with varying practice of congregational leadership in amounts of enthusiasm, to accept a multigenerational, multicultural, leadership positions in our diverse, and inclusive faith community. congregations. What a gift it is that they Informed by the work of Juana Bordas, give to their faith community—a gift of published in Salsa, Soul, and Spirit: their time, their love, and their talent! Leadership for a Multicultural Age, this That gift deserves the best that the program guides leaders to cultivate a congregation can give in return—an “we” culture in our congregations, with experience of leadership that is both relationships and covenant at the challenging and rewarding, that is an center, rather than an “I” culture of opportunity for spiritual growth as well autonomous individuals. It asks as skill development. The Harvest the participants to examine the Power program is a tool to help perspectives and gifts, strengths and congregations support and strengthen challenges they each bring to the their leaders in a way that honors the leadership team. It invites them to form gifts that each brings. a covenanted team together that is stronger than its parts and effective in staying in relationship with those in the GOALS faith community and in the larger This program will: community that surrounds them. The • Affirm the spiritual and emotional workshops consider stresses and gifts and the skills that each person opportunities presented by this time in brings to a leadership position Unitarian Universalism, offering frameworks and strategies to help

Harvest the Power, 2nd Edition © Unitarian Universalist Association 2020 | 3 • Encourage congregations and missions and values, both in participants to view holding a congregational life and in the wider leadership position as an world opportunity to enrich and deepen • Invite leaders to become aware of the leader’s faith their own role in the congregation • Deepen participants’ understanding and to develop a leadership of covenant and the practice of approach and skills to guide a keeping covenant within the community toward a faithful leadership team and in the response to conflict. congregation • Guide leaders to center FACILITATORS relationships as a faithful practice, A team of two or more adults who have thinking of the congregation as a experience as congregational leaders “we” rather than a collection of should facilitate the Harvest the Power individuals workshops. Work with a partner to plan the workshops together and share the • Lead participants to develop an facilitation responsibilities. understanding of the importance of personal spiritual practice and Be intentional about bringing different integrity to healthy leadership perspectives and different experiences • Guide participants to consider which to your facilitation team; for example, voices and perspectives were you might consider having people of marginalized in the past and need to different genders, including non-binary, be part of congregational or different racial identities, or different leadership decision-making age cohorts working together.

• Introduce systems thinking, and Workshop facilitators may be provide some practice with laypersons or religious professionals. exploring congregational issues Facilitators will be most effective if they through a systems lens have the following strengths: • Encourage participants to consider • Experience in congregational that conflict can indicate questions leadership as a member of the needing attention in the larger governing board, a committee chair, congregational system and invite a leader in the young adult group, or them to respond accordingly in some other leadership capacity • Deepen and enrich the experience • The time and willingness to prepare of congregational leaders and, by thoroughly for each workshop and extension, the ability of to take appropriate action in the congregations to live out their event of unexpected cancellations

Harvest the Power, 2nd Edition © Unitarian Universalist Association 2020 | 4 • Experience in facilitating a group PARTICIPANTS process Harvest the Power is designed for • The ability to create a supportive adults of all ages and stages, young group environment adults through elders, who currently hold or are considering accepting a • A willingness to listen deeply and to congregational leadership position. let “answers” emerge from the Participants in this program might group process include current or potential governing • Integrity, and the ability to maintain board members, committee members, strong boundaries, especially in the task force members, or small group midst of challenging conversations leaders. • Respect for the congregation and its mission Workshops can accommodate any number of participants. Six participants • A commitment to Unitarian is an ideal minimum. With more than 12 Universalist Principles and to the participants, consider adding a third faith development components of facilitator to your team. this curriculum INTEGRATING ALL PARTICIPANTS • Respect for individuals, regardless of age, race, social class, gender, People of all ages have a range of sexual orientation, and ability, and abilities, disabilities, and sensitivities. the willingness to modify workshop Be sure to ask individual participants to plans to support the full inclusion of identify any particular disability or all participants sensitivity-related accommodations they will need. • Willingness to support healthy group Participants also bring a wide range of process by reinforcing ground rules learning styles and information- politely and confidently. processing preferences. Individual workshops are designed with this in Facilitators must be capable of creating mind and allow for a number of different and nurturing a supportive, respectful kinds of activities. In addition, you will community within the workshops; find in each workshop alternate following congregational safety activities that may better suit your guidelines and policies; and modeling group’s stylistic preferences. respect for the congregation, its To support the inclusion of all mission, and its lay and professional participants, review Accessibility leadership throughout the course of the Guidelines for Adult Workshop workshop. Presenters before leading these workshops. Implement what you must

Harvest the Power, 2nd Edition © Unitarian Universalist Association 2020 | 5 to make your space welcoming and Power program’s larger “big picture” accessible, to the extent possible. goals are achieved.

PROGRAM STRUCTURE Workshop-At-a-Glance Each two-hour Harvest the Power The “Workshop-at-a-Glance” table lists workshop uses the structure outlined the workshop activities in order of their below. suggested sequence and provides an estimated time for completing each Quote activity. A quote introduces each workshop. Workshop-at-a-Glance is not a road You might discuss the quote with your map that you must follow. Rather, use it co-leader as part of your session prep. as a menu for planning the workshop. Each workshop’s opening quote also You will decide which elements to use appears in the Taking It Home handout. and how to combine them to best suit your group, your meeting space, and Introduction the amount of time you have. The Introduction provides a short Keep in mind that many variables summary of the workshop's content, inform the actual completion time for an along with guidance for leaders about activity. Whole-group discussions will implementing the workshop. take longer in a large group than in a small group. Remember to consider the Goals time you will need to relocate The Goals are general outcomes participants to another area of your toward which the workshop is geared. meeting room. As you plan a workshop, apply your knowledge of your group, the time and Spiritual Preparation space you have available, and your Each workshop provides suggestions own strengths and interests as co- that you may use to prepare for leading leaders to determine the most the Harvest the Power program, to important and achievable goals for the grow spiritually, and to grow as a workshop and the activities that will leader. Because part of growing as a best serve those goals. leader is learning to pay attention to the accessibility needs of those in your Learning Objectives workshop, pay attention to Accessibility The Learning Objectives describe Guidelines for Adult Workshop specific participant outcomes that the Presenters as you prepare to facilitate workshop activities are designed to each workshop. facilitate. It may be helpful to think of learning objectives as the building Workshop Plan blocks with which the Harvest the The workshop plan presents the main elements of each workshop:

Harvest the Power, 2nd Edition © Unitarian Universalist Association 2020 | 6 Opening: Each workshop begins with a resource to shape a closing that fits short opening ritual: welcoming words, your group and the culture and chalice lighting, and a reading. Shape practices of your congregation. your opening ritual to suit your group, any space limitations, and the culture The following are provided for each and practices of your congregation. activity, including the Opening and Activities: The core workshop content Closing: is presented as sequential activities. • Materials: This checklist outlines The variety of activities in each the supplies you will need for each workshop aims to address participants’ activity. different learning styles. Presenting the activities in the sequence suggested • Preparation: If your group meets will help you provide a coherent weekly, review this “to do” list for learning experience. In general, the each activity at least a week ahead sequence will balance listening with of a workshop. If your group meets talking, and individual exploration with less frequently than weekly, review group exploration. the preparation items several weeks Select activities that you believe best ahead. The list identifies all the suit the widest range of participants’ advance work you need to do for interests and will work well for you and the activity, such as writing a list of your group. Keep in mind the questions on newsprint or arranging participants’ learning journey and the supplies right before your benefits of a well-paced workshop that participants arrive. includes different kinds of activities. • Description: This section provides Each workshop includes one or more detailed directions for leading the alternate activities that you may choose activity with your group. Carefully to substitute for a core activity. If you read the activity descriptions during use alternate activities, take care to your planning process so that you place them in a sequence that gives the understand each activity and its workshop a balanced flow. purpose. Later, when you are Closing: Each workshop concludes actually leading your group, use the with a closing ritual that signals the end description as a step-by-step guide. of your group’s time together. During the closing, you will introduce the Activities that include unusual physical workshop’s Taking It Home ideas, invite circumstances or for which leaders participants to share briefly, offer would benefit from a reminder about closing words, and extinguish the inclusion have an Including All chalice. Like the opening, the closing of Participants section with specific a workshop grounds the experience in accessibility guidance. In addition, ritual. Use the workshop plans as a please consult Accessibility Guidelines

Harvest the Power, 2nd Edition © Unitarian Universalist Association 2020 | 7 for Adult Workshop Presenters for • Alternate Activities: Each general guidelines to help you prepare workshop features one or more to meet some common accessibility alternate activities that you may needs. substitute for core workshop activities. Sometimes the alternate The Workshop Plan also offers: activities are simpler to implement than the core activities. Materials • Faith in Action: These activities are designed to give participants an checklists, preparation steps, and opportunity to put their UU faith into activity descriptions appear in the action by bringing their learning same format as they do in the core from the workshop into their work in activities. You can also use the the congregation—or the world alternate activities to build longer beyond the congregation. You can workshops of up to three hours. customize this section to your • Resources: congregation and group. Stories - Narratives, from the Sources of our Unitarian • Leader Reflection and Planning: This section provides questions to Universalist tradition, that illuminate help you and your co-facilitator and support workshop activities. process the workshop after it is Handouts - Materials to download concluded and use your reflections and print for all participants to use in the workshop. to shape future workshops. Leader Resources - Materials for • Taking It Home: The Taking It the leader’s use during the Home handout for each workshop workshop. includes conversation topics, journaling assignments, and ideas WORKSHOPS for further exploration or to apply the Workshop 1 Leadership Journey workshop learning. The handouts are designed to help participants Workshop 2 From “I” to “We” extend their experiences by sharing Are We Doing the them with family and friends or by Workshop 3 Right Things? integrating them into their practice as leaders. You may customize to Caring for Ourselves Workshop 4 suit your congregation and group and One Another before distributing to participants. Each Taking It Home handout Workshop 5 Integrity includes a Find Out More section Workshop 6 Faith and Conflict with supplemental resources, such as books, videos, and websites, related to workshop topics.

Harvest the Power, 2nd Edition © Unitarian Universalist Association 2020 | 8 WORKSHOP 1: • Explore their experiences with becoming leaders and learning how LEADERSHIP JOURNEY to exercise leadership • Explore their understanding of faith Leadership is a series of behaviors • Become familiar with Five Smooth rather than a role for heroes. — Stones, a metaphor drawn from the Margaret J. Wheatley, author, work of James Luther Adams. management consultant, and • Investigate power and its role in leadership expert faithful leadership. INTRODUCTION WORKSHOP-AT-A-GLANCE This workshop serves as an introduction to the Harvest the Power Activity Minutes program, presenting key concepts and inviting participants to share their own Opening 5 leadership stories. The workshop Activity 1: Creating a 10 contains alternate activities for getting Covenant to know one another and for exploring individual notions of faith, but do not Activity 2: Sharing Our 25 substitute these for Activity 4, Five Leadership Stories Smooth Stones, or Activity 5, Power. Activity 3: What Is My Faith? 25 These two activities, in the order written, are essential gateways to the Activity 4: Five Smooth 25 workshops that follow. Stones

Activity 5: Power 25 GOALS This workshop will: Faith in Action: Sharing varies • Facilitate introductions and build Leadership Stories with the rapport among the group Congregation • Help participants develop their Closing 5 identities and skills as Unitarian Universalist leaders Alternate Activity 1: What I 20 • Offer theological grounding for Cherish (Icebreaker) faithful leadership, based on the Alternate Activity 2: Notions 25 work of the 20th-century Unitarian of God theologian James Luther Adams.

LEARNING OBJECTIVES SPIRITUAL PREPARATION Participants will: Respond to the questions in Activity 2, • Begin making connections with one Sharing Our Leadership Stories. Create another your own What Is My Faith? artwork to help you reflect on your own identity as

Harvest the Power, 2nd Edition © Unitarian Universalist Association 2020 | 9 a Unitarian Universalist leader. Share ▪ Be willing to learn, with the spirit your reflections with your co-facilitator. of “a beginner’s mind,” even when we may bring some WORKSHOP PLAN expertise. ▪ Be responsible for our own Opening (5 minutes) participation and spiritual growth, with integrity and enthusiasm. MATERIALS ▪ Listen generously to the  A copy of Singing the Living experiences and perspectives of Tradition, the Unitarian Universalist others, creating a supportive hymnbook space for each person to learn.  Small worship table ▪ Be mindful of “taking space and making space” to ensure that  Chalice, candle, and lighter, or LED everyone has opportunities to battery-operated candle speak and to listen. PREPARATION ▪ Respect the confidentiality of • Set the chalice on the worship table. personal information and stories DESCRIPTION shared here. Gather the group in a circle. Ask a ▪ Gently hold one another participant to light the chalice as you or accountable for creating a another participant read the opening community of faithful practice. words, “We come to this time and this ▪ Work with others to use what we place,” Reading 436 in Singing the learn to help further the mission Living Tradition. of the congregation or the Invite participants to introduce covenantal UU community. themselves briefly, sharing their names • Post blank newsprint where all and pronouns. participants can see it. Title it “Our Covenant with One Another.” ACTIVITY 1: Creating a DESCRIPTION Covenant (10 minutes) Explain to participants that covenants MATERIALS are a foundational aspect of liberal congregations, and the practice of  Newsprint, markers, and wall-safe tape establishing a covenant is an essential PREPARATION act of leadership. • For your own use, list the elements Invite participants to suggest guidelines of covenant that you would like to for how they will be with one another suggest as the facilitator. You might during the program. Write all include: suggestions on newsprint. When the ▪ Speak from our own experiences group has no more suggestions, add and perspectives. any items from the list you prepared.

Harvest the Power, 2nd Edition © Unitarian Universalist Association 2020 | 10 Ask participants if they would have ▪ How did you first become a lay concerns about or difficulty agreeing to leader in a congregation? any items listed. Discuss those items, ▪ What role did you have, and how and decide as a group whether to keep did you come to take on that or eliminate them from the group role? covenant. ▪ How did your personal faith and On a new sheet of newsprint, rewrite beliefs affect your decision to be the covenant title and the agreed-on a leader? items. Read the covenant aloud, and DESCRIPTION ask for verbal assent from each This activity invites participants to participant. Optional: Invite participants reflect on and share their own to each sign the covenant. leadership journey. It has three parts, Save the written covenant to post offering participants an opportunity to during future workshops. consider in turn their early leadership experiences, their congregational ACTIVITY 2: Sharing Our leadership experiences, and what they Leadership Stories (25 have learned about what it means to be minutes) a lay leader. Some may be new leaders in the MATERIALS congregation, some may be  Newsprint, markers, and wall-safe tape longstanding congregational leaders, and some may be leaders in other  Clock or timer aspects of their lives. Acknowledge that  Bell or chime everyone is in a different place on their PREPARATION leadership journey. Say that • Title a sheet of newsprint “Early participants in this workshop have in Leadership Experiences,” write the common that they have taken on (or following questions on it, and post it are at least considering) a leadership where all participants can see it: role in your faith community. ▪ How did the experience feel at Point out the sheet of newsprint you the time? posted. Invite participants to consider ▪ How did you learn and grow the questions and to try to recall their from the experience? early leadership experiences— ▪ What were your hopes and fears childhood and adolescent experiences in taking on that leadership role? as well as adult ones. • Prepare (but do not post) another After a minute, invite participants to turn sheet of newsprint with the title to a partner and share their “Becoming a Leader in a experiences and responses to the Congregation.” Write these questions listed on the newsprint. Tell questions: them that each partner will have three

Harvest the Power, 2nd Edition © Unitarian Universalist Association 2020 | 11 minutes to share. Ring a bell or chime • Set up a work area with the art when it is time for the second partner to materials. Mark sure that share. Facilitators may also choose to participants will have room to work take part in this activity. and can easily share the Post the second sheet of newsprint. materials. Invite participants to use the questions DESCRIPTION provided to recall the circumstances of Share this quote from religious historian their first becoming a leader in this or a William Cantwell Smith: previous faith community. After a Faith at its best has taken the form minute, invite participants to share with of a quiet confidence and joy which the same partner their experiences and enable one to feel at home in the their responses to the questions. Tell universe. them that each partner will have three Invite participants to reflect on these minutes to share. Ring a bell or chime words for a moment. Tell them that when it is time for the second partner to their task is to create a representation share. of what enables them to feel at home in Reconvene the large group. Prompt a the universe. Show them the work area discussion by asking, “What have you and the art materials, and tell them they learned about being a leader in the will have 12 minutes to use the course of your experiences?” materials to create a representation of Wrap up the activity by asking, “How their faith. was the experience of sharing When time is up, invite participants to leadership stories? Were there any share their creations and describe their surprises or revelations as you told meaning with the group. Say that it is your own story or heard someone fine to opt out of sharing. (This is true else’s?” for any workshop activity that involves sharing with the larger group.) ACTIVITY 3: What Is My Ask participants to quietly consider two Faith? (25 minutes) questions: “How will your faith ground MATERIALS you as you fulfill your leadership role? How will your decision-making grow  Art materials, such as 12- x 18- from your faith?” Allow a few moments inch sheets of construction paper, of silence for participants to reflect. a variety of colored and textured INCLUDING ALL PARTICIPANTS papers, illustrated magazines, If any participants are unable to draw or scissors (including left-handed prefer not to, invite them to use words scissors), glue and glue sticks, rather than pictures, or substitute and color markers and pencils Alternative Activity 2, Notions of God. PREPARATION

Harvest the Power, 2nd Edition © Unitarian Universalist Association 2020 | 12 ACTIVITY 4: Five Smooth  Newsprint, markers, and wall-safe tape Stones (25 minutes)  Handout 2, Types of Power MATERIALS  Pens and pencils  Handout 1, Five Smooth Stones  Participants’ copies of Handout 1, Five PREPARATION Smooth Stones, from Activity 4 • Copy Handout 1 for each PREPARATION participant. • Copy Handout 2 for all participants. DESCRIPTION • Write on newsprint, but do not post: Distribute Handout 1. Share brief “Power is the ability to achieve biographical information about James purpose,” from a 1967 sermon by Luther Adams from the Unitarian the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Universalist Historical Society’s online DESCRIPTION Dictionary of Unitarian & Universalist Post a sheet of blank newsprint and Biography: invite participants to brainstorm words, James Luther Adams (November phrases, concepts, and people they 12, 1901–July 26, 1994) was a associate with “power.” Record their Unitarian parish minister, social responses. After five minutes, or when activist, journal editor, prolific the newsprint is full, ask participants to author, and for more than 40 years look at the whole list and offer a divinity school professor. Adams comments and observations. Overall, was the most influential theologian how can they characterize this list of among 20th-century Unitarian what they associate with “power”? Universalists and one of the finest Post the quote from Dr. King, and read 20th-century American liberal it aloud. Ask how many items on the Christian theologians. brainstormed list can be included in this Invite participants to read the handout. definition of power. Use these questions to prompt a Note that this quote does not assign discussion: any value to the “purpose” one wishes • Which of James Luther Adams’ to achieve. Invite participants to concepts resonates most deeply for consider what “purpose” congregational you? leaders wish to achieve. Allow time for • What in the Five Smooth Stones responses and discussion. reading do you find inspirational, Distribute Handout 2 and writing meaningful, or otherwise helpful to implements. Invite participants to read you as a congregational leader? the handout and to make note of which types of power congregational leaders ACTIVITY 5: Power (25 can exercise. Encourage them to jot minutes) examples in the margins of the MATERIALS handout. Allow participants about 10 Harvest the Power, 2nd Edition © Unitarian Universalist Association 2020 | 13 minutes to work alone. Then, invite plan logistics for sharing leadership them to form triads. Tell them they will stories in another group or setting. have five minutes to discuss how Document task assignments on congregational leaders can exercise newsprint. power in ways that are in line with the values of our faith, using Handout 1 CLOSING (5 minutes) and Handout 2 as references. MATERIALS After five minutes, reconvene the large  Copies of Singing the Living Tradition, the group. Invite participants to share any Unitarian Universalist hymnbook insights or ideas they are mulling. PREPARATION FAITH IN ACTION: Sharing • Optional: Customize the Taking It Leadership Stories with the Home handout for your group before emailing or photocopying it. Congregation • Copy Taking It Home for all MATERIALS participants, or plan to email it.  Newsprint, markers, and wall-safe tape DESCRIPTION Distribute copies of Taking It Home or PREPARATION tell the group when you will email it. • Talk with your minister, Explain that you will close this administrator, and other appropriate workshop with a “gathering” song congregational leaders to explore because, as a group, you have begun ways participants’ leadership stories gathering yourselves for a leadership might be shared with the journey. congregation. If possible, develop Sing Hymn 188, Come, Come, specific options, complete with Whoever You Are, three times through. dates, to suggest to the group. If someone in your group is skilled at • Post blank newsprint. leading rounds, you might sing this as a DESCRIPTION two- or four-part round, depending on Engage participants to explore ways to the size of the group. share their leadership stories with the Invite each person to share, in a word broader congregation. For example, the or phrase, something from the Harvest the Power group might invite workshop that stays with them. committees or other groups to participate in the “Sharing Leadership LEADER REFLECTION Journeys” activity. Or, the group might AND PLANNING create a series of newsletter articles or blog posts. Record their ideas on Consider and discuss these questions newsprint. with your co-facilitator: As a plan takes shape, decide who will • Looking at each activity in this take charge of necessary tasks and workshop, what worked as well as

Harvest the Power, 2nd Edition © Unitarian Universalist Association 2020 | 14 or better than you had anticipated? Explore leadership’s grounding in What did not work as well as you theology by reading A Hidden had anticipated? Wholeness: The Journey Toward an • What issues came up for you, Undivided Life (San Francisco: Jossey- personally, in trying any activity Bass, 2004) or Let Your Life Speak: yourself? What came up in the Listening for the Voice of Vocation (San process of facilitating? Francisco: Jossey-Bass, 1999), both by • What would you change if you were Parker J. Palmer. to lead this workshop again? How Explore the website of writer and would you do it differently? leadership consultant Margaret J. • What did you learn about yourself Wheatley. as an individual while facilitating this workshop? What did you learn ALTERNATE ACTIVITY 1: about yourself as a leader? What I Cherish (20 minutes) • Look ahead to the next workshop in MATERIALS this program. What materials do you  Newsprint, markers, and wall-safe tape need to request or gather? What other preparation is needed? PREPARATION • Be prepared to model this activity TAKING IT HOME for participants. Leadership is a series of behaviors • On a sheet of newsprint, write your rather than a role for heroes. — name, how long you have been part Margaret J. Wheatley, author, of this congregation, and a brief management consultant, and description of a place, person, or leadership expert item that you cherish. Post the Share with loved ones what you have newsprint where all can see it. discovered about your own spiritual • If the group is larger than 10, you journey, and show them your “What Is may wish to form smaller groups for My Faith?” creation. How are your this activity. If you are presenting ideas and understandings about faith this workshop as part of a retreat, similar to or different from those of your this activity can be a good family members or friends? icebreaker. DESCRIPTION Find Out More This activity provides an opportunity for Learn more about James Luther Adams participants to share, at whatever level from the Unitarian Universalist they are comfortable, a bit of their Historical Society’s online Dictionary of identity by telling others about Unitarian & Universalist Biography or something they cherish. by reading The Essential James Luther Indicate the newsprint. Give Adams by George Kimmich Beach participants a minute to prepare to (Boston: Skinner House Books, 1998). Harvest the Power, 2nd Edition © Unitarian Universalist Association 2020 | 15 introduce themselves to the group, somehow did not make sense using your example on newsprint as a anymore. Perhaps you lost your guide. comfort with the word “God” and Facilitators should go first to model the began using other terms, such as process. Have participants introduce “the divine,” “the ultimate mystery,” themselves and share their stories, or “a force greater than humans.” either going around the circle or asking Perhaps you have experienced for volunteers. moments of spiritual crisis or a crisis Once everyone has shared, ask, “How of meaning. will sharing these stories with one Hand out index cards and writing another help us work together as a implements, and ask people to divide faithful leadership team?” the cards into four quadrants. Say, “Title the quadrants Age 5, Age 15, Age ALTERNATE ACTIVITY 2: 25, and Today. Describe or draw your Notions of God (25 notion of God—or whatever term you minutes) choose—at each age.” Allow several minutes for participants to fill their index MATERIALS cards.  4 x 6 index cards, one for each participant Invite participants to form groups of four and share the ways that their notions of  Pencils or pens God have developed over time. Tell  Clock or timer them they will have 15 minutes for this  Bell or chime sharing. Ring a bell or chime every three or four minutes to remind DESCRIPTION participants to switch speakers if they This non-drawing-oriented activity is a haven’t done so. good alternative to Activity 4, What Is After 15 minutes, reconvene the group. My Faith? Ask participants to quietly consider two Invite participants to consider how they questions: “How will your faith, as you have formed images of God, positive or understand it today, ground you as you negative, over time. Say: fulfill your leadership role? How will the Perhaps you recall teachings from strength or wisdom of your decision- childhood or chance conversations making grow from your faith?” Allow a with others. Perhaps your few moments of silence for participants experiences include a rejection—or to reflect. an embrace—of the idea of God. Perhaps you recall spiritual and theological questions you had as a youth or a young adult. Perhaps you remember when your notion of the existence and nature of God

Harvest the Power, 2nd Edition © Unitarian Universalist Association 2020 | 16 HANDOUT 1: Five Smooth Healthy leaders are lifelong learners. They are curious about the world, they Stones question their assumptions, and they This text originally appeared as a are nimble when responding. Instead of March 1, 2019, blog post by Renee saying, “This is true,” they say, “This is Ruchotzke titled “A Theology for my best thinking with what I know now.” Leaders.” It was inspired by James The best place to learn, the place with Luther Adams’ essay “Guiding the most potential for Creative Principles for a Free Faith” in On Interchange, is in the interaction Becoming Human Religiously: Selected between different cultures, Essays in Religion and Society, edited experiences, and worldviews. Whether by Max Stackhouse (Beacon Press, in nature (think of estuaries or coral 1976, pp. 12–20). reefs) or in community, it’s at the It was not Adams, but one of his edge—where differences overlap and editors, who lifted up the metaphor of engage—that there is more potential for five smooth stones, drawn from the transformation. biblical David and Goliath story, to name the five liberal religious principles TWO: Use the Ethic of Mutuality to Adams discussed. Guide Relationships In a real sense all life is inter-related. Unitarian Universalists often look to All . . . are caught in an inescapable the Seven Principles as a guide for network of mutuality, tied in a single ethical discernment, but there is garment of destiny. Whatever affects another source that should inform our one directly, affects all indirectly. I can decisions, especially for leaders in our never be what I ought to be until you congregations: The Five Smooth are what you ought to be, and you can Stones of Liberalism as imagined by never be what you ought to be until I Unitarian theologian and ethicist James am what I ought to be. This is the inter- Luther Adams (1901–1994). The five related structure of reality. — Rev. Dr. stones refer to those scooped from the Martin Luther King Jr., Letter from the river by young David as he went to fight Birmingham Jail the giant Goliath in the Hebrew Most faith traditions have a version of Scriptures. The metaphor for today’s the Golden Rule: “Do unto others as religious liberals is: What “stones” will you would have them do unto you.” But help us take down today’s giants of that statement has the subject (you) at racism, patriarchy, environmental the center, and the other as a separate destruction, and other ills of the 21st object. True mutuality is the meeting century? and interaction of subjects creating a shared sense of meaning and agreeing ONE: Revelation Is Not Sealed on a future that benefits all.

Harvest the Power, 2nd Edition © Unitarian Universalist Association 2020 | 17 This ethic is especially helpful when The hope that can sustain us for the trying to understand cultural long haul is grounded in the belief that (mis)appropriation. Is the sharing of there is an arc to the moral universe culture consensual? Is anyone that bends toward justice, but it needs exploiting anyone else’s culture for our participation. It’s this belief that can reputational or financial gain? Is the make a way out of no way. It’s this culture being extracted out of the belief that can give us a shared context that dishonors or ignores its purpose and reason to embrace our deeper meaning? interconnection and shared destiny of It is also helpful during times of Beloved Community. disagreement or conflict. Is there time and space for everyone to share their story or opinion and for the others to listen deeply? Is there a way forward that all can agree to?

THREE: The Beloved Community Is a Just Community Our faith communities are laboratories where we practice creating Beloved Community, where our values of mutuality, interconnection, and love are made real. We do this through our covenants, calling one another to our highest aspirations with accountability to living out our promises.

FOUR: The Beloved Community Creates Justice in the World We are also called to organize and work with other communities to do the hard work of dismantling systems and structures that support patriarchy, racism, other oppressions, extraction, exploitation, co lonization, dehumanization, pollution, climate change, etc.

FIVE: We Are the Ones Who Can Bend the Arc of the Universe

Harvest the Power, 2nd Edition © Unitarian Universalist Association 2020 | 18 HANDOUT 2: Types of connected to genuine integrity and strength of character, referent power is Power easily lost. Adapted by Beth Zemsky, MA, ED, In organizations, referent power is most LICSW, from “The Bases of Social easily seen in the charismatic leader Power” by J. R. P. French and B. who excels in making others feel Raven (1959), in D. Cartwright (Ed.), comfortable in their presence. Staff Studies in Social Power (pp. 150–167). typically express their excitement about Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan. work in terms of their attraction to their Retrieved from leader’s personal characteristics and https://cdn.ymaws.com/www.uuma.org/ charisma. They commit to their work resource/collection/09E8DC6B-0E32- because of the leader’s likability, and 4E67-AC19- they base their self-esteem and sense AE44B1F93EF1/TypesofPowerOrgs.pd of accomplishment on their leader’s f approval. Charismatic leaders who lack the integrity and depth of character to Referent power: The desire for a match their charm and charisma often feeling of oneness and acceptance in a leave organizations within a few years, valued relationship. Referent power is and frequently leave a path of based on identification with, attraction destruction in their wake. Their to, or respect for the leader. Group insecurities eventually manifest members gain a sense of intrinsic themselves in the form of erratic personal satisfaction from identification decision-making and defensiveness with a referent leader. This kind of that can alienate the leader from their power relationship is dependent on the staff and their colleagues. If left inclination to work harder for someone unchecked or used as an exclusive who is liked or admired. To gain and source of influence, referent power’s maintain a leader’s approval and benefits quickly decrease and acceptance, a follower is likely to do destructively give way to its liabilities. what the leader asks, develop a similar attitude, and even imitate the leader’s Expert power: The extent of behavior. Leaders who are charming specialized skills or knowledge that and trustworthy tend to possess and followers attribute to a leader. Expert use referent power more often than power derives from group members’ those who are less personable. By assumptions that the leader possesses showing genuine concern and superior skills, knowledge, and abilities. demonstrating a general level of This expertise enables leaders to respect for others, referent power tends perform tasks and provides them with a to increase early in the relationship better understanding of the world between leader and follower. However, around them. However, expertise is if the charisma of a leader is never only a source of power if others are

Harvest the Power, 2nd Edition © Unitarian Universalist Association 2020 | 19 dependent on the leader for the skill, and life skills is also an area in which a knowledge, or ability the leader leader may influence others. possesses. The more important a problem is to the follower, and the more Positional power: The authority the leader is perceived to be an expert granted to someone stemming from a in that area, the greater power the position in a group or organization. This expert leader will have. Like referent type of power stems from an authority’s power, expert power may come more right to require and demand easily in the short term, yet prove compliance. It is dependent on the troublesome in the long term. Initially, official position held by the person the leader’s perceived expertise is exercising it. typically strong, but a leader must Positional power may be derived from balance expertise with wisdom and not prevailing cultural values that assign exaggerate the extent of their expertise. power to some individuals (e.g., respect As time progresses, followers learn for one’s elders), from social structures more, and a leader’s expertise may be that grant position power to some questioned and challenged; the power people (e.g., British royalty), or through of expertise can diminish. one’s position in a hierarchy. Positional While expertise can be maintained power may also be granted to someone through continual formal study and consciously or unconsciously based on training, research suggests that a their social identity (e.g White, male, convincing way to demonstrate heterosexual, Christian, etc.). The expertise is to solve problems important amount of positional power a leader to followers and to provide sound might have is likely related to the advice on a consistent basis. When a leader’s scope of authority. For leader has a lot of expert power and is example, managers typically have more trusted by followers as a reliable authority than staff members, and a resource for wisdom and information, staff member typically has more the leader can have tremendous authority than community members. influence over the long term. Yet, it is not uncommon for a leader to Leaders are generally granted expert make requests of someone who may power in fields in which they have technically fall outside their scope of reputable experience and education. authority and for that person to willingly While the educational field, and the comply. ability to understand and effectively A leader’s scope of authority is usually communicate educational content, is an defined in the work environment by obvious example, the ability to documents such as organizational communicate experience and wisdom charts, contracts, and job descriptions. about interpersonal problem-solving However, ambiguity about the scope of a leader’s authority is common. If managers, staff members, and the

Harvest the Power, 2nd Edition © Unitarian Universalist Association 2020 | 20 community define the boundaries of and reward. Leaders most commonly positional power differently, then use reward power with a promise to conflict is likely to develop. This conflict give staff something in exchange for can interfere with the accomplishments carrying out an assigned task, such as of an organizational or educational a grade, a special privilege, or a form of purpose. recognition. Precisely how this is Positional power can easily lead to carried out can significantly affect the tension because of its close association outcome. When leaders offer the right with the position and not the person; rewards—that is, rewards that are the position itself may grant power to valued, fair, and in line with what they uncooperative and difficult people. can deliver—reward power is effective. However, over time, positional power Being true to one’s word and using becomes less useful if it is not practiced rewards in a non-manipulative fashion in a manner consistent with agreed-on are also essential. norms of behavior and in an The overuse of reward power by a environment where communication is leader may drive followers to view the clear. While the position of leader holds relationship in purely transactional respect and authority, the personal terms (e.g., “I will do X because you will nature of some positions do not allow a give me Y”). Rather than use rewards leader to wield a great deal of power. in an impersonal way, leaders can most Leaders generally have the authority to effectively use rewards to recognize ask much of their staff, but they must accomplishments within the context of do so in a way perceived to be fair and referent power. respectful, which often involves the use of referent and expert power. So, while Coercive power: The ability to punish the position itself grants the leader if expectations are not met. Coercive some positional power, exercising power is the capacity to dispense positional power exclusively is not likely punishments to those who do not to be useful over time. comply with requests or demands. People exercise coercive power Reward power: The ability to reward. through reliance on physical strength, Reward power is based on the belief verbal facility, or the ability to grant or that a leader controls important withhold emotional support or tangible resources and rewards that the follower resources from others. Coercive power wants. Reward power depends not only provides a leader with the means to on a leader’s actual control over physically harm, bully, humiliate, or rewards, but also on the follower’s deny love, affection, or resources to perceived value of those rewards. others. Coercive power in the Reward power has been shown to be workplace includes the ability (implied most effective when followers see a or real) to fire, demote, or transfer direct connection between performance others to undesirable positions.

Harvest the Power, 2nd Edition © Unitarian Universalist Association 2020 | 21 Coercive power can be useful for deterring detrimental behavior and at times when compliance is absolutely necessary, such as in a crisis situation. However, in most situations, coercive power should be used predominantly as a last resort, as it has significant negative side effects. Coercive methods have been linked to a number of dysfunctional group processes, including dislike, anger, resentment, rejection, conflict, and decreases in motivation, and self-esteem.

Harvest the Power, 2nd Edition © Unitarian Universalist Association 2020 | 22 WORKSHOP 2: retreat, consider including Alternate Activity 2, News You Can UUse! FROM “I” TO “WE” Wisdom is not a fixed quality. It GOALS circulates among us. — Sister This workshop will: Souljah, contemporary author, • Explore the practice of activist, hip-hop recording artist, and covenant and its centrality in film producer our religious tradition INTRODUCTION • Introduce the work of Juana This workshop focuses on the Bordas and give participants relationships that are the center of our the opportunity to explore congregations, beginning with a deeper what is meant by “we” culture exploration of covenant. It asks participants to examine their • Invite participants to explore congregational culture to discover their own experiences of which voices and perspectives are at mattering and marginality the center of congregational life, which • Ask participants to consider are on the margins, and why that the responsibility of leaders matters. In this workshop, participants to put relationship at the are introduced to the work of Juana center of congregational life Bordas, author of Salsa, Soul, and Spirit: Leadership in a Multicultural Age, • Ask participants to reflect on as they consider the responsibility of the responsibility of leaders to cultivate a “we” culture, with congregational leaders to relationships and covenant at the center the perspectives and center, rather than an “I” culture of voices of those who are often autonomous individuals. Finally, on the margins. participants consider the experiences of people in the congregation with LEARNING OBJECTIVES marginalized identities, including those Participants will: in your leadership group, using the question, “How does our congregation • Explore the qualities of covenant, limit the expression and full inclusion of and explore its role in those with marginalized identities in congregational life and in the order to make those at the center more practices of leadership comfortable?” • Share experiences of mattering and If you have time or are doing this marginality workshop as part of a leadership • Apply a “we” culture lens to congregational life, and identify

Harvest the Power, 2nd Edition © Unitarian Universalist Association 2020 | 23 practices that might strengthen “we” Unitarian Universalism. Read some or culture all of the essays and responses in the book Centering: Navigating Race, • Reflect on the responsibility of Authenticity, and Power in Ministry leadership to center voices and and/or read responses to a UU World perspectives who are often on the article that did harm to transgender margins of congregational culture, Unitarian Universalists by centering the and identify and name work that perspective of a cisgender person. needs to be done in that regard. WORKSHOP-AT-A-GLANCE Prepare to be aware, as you lead this workshop, that even as the group Activity Minutes discusses marginalization, some participants are members of historically Opening 10 marginalized groups and/or experience Activity 1: What Is 25 marginalization within the Covenant? congregation. How will you hold space for the complexity of individuals and of Activity 2: Mattering and 25 the group, in a way that will support the Marginality marginalized members? Prepare Activity 3: From “I” to “We” 30 yourself to take care to not assume a discussion is about “others” who are Activity 4: The Margin, the 25 not present. Center Faith in Action: Seeking WORKSHOP PLAN Voices from the Margins OPENING (5 minutes) Closing 5 MATERIALS Alternate Activity 1: News 40  Small worship table You Can UUse!  Chalice, candle, and lighter or LED SPIRITUAL PREPARATION battery-operated candle Journal about your own experiences of PREPARATION mattering and marginality, or share • Set the chalice on the worship table. them with your co-leader. Reflect on DESCRIPTION how you were called to offer your Gather the group in a circle. Invite each wisdom, skills, and creativity as a person in turn to say their name and workshop facilitator for Harvest the pronouns, and, if they wish, to share Power. Was that an experience of anything that has come up for them as mattering? they thought more deeply about their Thoughtfully consider the voices of own leadership story or their “What Is those who are often marginalized in My Faith?” creation. Ask a participant to

Harvest the Power, 2nd Edition © Unitarian Universalist Association 2020 | 24 light the chalice as you or another Covenant is a way of articulating participant read these opening words shared values that: by Victoria Safford: ▪ clarifies what the congregation values most highly We are bound by covenant, ▪ defines the promises we make each to each and each to all, by together what theologian Rebecca Parker ▪ defines how members will act calls “freely chosen and life- with one another sustaining interdependence.” • Write on newsprint, but do not post: The central question for us is ▪ Thinking back, what events or not, “What do we believe?” but people were part of that turning more, “What do we believe in? point? To what larger love, to what ▪ What challenges presented people, principles, values, and themselves? dreams shall we be committed? ▪ What gifts and skills emerged To whom, to what, are we from the congregation’s leaders accountable?” and members that helped Repeat the second part of the quote, navigate that time? starting with “The central question for ▪ When did the leaders realize that us...” Invite participants to reflect for a the event in question was a few moments on these questions. turning point? When did the ACTIVITY 1: What Is congregation realize it? Covenant? (25 minutes) ▪ Did the congregation’s leaders MATERIALS affirm a “we” culture? If so, how did that affirmation make a  Newsprint, markers, and wall-safe tape difference?  Group covenant from Workshop 1 DESCRIPTION Call participants’ attention to the  Handout 1, Congregational newsprint sheet with the covenant they Covenants made with one another in Workshop 1. PREPARATION Ask: • Obtain a copy of your congregation’s covenant (if you • How is this covenant an expression have one). Add the text to Handout of our intention to engage in this 1, Congregational Covenants. program, not just as individuals, but • Copy Handout 1 for all participants. as a group responsible to and • Post the covenant the group supported by one another? generated in Workshop 1, Activity 1. • What does our covenant say about • Write this definition of “covenant” on the questions raised in the opening newsprint and post: reading: “What do we believe in? To

Harvest the Power, 2nd Edition © Unitarian Universalist Association 2020 | 25 what larger love, to what people, ACTIVITY 2: Mattering and principles, values, and dreams shall we be committed? To whom, to Marginality (25 minutes) what, are we accountable?” MATERIALS Distribute Handout 1, Congregational  Paper and pens or pencils Covenants. Invite participants to read  Clock or timer aloud together either your  Bell or chime congregation’s covenant or one of the commonly used covenants on the PREPARATION handout. Invite participants to choose a • Ensure that participants have conversation partner to consider the appropriate surfaces for writing. following questions: DESCRIPTION • What are the ways that members of This activity is adapted from an our congregation have obligations to exercise developed by Dr. L. Lee one another? Knefelkamp, described in “Integrating • How does our covenant center Jewish Issues into the Teaching of people, principles, values, and Psychology” by Evelyn Torton Beck, dreams rather than beliefs? Julie L. Goldberg, and L. Lee Allow 10 minutes for this conversation. Knefelkamp, Chapter 17 in Teaching Gender and Multicultural Awareness Reconvene the group. Indicate the (edited by Phyllis Bronstein and definition of “covenant” you have Kathryn Quina, Washington, DC: APA posted. Engage the group in Press, 2003). discussion, using these questions: Distribute paper and writing • How does our Harvest the Power implements. Invite participants to covenant meet these criteria? Is journal their responses to the prompts there anything we should add to it? as you read them aloud. Allow the time • How does our congregation’s suggested for writing after each prompt: covenant meet these criteria? • Consider a time in your life when • Who is stated as the “we” or “us” in your presence, your skills, and your our congregational covenant? ideas really mattered. What were Whose inclusion in the covenant is the circumstances? How did you implied? know that your contributions mattered? How did you respond to • Who might not feel included in our the situation in that moment? How congregation’s “we” or “us”? did you respond, going forward? (Allow four minutes for journaling. Ring a bell or chime at the end of

Harvest the Power, 2nd Edition © Unitarian Universalist Association 2020 | 26 four minutes.) was in play? (Remind participants of the Types of Power handout and • Consider a time in your life when discussion in Workshop 1.) you felt marginalized—a time when you believed that your presence, • How does this exercise offer insight your ideas, your skills, and your into who might feel excluded from opinions were not all that important. the “we” in our congregational What were the circumstances? covenant? What gave you the impression that your contributions were not really ACTIVITY 3: From “I” to valued? How did you respond to the “We” (30 minutes) situation in that moment? How did MATERIALS you respond, going forward? (Allow four minutes for journaling. Ring a  Newsprint, markers, and wall-safe tape bell or chime at the end of four  Handout 2, I to We: From Individualism to minutes.) Collective Identity • As you contrast the two situations, PREPARATION what strikes you? What was your • Copy Handout 2 for all participants. level of engagement, energy, • Decide which areas of your creativity, and imagination in each congregational culture you will ask case? What conclusions can you each group of three to consider. draw from the two different Depending on your context, you experiences? (Allow three minutes might choose leadership meetings, for journaling. Ring a bell or chime worship, family ministry, social at the end of three minutes.) justice ministry, paths to Invite participants to turn to another membership, hospitality to visitors, person and share as much of their or stewardship. experiences and conclusions as they are comfortable sharing. Tell DESCRIPTION participants that they will each have two Say: minutes. After two minutes, ring a bell Unitarian Universalist leaders are or chime to remind pairs to switch examining how individualism in our speakers. congregations mirrors some of the Reconvene the group. Ask: unhealthy practices of the dominant • What conclusions can you draw white U.S. culture. In her book from the two different experiences? Salsa, Soul, and Spirit: Leadership in a Multicultural Age, Juana Bordas • What role did power play in your explores leadership approaches in experiences of mattering and Latinx, Black, and Indigenous marginality? What kind of power communities and invites those who

Harvest the Power, 2nd Edition © Unitarian Universalist Association 2020 | 27 are not part of these communities to some notes on this discussion for later learn from them. She writes of “we” use. culture in these communities, • What suggestions and observations contrasting it with the “I” culture that from this exercise might we want to prevails in the U.S. today. consider more thoroughly at a future Ask for examples of “I” culture— business meeting or retreat? meaning, individualism—in our congregation, and take three or four • How might we incorporate this quick responses. Distribute Handout 2, exercise into our conversations and and ask participants to read the discussions with the leaders and descriptions of “we” culture. Invite brief volunteers of various committees observations and comments. and groups in our congregation?

Note that both the congregational ACTIVITY 4: The Margin, covenant and the Harvest the Power covenant call us away from a focus on the Center (25 minutes) “I” and toward a more relational “we” MATERIALS culture. Invite the group to explore what  Newsprint, markers, and wall-safe tape congregational practices would support and strengthen a “we” culture. Form  Handout 3, The Margin, the Center groups of three participants and give  Participants’ copies of Handout 2, I to We: each group newsprint and markers. From Individualism to Collective Identity Assign each group an area of PREPARATION congregational culture to consider. Ask them to think about how your • Copy Handout 3 for all participants. congregation currently centers people and relationships in that area of DESCRIPTION congregational life. What practices Invite participants to remember the might be initiated or strengthened to experiences they shared, earlier in the build relationships between people? workshop, of mattering and of being What practices might invite those with marginalized. Ask: “What do your marginalized identities to bring their experiences suggest about the whole selves to this faith community? importance of leaders attending to both Tell groups that they will have 15 the culture of their meetings and the minutes to work. culture of their congregation?” Ask each group to post their newsprint Introduce Handout 3 by explaining that and share their suggestions with the in March 2019, UU World published a whole group. story that caused significant harm to transgender Unitarian Universalists. Ask the group to discuss the following Say that the handout is an excerpt from questions. Invite a participant to take CB Beal’s response, which, although

Harvest the Power, 2nd Edition © Unitarian Universalist Association 2020 | 28 written in response to a particular conclusion, you may wish to repeat this situation, makes a larger point about quote from Handout 3: inclusion. Do not allow any When we UU’s speak of inclusion conversation about the specific but we only mean that people are situation, in order to keep the focus on welcome among us when their this larger point about inclusion. identities do not cause us confusion Distribute the handout, and invite or discomfort, we are not speaking participants to read it. of inclusion. Inclusion without Lead a discussion on Handout 2 and allowing people to be present in Handout 3, using these questions to their natural state is like simply help guide the discussion: pouring more milk into rice pudding. It creates a larger mushier dish, • What is Beal saying? What is their which, while still palatable and call to Unitarian Universalists? maybe even delicious for some, is • What are the connections between not, in fact, a whole meal. It is not Beal’s post and Juana Bordas’s list equity. It is not justice. of the characteristics of “we” culture? FAITH IN ACTION: Seeking • How does this writing deepen, or Voices from the Margins challenge, our understanding of DESCRIPTION covenant in Unitarian Universalism? Ask yourself what groups, • In what ways does our congregation constituencies, or individuals in your limit the expression and full congregation might consider inclusion of those with marginalized themselves to be “on the margins.” identities in order to make those at Compare your reflections with those of the center more comfortable? other congregational leaders. Together, consider the voices that may be • How might we better center the missing or muted as your congregation perspectives of those in our makes decisions about direction. What leadership group and those in the creativity and innovation might you be larger congregation who hold missing? What might be some ways to marginalized identities? How do we engage those who are currently on the live out the covenantal commitment margins to bring their gifts to the that “all of us means ALL of us?” congregation? As needed, steer participants away from the particulars of the UU World CLOSING (5 minutes) article and toward Beal’s broader points PREPARATION about what inclusion means. To re- focus the conversation or to provide a

Harvest the Power, 2nd Edition © Unitarian Universalist Association 2020 | 29 • Optional: Customize the Taking It • What would you change if you were Home handout for your group to lead this workshop again? How before emailing or photocopying it. would you do it differently?

• Copy Taking It Home for all • What did you learn about yourself participants, or plan to email it. as an individual while facilitating this workshop? What did you learn DESCRIPTION about yourself as a leader? Distribute copies of Taking It Home or Look ahead to the next workshop in this tell the group when you will email it. program. What materials do we need to Thank participants for their willingness request or gather? What other to share from the heart in this workshop preparation is needed? and to offer one another the gift of deep listening. Close with these words from TAKING IT HOME Orlanda Brugnola: Wisdom is not a fixed quality. It circulates among us. — Sister As we move through life Souljah, contemporary author, we find ourselves activist, hip-hop recording artist, and always wise and newly foolish film producer we ask that our mistakes be small Invite family members or friends to ones explore their own experiences of and not hurtful ones mattering and marginality, setting aside We ask that as we gain experience time to share those experiences with we do not forget our innocence one another and to reflect on how for they are both part of the whole. systems of power and privilege were LEADER REFLECTION woven into those experiences. Read stories and posts that include voices AND PLANNING and perspectives of people whose Consider and discuss these questions experiences are not centered in our with your co-facilitator: congregational culture, starting with the resources listed in “Find Out More.” • Looking at each activity in this You might also explore the EqUUal workshop, what worked as well as Access website to find out how to or better than you had anticipated? center the perspectives of those with What did not work as well as you disabilities. had anticipated? Find Out More • What issues came up for you, personally, in trying any activity You may wish to add resources that yourself? What came up in the informed this workshop to your process of facilitating? congregation’s leadership library:

Harvest the Power, 2nd Edition © Unitarian Universalist Association 2020 | 30 • Centering: Navigating Race, DESCRIPTION Authenticity, and Power in Ministry, In this activity, small groups write brief edited by Mitra Rahnema (Skinner pieces describing the doings of their House Books, 2017) 10-years-in-the-future congregation, one that actively cultivates a “we” • Salsa, Soul, and Spirit: Leadership culture and puts relationship at the in a Multicultural Age by Juana center of its religious and spiritual Bordas (Berrett-Koehler Publishers, practice. Inc., 2007) Tell participants that they are going to ALTERNATE ACTIVITY 1: travel 10 years into the future of their News You Can UUse (40 congregation. Imagine that the congregation actively cultivates a “we” minutes) culture and considers attention to MATERIALS relationship a primary religious and  Card stock spiritual practice. Show them the tent signs for various aspects of  Newsprint and markers congregational life. Invite them to  Writing paper and pens or pencils choose the one that most interests or suits them. They will work in small PREPARATION groups to write either a congregational • If you’d like to have small groups newsletter article or one or more social work in separate rooms, arrange to media posts that announce and explain use as many rooms as you think the activities of the congregation, as if you’ll need. today were 10 years in the future. Tell • Make up to five table tents by small groups that they have 20 minutes folding pieces of card stock in half. for this part of the activity, and ask Label each with one of these them to move with their tent sign to the headings: SPIRITUAL/ FAITH tables or rooms you have prepared. DEVELOPMENT, WORSHIP, SOCIAL JUSTICE, MUSIC, and After 20 minutes, reconvene the entire FACILITY. Or, use other headings group. Invite groups to share their that are more appropriate for your writings. congregation. Ask participants to consider how, as • Set up five tables, large enough for leaders, they might move the participants to spread out and congregation toward the culture they collaborate. Equip each table with have imagined. You might suggest that one or two sheets of newsprint, by imagining the future, they have writing paper, markers, and pens or begun the journey. pencils.

Harvest the Power, 2nd Edition © Unitarian Universalist Association 2020 | 31 HANDOUT 1: Love is the spirit of this church, CONGREGATIONAL and service is its law. COVENANTS This is our great covenant: To dwell together in peace, Questions to consider: To seek the truth in love, • What are the ways that members of And to help one another. our congregation have obligations to one another? — James Vila Blake • How does our covenant center people, principles, values, and In the freedom of truth, dreams rather than beliefs? And the spirit of Jesus, OUR CONGREGATION’S COVENANT We unite for the worship of God [Leader: Add the text of your congregation’s covenant of right And the service of all. relations to this handout before copying — Charles Gordon Ames it for the group.}

COVENANTS COMMONLY USED IN UNITARIAN UNIVERSALIST CONGREGATIONS

Love is the doctrine of this church, The quest of truth is its sacrament, And service is its prayer. To dwell together in peace, To seek knowledge in freedom, To serve human need, To the end that all souls shall grow into harmony with the Divine— Thus do we covenant with each other and with God. — Arranged by L. Griswold Williams

Harvest the Power, 2nd Edition © Unitarian Universalist Association 2020 | 32 HANDOUT 2: I TO WE: FROM INDIVIDUALISM TO COLLECTIVE IDENTITY Excerpted from Salsa, Soul, and Spirit: Leadership in a Multicultural Age by Juana Bordas (Berrett-Koehler Publishers, Inc., 2007, pp. 45–46).

Characteristics of We Cultures We cultures have a strong sense of belonging and sticking together. We cultures share everything. We cultures work together so everyone benefits. We cultures center on people. We cultures are collective and relish togetherness. We cultures are impeccably inclusive. We cultures put benefiting the whole before the individual. In We cultures, the “I” exists only in relationship to others, not as a separate entity.

Harvest the Power, 2nd Edition © Unitarian Universalist Association 2020 | 33 HANDOUT 3: THE MARGIN, equity. One of my more popular workshop experiences is Mind Your T’s THE CENTER and Q’s: Supporting Transgender/Non- Excerpted from “Centering the Binary People. Marginalized: Symphony and Triptich,” a post on Medium by CB Beal, written in response to a Spring 2019 UU World During those 20 years, as part of article.* preparation for a conversation about a hire in a congregation, I was told, “Don’t be too butch.” The thinking went like I. The Margin, The Center this: If I was going to be a lesbian/queer … person working with children in a Sunday school, I should downplay my I used to refer to myself as a masculinity. “masculine of center, tomboyfarmgrrl, butch, queer, woman-ish type person.” That was quite a litany of words needed I didn’t have to put on a feminine dress, to describe my internal understanding they promised, but really, the button-up of my gender. I now find that “non- shirts and ties should probably go. It binary” or “genderqueer” is much tidier, was also recommended that I use the and accurate. We have developed a name Cindy and avoid my preferred level of understanding and nuance in nickname, CB, because “Cindy is more our language that means we don’t have professional.” Given my social location to work so hard to name as a queer masculine of center person, approximations of identity; we can hold I was encouraged to maximize some common language. “professionalism.” I was encouraged to It’s ok for cisgender people to be let my more feminine partner choose confused, to learn as they go . . . we all my clothes and dress me. Since I don’t did, we all do. What’s problematic is understand women’s clothing, when I when cisgender people speak to took this advice I adorned my body for cisgender people about trans people someone else. When I was wearing my when we’re right over here. own clothes, when I dressed so that I felt the most myself, voices around me suggested I made them uncomfortable. I’ve been a UU religious professional And so it followed that I should myself for nearly 20 years, both within be less comfortable in order to attend to congregations and as a consultant. I the comfort of people who do not have teach consent and sexuality education, to live in my body. preemptive radical inclusion, and other workshops supporting justice and

Harvest the Power, 2nd Edition © Unitarian Universalist Association 2020 | 34 Expecting some people to modify themselves for others’ comfort is a poor … starting point for engagement with a faith tradition, and it’s further In the practice of preemptive radical complexified when it is our calling, inclusion, which is how I frame this and/or our source of income. work, it is our responsibility as leaders to continually understand that who “We“

are is made up of multitudes. Our When we UU’s speak of inclusion but responsibility is to work harder than we we only mean that people are welcome would otherwise to ensure that our among us when their identities do not privilege has not prevented us from cause us confusion or discomfort, we perceiving the very thing we are are not speaking of inclusion. Inclusion attempting to unveil. Our responsibility without allowing people to be present in is to learn about the ways our privilege their natural state is like simply pouring hides reality from us and fools us into more milk into rice pudding. It creates a believing we have accurate insight. Our larger mushier dish, which, while still responsibility is to practice humility and palatable and maybe even delicious for curiosity. Our responsibility is to bear some, is not, in fact, a whole meal. It is witness to others of us who are not equity. It is not justice. marginalized and oppressed, to center them, to hold up their lives and

experiences. To shhhhhhhhhhhh (not When we speak of inclusion but we talk, just listen) much more often than mean that white people will write about we are used to. the lives of black people, that cisgender people will write about the lives of transgender people, that heterosexual ------people will write about the lives of * The UU World story, “After L, G and queer people, that able-bodied people B,” focused on the comfort, discomfort, will write about the lives and and learning process of cisgender experiences of people who are disabled people, rather than providing by our society, we are doing the transgender Unitarian Universalists a opposite of inclusion. It is this which space to speak and write of their own causes me the most harm. experiences. The article, the magazine editor’s apology, and links to several responses from transgender Unitarian … Universalists can be found on the UU World website. III.

Harvest the Power, 2nd Edition © Unitarian Universalist Association 2020 | 35 WORKSHOP 3: ARE WE • Lift up examples of turning points, and invite participants to recall their DOING THE RIGHT own turning points THINGS? • Explore ways that congregations can experience turning points The prophetic liberal church is the church where persons think and • Provide an opportunity to name the work together to interpret the signs gifts and skills that the participants’ of the times in the light of their faith. leadership team can bring to help — James Luther Adams, 20th- navigate turning points century Unitarian theologian • Introduce and explore the difference between management and INTRODUCTION leadership. This workshop introduces the idea of turning points—times when events or LEARNING OBJECTIVES circumstances lead one’s life in a new Participants will: direction. After identifying personal • Identify their own turning points and turning points, participants consider moments of grace conditions that can lead a congregation • Explore turning points in their own to and through a turning point. congregation and another Participants examine both their own congregation congregation’s recent history and a • Identify the gifts and skills present in story about a turning point in another their own leadership team congregation, identifying gifts and skills • Practice applying what they learn brought by individual leaders and by about the difference between the leadership team. Turning their management and leadership. attention to their own team, they • Investigate power and its role in identify and celebrate the gifts and faithful leadership. skills that they collectively bring to face whatever challenges and possible WORKSHOP-AT-A-GLANCE turning points lie ahead. Activity Minutes Participants learn about the difference between management and leadership, Opening 5 as defined by congregational consultant Activity 1: Turning Points 30 Gil Rendle, and use a fishbowl role- playing activity to discover the Activity 2: Practicing 25 difference between asking, “Are we Reconciliation – A doing things right?” and “Are we doing Reflection [the] right things?” Activity 3: What Gifts Do We 15 GOALS Bring? This workshop will:

Harvest the Power, 2nd Edition © Unitarian Universalist Association 2020 | 36 Activity 4: Leadership and 30 • Set the chalice on the worship table. Management • Post the covenant created in Workshop 1 where all participants Activity 5: Adaptive 10 can see it. Challenges DESCRIPTION Faith in Action: Responding varies Gather the group in a circle. Ask a to Adaptive Challenges participant to light the chalice as you or another participant read the opening Closing 5 words, “A Prayer for This Gathering” by Alternate Activity 1: 30 Laila Ibrahim: Leadership and Dear God, Spirit of Connection and Management Alternate Creation, Scenario Bless this community, gathered in hope SPIRITUAL PREPARATION and love for our world, for one another, Reflect on the turning points in your and for ourselves. own life. Share some of what you discover about yourself with your co- We gather here longing to create a facilitator or with a trusted friend. more connected and more just world. Examine each of the “player” Help us to speak the truth with respect. instructions in the role play for Activity Help us to listen with love. 4, and imagine yourself, in turn, as each of those people. Find in each of Help us to be patient. them the desire to do what is best for Help us to be forgiving. the congregation, remembering that each leader has an important Help us to know that here, as in all contribution to make to the human endeavors, mistakes are conversation. inevitable and perfection is impossible. WORKSHOP PLAN And, oh yes, remind us not to take ourselves too seriously. OPENING (5 minutes) Amen. MATERIALS Review the posted covenant.  Small worship table  Chalice, candle, and lighter or LED ACTIVITY 1: Turning Points battery-operated candle (30 minutes)  Covenant created in Workshop 1 MATERIALS  Wall-safe tape  Story 1, A Path Diverted PREPARATION  Optional: Story 2, Rise in Body or in

Harvest the Power, 2nd Edition © Unitarian Universalist Association 2020 | 37 Spirit Invite participants to share their stories with another person, explaining what  Clock or timer happened and how their self-perception  Bell or chime changed. Tell them that each person PREPARATION will have about three minutes to share. • Read both stories. Choose one for Encourage participants to practice deep this activity. Decide whether you listening, allowing the other person to might ask a volunteer to read the tell their story without interruption. story aloud, or plan to read it Ring a bell or chime when three yourself. You may wish to provide a minutes have passed and again when reader with a copy of the story the second three minutes have passed. ahead of time. Reconvene the group. Invite • Write on newsprint, but do not post: participants to think of a word or phrase ▪ Thinking back, what events or that captures the essence of their people were part of that turning experience. Wait a minute for people to point? think of their word or phrase, then ask ▪ What challenges presented each person in turn to share it with the themselves? group. ▪ What gifts and skills emerged Invite participants to consider if their from the congregation’s leaders congregation has had turning points in and members that helped its recent history—moments that navigate that time? pointed to a whole new set of ▪ When did the leaders realize that possibilities or a whole new direction. the event in question was a Post the questions you have written. turning point? When did the Lead a discussion that invites reflection congregation realize it? on those moments. ▪ Did the congregation’s leaders affirm a “we” culture? If so, how ACTIVITY 2: Practicing did that affirmation make a Reconciliation – A difference? Reflection (25 minutes) DESCRIPTION Gather the group, and ask them to MATERIALS listen as a participant reads a story  Story 3, Practicing Reconciliation – A aloud. Reflection After the reading, invite participants to  Newsprint, markers, and wall-safe tape recall a time in their lives when an action, event, or chance meeting sent  Newsprint with questions from Activity 1, their lives in a new and unexpected posted where all participants can see direction. Allow a minute for silent PREPARATION reflection.

Harvest the Power, 2nd Edition © Unitarian Universalist Association 2020 | 38 • Decide whether you might ask a  Lined and unlined paper volunteer to read the story aloud, or  Pens, pencils, and color pencils plan to read it yourself. You may wish to provide a reader with a copy PREPARATION of the story ahead of time. • Set out the supplies. • Write on newsprint, and post it • Ensure that participants have where all participants can see it: appropriate surfaces for writing or “Reconciliation as a Spiritual drawing. Discipline,” UU World, March/April DESCRIPTION 2004 In this activity, participants consider the www.uuworld.org/life/articles/14270. gifts and skills contributed by members shtml of their leadership team. DESCRIPTION Distribute paper and writing or drawing Participants hear a first-person story by implements, and invite participants to Paula Cole Jones, abridged from her name some of the skills and gifts their article “Reconciliation as a Spiritual leadership team brings that can help Practice” in the March/April 2004 issue navigate turning points. If needed, of UU World. prompt participants by suggesting Invite listeners, as they listen to the curiosity, tenacity, budgeting skills, and story, to reflect on the questions they communication skills. Encourage them just discussed about their own to do something creative if they wish, congregation’s recent history, and to such as creating a drawing, a poem, or consider how Jones and other the ingredients for a recipe. Allow 10 members of the All Souls leadership minutes for participants to write, draw, team might answer those same or otherwise create. questions about this story. Ask each person in turn to share their Read the story aloud or have a representation of their team’s gifts and volunteer read it. skills. Take a moment to celebrate all that people bring to the challenges that Discuss the posted questions, focusing are before you! this time on Jones’s story. As you conclude your discussion, point ACTIVITY 4: Leadership out the posted title of Jones’s piece, the and Management (30 edition of UU World, and the URL, minutes) where they can read the entire article. MATERIALS ACTIVITY 3: What Gifts Do  Leader Resource 1, Accessibilities Audit We Bring? (15 minutes) Scenario MATERIALS  Newsprint, markers, and wall-safe tape

Harvest the Power, 2nd Edition © Unitarian Universalist Association 2020 | 39 PREPARATION anything new or do anything • Prepare Leader Resource 1 differently. according to the instructions (cut the Rendle says that leadership, in individual role play directions apart). contrast, asks the question, “Are we • Arrange seating in a “fishbowl”: a doing the right things?” Asking this tight circle of six chairs (or six chairs question creates a necessary around a small table), with seating unsettledness in congregations around the outside of the circle for because it makes congregants look the other participants. more deeply into what they are doing. • Write the following questions on newsprint, and post it where all Both leadership and management are participants can see it: necessary, but leaders need to focus ▪ When is the group asking on leading, and not seeking simple management questions? harmony or satisfaction. ▪ When are they asking leadership Convey the idea that congregations, questions? like individuals, are sometimes faced ▪ How might this scenario become with the unexpected when events or a turning point for the issues seem to call for moving in a new congregation? direction. Often, congregations face DESCRIPTION issues that present both management In this activity, six participants role-play and leadership challenges. When members of a congregation’s governing leaders have the courage to ask not board faced with a significant issue. only “Are we doing things right?” but Each role-player is assigned a specific also “Are we doing the right things?,” perspective or agenda to bring to the the results can mean a turning point for discussion. the congregation and its work in the Say: world. Alban Institute consultant Gil Rendle Tell participants that they will do a describes management as fishbowl role play. Six volunteers will “something that makes the role-play members of a congregation’s organization operate smoothly.” He governing board, faced with a says that management tries to significant issue. Those not in the role answer the question, “Are we doing play will pay close attention to the things right?” If this is your primary governing board’s discussion. question, then what you are doing is Ask for six volunteers to be the trying to “satisfy” a congregation. congregation’s governing board. Give Rendle notes that a completely them each a slip of paper from Leader satisfied congregation is difficult to Resource 1 that they will bring to a lead because they don’t want to try discussion of the issue. Point out the

Harvest the Power, 2nd Edition © Unitarian Universalist Association 2020 | 40 posted questions, and ask the cultural, and spiritual capacity to meet remaining participants to keep them in problems successfully, according to our mind as they observe the role play. values and purposes. It often requires clarification and integration of Introduce the scenario: competing values. Your congregation is planning to do DESCRIPTION some major work to repair the Introduce the concept of adaptive foundation of the building and to challenge to the group. Point out the upgrade the space. You’ve had a posted newsprint, and read the successful capital campaign and have definition to the group. Tell them that raised nearly enough money—but not this definition comes from the work of quite enough. Now you have heard Ron Heifitz, director of the Leadership from local government officials that you Education Project at Harvard’s will not be granted a building permit Kennedy School of Government. Read until you have addressed some major the definition a second time, this time accessibility issues in your building. underlining the words developing, Allow discussion for 10 minutes or until capacity, meet problems, and values. the role play seems to reach a natural Invite participants to suggest some stopping point. Invite those on the adaptive challenges faced by our outside of the fishbowl to respond to society. Ask, “What are some events or the posted questions. Record their issues that could lead to a turning point responses on another sheet of in how we proceed as a society?” newsprint. After those on the outside of the fishbowl have spoken, ask the role After they have considered some of players to reflect on their experience. society’s adaptive challenges, invite Add their observations to the newsprint them to name some adaptive list of responses. challenges facing their congregation. Ask: “What are some challenges that ACTIVITY 5: Adaptive will require our congregation to develop Challenges (10 minutes) some new organizational, cultural, or spiritual capacities? What events or MATERIALS issues could lead to a turning point in  Newsprint, markers, and wall-safe tape how we proceed as a congregation?” PREPARATION FAITH IN ACTION: • Write this definition on a sheet of Responding to Adaptive newsprint, and post it where all participants can see: Challenges An “adaptive challenge” is one that DESCRIPTION requires developing the organizational, Explore the UUA’s descriptions of

Harvest the Power, 2nd Edition © Unitarian Universalist Association 2020 | 41 Breakthrough Congregations. The UUA Distribute copies of Taking It Home or Breakthrough Congregations program tell the group when you will email it. “inspires and supports spiritual vitality Say: in Unitarian Universalist communities by showcasing new models of vitality How many of you have thrown a coin into a and successful approaches to leading fountain and made a wish? Some of us change.” As you explore, consider: may have a superstitious idea that if we keep our wish a secret, it will magically • What were the challenges facing come true. When I throw coins into a this congregation? fountain, I usually don’t remember what I • What questions did they ask? wished for, and so I don’t know if those wishes ever come true. • What adaptive challenges are they addressing? Today, I want to give you an idea for a new way to make wishes. I’m going to give you • What were some of their turning each a penny. Hold your penny in your points? hand, and wish something not for yourself, Ask yourself how your congregation is but for this congregation. (or might be) finding new and better Now I invite each of you to give that penny ways to meet the needs of people who to someone else and share your wish are currently underserved or not served aloud. at all in our religious communities. What questions are you asking? What (Pause.) adaptive challenges do you face? What You just gave another person your would it take to move your hopes and dreams for the congregation toward a turning point? congregation, and you just received someone else’s hopes and dreams. CLOSING (5 minutes) They have given you an invitation to MATERIALS help them with their wish, and you  A penny for each participant have invited them to help you. Pass your pennies around again. PREPARATION • Optional: Customize the Taking It (Pause.) Home handout for your group Imagine doing it again. And again. before emailing or photocopying it. So many wishes and hopes and • Copy Taking It Home for all dreams passing through so many participants, or plan to email it. hands. May you all be ready to help one another fulfill those wishes. I DESCRIPTION hope you will also tell others outside This activity was developed for this room what your wish is so they children, but it works well for adults too. can help you fulfill it.

Harvest the Power, 2nd Edition © Unitarian Universalist Association 2020 | 42 Keep your penny, and when you — James Luther Adams, 20th- look at it, think of the hopes and century Unitarian theologian dreams that we all have for this Share your turning-point reflections with congregation, and pledge to help others in your congregation. This is a one another make your wishes great opportunity for cross-generational come true. conversations among congregational LEADER REFLECTION leaders. For example, an elder might speak with a high-schooler who is a AND PLANNING leader within the youth group, or a Consider and discuss these questions newer congregational leader can with your co-facilitator: interview a former church president of a different generation. • Looking at each activity in this workshop, what worked as well as Consider with others how leaders might or better than you had anticipated? work to ensure that the congregation What did not work as well as you asks both “Are we doing the right had anticipated? things?” and “Are we doing things right?” Entrust a volunteer or two from • What issues came up for you, your group to write a social media post personally, in trying any activity or a short reflection to explain turning yourself? What came up in the points. Create a forum for others to process of facilitating? respond with their own turning-point • What would you change if you were stories. to lead this workshop again? How Find Out More would you do it differently? Explore these web pages: • What did you learn about yourself • Breakthrough Congregations on the UUA as an individual while facilitating this website workshop? What did you learn about yourself as a leader? • The Emotional Dynamics of Change by Gilbert Rendle • Look ahead to the next workshop in this program. What materials do we need to request or gather? What ALTERNATE ACTIVITY 1: other preparation is needed? Leadership and Management Alternate TAKING IT HOME Scenario (30 minutes) The prophetic liberal church is the MATERIALS church where persons think and  Leader Resource 2, Safe Congregation work together to interpret the signs Scenario of the times in the light of their faith.

Harvest the Power, 2nd Edition © Unitarian Universalist Association 2020 | 43  Newsprint, markers, and wall-safe tape discussion of the issue. Point out the PREPARATION posted questions, and ask the remaining participants to keep them in • Prepare Leader Resource 2 mind as they observe the role play. according to the instructions (cut the individual role-play directions apart). Introduce the scenario: • Arrange seating in a “fishbowl”: a Your congregation’s insurance tight circle of six chairs (or six chairs company has informed you that you will around a small table), with seating no longer be able to purchase liability around the outside of the circle for coverage unless you have a policy in the remaining participants. place to address the prevention of sexual abuse and misconduct, • Write the following questions on including the use of criminal newsprint, and post it where all background checks for volunteers and participants can see it: staff. ▪ When is the group asking Allow discussion for 10 minutes or until management questions? the role play seems to reach a natural ▪ When are they asking leadership stopping point. Invite those on the questions? outside of the fishbowl to respond to ▪ How might this scenario become the posted questions. Record their a turning point for the responses on another sheet of congregation? newsprint. After those on the outside of DESCRIPTION the fishbowl have spoken, ask the role In this activity, six participants role-play players to reflect on their experience. members of a congregational governing Add their observations to the newsprint board facing a significant issue. Each is list of responses. assigned a specific perspective or agenda to bring to the discussion. Tell participants that they will now do a fishbowl role play. Six volunteers will role-play members of a congregation’s governing board, faced with a significant issue. Those not in the role play will pay close attention to the governing board’s discussion. Ask for six volunteers to be the congregation’s governing board. Give them each a slip of paper from Leader Resource 2 that they will bring to a

Harvest the Power, 2nd Edition © Unitarian Universalist Association 2020 | 44 STORY 1: A Path Diverted picked up the stick and pointed. It took a moment for me to quiet down enough Excerpted from “A Path Diverted” by for my eyes to see. Gregory S. Pelley, in Wrestling with Adulthood: Unitarian Universalist Men An ant was dragging a crumb of bread Talk About Growing Up, edited by Ken that looked to be four times its size. Beldon (Skinner House Books, 2008, The ant pulled and pushed and climbed pp. 77–86). Used with permission. on top of the crumb, then underneath it.

The scene was excruciating, and fascinating. I sat down, and Grace One morning last fall, I picked up [my slipped into my lap. She never said a daughter] Grace from preschool. She word, keeping the stick in one hand and was now two and a half years old. her blanket clutched in the other, thumb When we arrived home, I was rushing in her mouth. It took several minutes for to get into the house to do whatever it the ant to move that crumb the last six was I thought I had to get done at that inches to the edge of the sidewalk, moment. When I got to the back door, I before slipping down into the leaves turned to see her squatting on the and out of sight. Grace stood, dropped sidewalk, blankie in one hand, poking a the stick, and walked up the stairs to stick at something on the ground. the door. I didn’t know what to do, what Frustrated, I barked at her to get inside to say. At the top of the stairs, she now. She stood and let the stick drop, turned to me and said, “Come on, still staring at whatever she had been Daddy.” prodding. I impatiently held the door and growled, “Come on, Grace! We need to get inside!” She took a half- step toward me and cocked her head to one side, her eyes never leaving that spot on the ground. Suddenly it hit me. This is the clash between being an adult and being a child. At that moment, for Grace, nothing could be more important than what had caught her attention. It was time to wonder, to explore. I sighed, sad that I had given up the ability to be deeply interested in something crawling across the sidewalk on a warm afternoon. I let the door shut, walked the few steps to Grace’s side, and quietly asked, “What do you see?” She

Harvest the Power, 2nd Edition © Unitarian Universalist Association 2020 | 45 STORY 2: Rise in Body or that using an assist of any kind would encourage my congregation to begin in Spirit taking care of me, which would Excerpted from “Rise in Body or in compromise my ability to care for and Spirit” by the Reverend William minister to them. That is a real concern. Sinkford, in Landscapes of Aging and But pride is also involved. And pride Spirituality, edited by Kathleen can be dangerous. Montgomery (Skinner House Books, 2015, pp. 33–46). Used with I also know, or at least believe, that once I begin using more assistive permission. devices, I’ll never return to life without I took a fall exiting a small commuter them. So I refuse to use them. plane in South Carolina. The bruising was extensive, but I soldiered on. In the The rational part of me, which next weeks and months, my walking continues to function well (at least as became more and more compromised, far as I can tell), knows that my and the pain got worse, not better. congregation sees me walk awkwardly. I have never fallen in public, but they I underwent surgery to alleviate the know. pain. But my walking and my balance never returned. The final diagnosis was Worse, using a visible assist would neuropathy. Though that term has a make me feel that the end is near, or at fancy medical definition, what it means least nearing, even if that wasn’t the to me is that the nerves to my feet and case. The invincible younger man lower legs don’t work right. inside me, who never had to think about physical limitations, who could At General Assembly, the large annual rely on his body to do what he asked it gathering of Unitarian Universalists, I to do, who never had to think about began using a scooter to get around. I limitations or compromises, resents simply couldn’t walk fast enough to get these limitations and, when I allow him from location to location within the time to, rails against them. frames of the conference. The scooter was easy enough to justify while I was I live with a sense of betrayal. The body still working through diagnosis and I relied on for so many years is letting treatment options, easy to justify as I me down. I am still mad about it. was recovering from the surgery. Now, Furious, actually. How is it possible to it is just what I need to do. be so angry at my own body, at myself? Accepting my new physical reality has My mind seems uncompromised by been a test, and it is still a work in aging, at least so far. But there are progress. I don’t use a scooter at home qualifications even to that statement. or at work. I don’t use or a cane, or My memory is not as sharp as it once anything. Part of the reason is my fear was. I need to make more notes, lest I Harvest the Power, 2nd Edition © Unitarian Universalist Association 2020 | 46 forget things. That doesn’t feel like At a recent installation where I much of a compromise. preached, I decided to take the invitation to “rise in body or spirit” Yet my spirit seems to deepen by the seriously and remained seated. It felt day. like a watershed moment. Could I give The spirit is willing, but the body? A myself permission to acknowledge my quip from the used car business comes limitations so publicly? I found out, of to mind: “It’s not the mileage but the course, that the world continued wear and tear on the chassis that spinning on its axis while I remained matters.” seated to sing. It was not a big deal to anyone other than me. I am blessed to be doing a ministry I love. I now serve as the minister at First It felt like another step in acceptance of Unitarian, Portland, Oregon, and four who I am now. A healthy decision, no years in, parish ministry is proving to be doubt. The problem is that more such just as satisfying as I imagined it would. decisions will surely be required, and I loved my time at the UUA. I gave each one presents the same spiritual everything I had to that work. But now I test. Each one presents yet another am finally living out the call to ministry I opportunity to accept a new, more heard and answered twenty-five years limited body. Each one calls up again ago. the sense of betrayal, the anger, and the disappointment. What takes a toll is the having to pay attention, almost all the time: needing What is hardest to accept is not any to plan where I can stand, calculating one sign of the reality of my physical how far I can walk. How close can I limitations, but the knowledge that park to that meeting? How many steps dealing with them will be part of my life will I have to climb? How long will I for the rest of my life. have to stand?

My colleagues at the church increasingly understand that I have limitations. They are both gracious and generous in making accommodations without making a big production of it. No one asks me to march in protests. I just show up at the speakers’ platform at the end of the march. We’ve modified our child dedication ritual so that I don’t hold the children. I need to place a hand on someone’s shoulder to stand and sing the hymns.

Harvest the Power, 2nd Edition © Unitarian Universalist Association 2020 | 47 STORY 3: Practicing The meeting began a painstaking process of rebuilding our community Reconciliation – A and deciding how to move forward. Reflection One of the many changes that came Excerpted from “Reconciliation as a out of the reconciliation work at church Spiritual Practice” by Paula Cole Jones, was “A Dialogue on Race and Ethnicity” in the March/April 2004 issue of UU (ADORE). People came together to World. share personal stories about how race had shaped their life experiences, and Practicing reconciliation is my personal it was clear that we had tapped into spiritual discipline. Practicing something deep in the community. We reconciliation means I commit to being kept the door open for anyone who in right relationship with people in my wanted to participate: Everyone has a life and, when I’m not, caring enough to story about race and ethnicity. Telling face unresolved issues and improve the the stories brought a new dimension of relationship. our lives to the church community and brought us closer together. Six years I have carried reconciliation with me later, ADORE continues to meet, and while working in All Souls Church in welcomes new participants. Washington, where I am a lifelong member, and increasingly in the Several months after the first ADORE Unitarian Universalist Association at meeting, our assistant minister handed large. From this experience I have me a flyer and said, “You might be learned that reconciliation is a interested in this.” It was an competency we can bring to four levels announcement for “Creating a Jubilee of conflict—in our own souls, between World,” a UUA-sponsored weekend individuals like my sister and me, within workshop about antiracism hosted by groups like my congregation, and the Unitarian Universalist Church of between groups such as people of Annapolis, Maryland. About eighty color like me and the dominant white people from congregations in the area culture. Reconciliation helps us to get attended. I was deeply impressed. into right relationship. The leaders provided a structure for I learned the importance of personal this large group of people to address and group reconciliation at church on a one of the most difficult issues in our sticky weekend in July 1997. Seventy lives; they took the conversation much members of All Souls in Washington, deeper than I had expected. My mother D.C., gathered to discuss reconciliation and another member of our at the church. Our racially diverse congregation attended with me, and we congregation was staggering after a agreed that such a workshop would be divisive crisis that ended a ministry. good for our congregation. But as we Harvest the Power, 2nd Edition © Unitarian Universalist Association 2020 | 48 learned when the workshop came to All thinking things are all right when they’re Souls, some people found this deeper not makes it difficult to see why or how involvement a challenge. We were we need to change. fortunate to have members of the The work of building a just community church board, search committee, means individually and collectively ADORE, and other leaders participate working to be in right relationship with in the even more challenging “Jubilee people from historically marginalized Two” workshop before the search groups and holding ourselves committee reviewed applications for a accountable for changing the things new senior minister. After five years of that create injustice. A discipline of reconciliation work, with ministerial reconciliation helps us as we work to participation and lay leadership, undo racism and oppression by antiracism has been embraced widely empowering us to get on the path over in the congregation. and over again, respecting and My experience at All Souls in 1997 appreciating that we have traveled inspired my decision to make different paths and we come to this reconciliation my spiritual practice. That point from different experiences. experience also deepened my The unfinished business of race has involvement in my church and began challenged me spiritually. At the end of my growing involvement in my district 2002, reflecting on a year of and ultimately in the UUA. The more engagement with UUA antiracism involved I got, the more challenging the efforts, I wrote in my journal: “I am no work became—but the more risks I longer willing to have my personal took, the more I grew. The more I energy and spirit absorbed by the listened and the more I communicated, ‘Great Inertia’ around antiracism.” I the stronger trust became. The more considered leaving the church. I spoke humility I summoned, the more I with my mother about visiting other learned. churches. She was loving and People tend to be reluctant to go deep supportive—and encouraged me to not into matters of race because we fear give up. discomfort, conflict, and loss, and we Then I left for a ten-day trip on UUA fear appearing uninformed and business that I figured would make my unprepared. Summoning the depth of decision to stay or leave. My first honesty needed to confront these meeting, in Boston, included a fears—and thus to confront racism and serendipitous encounter with a bring reconciliation to groups that have colleague on a midnight walk in the been divided—is a spiritual challenge. It snow to the corner store; he told me troubles the spirit because it disrupts about some ministers who were ready our sense of things being all right. But to enter the conversation about

Harvest the Power, 2nd Edition © Unitarian Universalist Association 2020 | 49 antiracism. The trip led to Chicago and back to Boston for a meeting with the leaders of the UUA’s youth organization, who committed to incorporate antiracism into their long- range planning. My moment of decision came on the airplane to Chicago, tears welling up in my eyes as I read the Skinner House book Soul Work, and saw that the conversation to undo racism is authentic among ministers in the UUA. By the end of the trip, I had reconciled my own misgivings, and I had grown. It’s like what they say about marriage: We marry a fantasy, and the bubble has to burst before the real relationship begins. It took forty years for my UU bubble to burst my fantasy that it was the ideal community. It was a pretty long honeymoon. I committed to begin again. At its high points, my work with the church has given me spiritual sustenance and a loving community. It’s been more than five years since I learned the valuable lesson that led to developing a practice of reconciliation. Yes, it is spiritual work, and it takes discipline. For five years this practice has enabled me to challenge and be challenged in our congregation, which is now a vibrant, rapidly growing community with a vision for racial and social justice, and it has enriched my personal life.

Harvest the Power, 2nd Edition © Unitarian Universalist Association 2020 | 50 LEADER RESOURCE 1: Accessibilities Audit Scenario Cut to create six different “roles” for the fishbowl role play. Give each of the six volunteer role-players a different slip. ------Player One: Chair of the Board. You Player Four: You believe in your heart are overwhelmed by this latest news that making the congregation more and very worried. There just doesn’t accessible to those with mobility seem to be any more money to be had impairments is the right thing to do, and from the congregation, and the you are convinced that a way can be accessibility upgrades will be costly. found to do it. You are often seen as You’re afraid that this will torpedo the the “impractical” one in the group. whole project. ------Player Two: You are angry with the Player Five: You wonder if the local government for imposing this on accessibility upgrades make good the congregation. You believe they financial sense. From your point of have no right to do so. Your attitude is view, the planned upgrades will benefit that the local government should many people, and the accessibility support the building repairs and upgrades will benefit only a few. upgrades the congregation is undertaking, rather than undermine them. ------Player Three: You have arthritis in your Player Six: You have been the hands and in your knees, and you representative to the building task sometimes find the front steps and the force, and you are exhausted. You door handles difficult to negotiate. You have done all that you can do to get are quiet about this difficulty and are this project ready to the point where not sure that you are ready to share construction and renovation can your experience with this group. begin—and now this!! You are discouraged and feel unappreciated.

Harvest the Power, 2nd Edition © Unitarian Universalist Association 2020 | 51 LEADER RESOURCE 2: Safe Congregation Scenario Cut to create six different “roles” for the fishbowl role play. Give each of the six volunteer role-players a different slip.

Player One: Chair of the Board. You Player Four: You have been reading believe that having liability coverage is the latest news about child sexual crucial to the well-being of the abuse among volunteers and congregation and that you have a professionals who are entrusted with fiduciary responsibility to see to it that the well-being of children. From your there is a safe congregation policy. point of view, a safe congregation policy cannot come soon enough.

------Player Two: You are concerned about Player Five: You keep thinking about finances, especially about any possible the first UU Principle, the inherent costs of criminal background checks. worth and dignity of every person. How You are also concerned because a does this Principle apply when it comes large donor has stated that they view to protecting children? What about our background checks as an invasion of volunteers? Do background checks privacy. violate their worth and dignity?

------Player Three: You are concerned about Player Six: You have been with this the implementation of any safe congregation for a long time, and you congregation policy. Who will be trust everyone here. Requiring responsible? How will they get training? background checks and other policies Do our current staff members have the seems to be unnecessary. You wonder time and bandwidth to take this on? if there really is any need for liability insurance—and you resent the insurance company for pushing the congregation around.

Harvest the Power, 2nd Edition © Unitarian Universalist Association 2020 | 52 WORKSHOP 4: CARING GOALS FOR OURSELVES AND This workshop will: • Help participants honestly examine

ONE ANOTHER their own spiritual well-being Laughter and tears are both responses to frustration and • Explore the role of leaders in exhaustion. I myself prefer to laugh, creating a spiritually healthy since there is less cleaning up to do congregational culture that afterward. — Kurt Vonnegut, 20th- encourages its volunteers’ spiritual century American novelist and emotional health • Help participants recognize what INTRODUCTION energizes them and what depletes This workshop helps participants them and help build empathy for consider how they care for themselves others’ possibly different as leaders and how they encourage experiences. and model self-care for other members of the congregation. LEARNING OBJECTIVES Participants will: Participants reflect on the causes of personal stress and burnout and on • Name responsibilities and their own responses to stress. They accountabilities they hold as people name ways they can take care of their and as leaders own spirits and practice asking for what • Reflect on their sense of spiritual they need from a leadership group to well-being help them participate with a full heart. • Recognize differences among Some activities may evoke emotional people regarding what energizes responses. Be sure participants them and what depletes them understand that this workshop focuses on stress and its impact, and that they • Practice asking the group for are free to “pass” or excuse themselves specific support that will make it from an activity at any time. easier for them to stay spiritually and emotionally healthy while Optional: Review the UUA pamphlet leading Spirituality of Service, available at inSpirit: UU Book and Gift Shop. • Consider their role in preventing Purchase copies for workshop their own burnout and in modeling participants, your leadership team, or healthy behavior for the the congregation’s pamphlet rack. congregation • Learn strategies to build and

maintain a congregational culture

Harvest the Power, 2nd Edition © Unitarian Universalist Association 2020 | 53 that encourages its volunteers’ • In what ways could I take better spiritual and emotional health. care of myself? • Am I excited about leading this WORKSHOP-AT-A-GLANCE workshop? (If not, why?) Activity Minutes • Do I currently feel joy or satisfaction Opening 5 regarding my service to the congregation? Activity 1: Heads Up! 10 • Does my work at the congregation Activity 2: Bodies of Water 15 feel like a chore or an obligation? Guided Meditation • What is currently causing me Activity 3: Working and 15 stress? Coping Styles • What is currently giving me joy? Activity 4: What I Need 20 Writing your answers will help you see Activity 5: Confessions of a 25 any differences in your feelings before Prodigal Volunteer and after the workshop. Activity 6: Keeping Priorities 25 WORKSHOP PLAN Straight in Congregations OPENING (5 minutes) Faith in Action: Keeping Priorities Straight MATERIALS  Copies of Singing the Living Tradition, the Closing 5 Unitarian Universalist hymnbook Alternate Activity 1: Juggling 10  Small worship table Act  Chalice, candle, and lighter or LED battery- Alternative Activity 2: 20 operated candle Burnout – A Misnomer  Covenant created in Workshop 1, SPIRITUAL PREPARATION and wall-safe tape If you have a personal spiritual practice, PREPARATION engage in it before facilitating this • Set the chalice on the worship table. workshop. Consider your spiritual • Post the covenant. practices, your own level of self-care, and your potential for fatigue and • Choose either the song or the burnout by answering the following reading for your opening: questions honestly: ▪ “Here We Have Gathered,” Hymn 360 in Singing the Living • In what ways do I currently take Tradition, is a good choice if good care of myself? your group likes to sing.

Harvest the Power, 2nd Edition © Unitarian Universalist Association 2020 | 54 ▪ “We Need One Another,” while naming tasks and people that Reading 468 in Singing the demand their time and attention on a Living Tradition, is a responsive daily or weekly basis. reading. Plan to have half the Explain that you will name one task or participants read the plain text person from congregational life, home and the other half read the life, or work life that you must attend to. italicized text. You will then toss a beanbag to a DESCRIPTION random participant. That person will Gather the group in a circle. Ask a also name something or someone that participant to light the chalice as you calls on their time and attention, and and the group engage in the opening then immediately toss the beanbag to words, either singing “Here We Have another random person—and so on. Gathered” or responsively reading “We Need One Another.” Point out that people of different cultures, genders, and ages may face Tell participants that today’s workshop very different expectations with regard focuses on spiritual well-being and that to the responsibilities they take on, some activities may induce a mild level including for the care of others. Say of stress. Let them know that they can that the object of this activity is to always “pass” or excuse themselves if generate a list and ask that participants they are uncomfortable. Reassure them not comment on what anyone else that the purpose of the workshop is to shares. build participants’ awareness of how they react to and reduce stress and to Have the group form a circle. Start the explore how they, as leaders, can set a game, and encourage participants to go congregational tone that invites others as quickly as possible. to care for themselves in body and Once a rhythm is established, add a spirit. second tossed object, then a third and Review the posted covenant. a fourth, in turn. Adding tossed objects will require participants to watch in ACTIVITY 1: Heads Up! (10 several directions for the next ball and think quickly of tasks or people to minutes) name. Continue the game for about five MATERIALS minutes or until everyone has had a  Four or five bean bags, small chance to speak a few times. stuffed animals, or other soft objects Ask participants how they felt as they for throwing played the game:

DESCRIPTION • Did the game feel stressful? Silly? In this activity, participants toss a bean Some participants may have felt bag or other soft object to one another

Harvest the Power, 2nd Edition © Unitarian Universalist Association 2020 | 55 mild stress due to the speed of the ACTIVITY 2: Bodies of game, the need to think under pressure, the number of objects, Water Guided Meditation and the increased difficulty of (15 minutes) thinking of things to name. Some MATERIALS participants may have responded  Leader Resource 1, Bodies of with laughter and giddiness. Water Guided Meditation • Was it easier or harder to identify  Clock or timer demands on your time and attention as the game proceeded? Why?  Bell or chime Say, “Every one of us carries multiple DESCRIPTION responsibilities and must pay attention Begin by reminding participants that to things coming at us from many they have agreed to respect the different directions.” Invite the group to confidentiality of personal information reflect for a moment on this experience. and stories shared here. Tell participants that it is important for Invite participants to settle into a them as leaders to develop ways to comfortable space for meditation. Tell care for themselves in both body and them that you will now read a guided spirit, because (1) their well-being is meditation to encourage awareness of essential to their continuing the work, the state of their spiritual and emotional and (2) their approach to self-care sets selves, both currently and at other a tone for others in the congregation. times in their lives. The goal is to help Part of self-care includes telling the them connect more intentionally with truth to ourselves and others about the the things that feed their energy, responsibilities we hold and carry and strength, and enthusiasm and enable about the sources of support available them to cope with their myriad to us. responsibilities and tasks. INCLUDING ALL PARTICIPANTS Read aloud the guided meditation in If any participants cannot catch or Leader Resource 1. throw an object around the room, have Invite participants to consider the ways participants call out the name of the in which the various bodies of water next person who must answer. For reflect their own experiences as human example, “I help my parents with their beings and as leaders. After about a bills. Bill, you’re next.” Encourage minute, ask the group to consider these everyone to be random in calling on the questions: next person, so participants cannot anticipate their next turn. • What discoveries did you make about yourself and your own journey?

Harvest the Power, 2nd Edition © Unitarian Universalist Association 2020 | 56 • Did you identify some three things they would do at this circumstances that energize you? hypothetical committee meeting. Prompt them by asking, “Might you sit • Did you identify some things that back and listen first? immediately deplete you? volunteer to chair the committee? dash Invite participants to spend 10 minutes out of the room for supplies? start a sharing their reflections with a partner. brainstorming session? something Ring a bell or chime after five minutes else?” to remind pairs to switch speakers if they haven’t yet done so. After three minutes, invite participants to move into groups of three and share ACTIVITY 3: Working and their ideas. Coping Styles (15 minutes) After participants have spent 10 minutes sharing in triads, invite general MATERIALS comments from the group about the  Paper and pens or pencils for all experience. You may prompt participants discussion with these questions:

PREPARATION • In what ways did you and your • Ensure that participants have conversation partners respond appropriate surfaces for writing. similarly to this situation? DESCRIPTION • In what ways did your responses Distribute paper and pens or pencils. differ? Read aloud this scenario: • To what do you attribute your The board of your congregation has different approaches? just asked you to be part of a new • Where is self care in this scenario? seven-person committee to work on an Where should or could it appear? issue of great importance to the congregation. You have agreed to • What are you noticing about the serve. The charge to the committee is patterns and tendencies that are unclear to you, and the board has not part of your personal leadership chosen a leader, instead telling you to style? choose a chair from among the group. The night of the first meeting, all seven ACTIVITY 4: What I Need of you assemble in a room at the (20 minutes) appointed time. What would you do MATERIALS under these circumstances?  Newsprint, markers, and wall-safe tape Tell participants that they have three  Optional: Paper and pens or pencils for all minutes to reflect on the first two or participants

Harvest the Power, 2nd Edition © Unitarian Universalist Association 2020 | 57 PREPARATION specific ways that the group might accommodate individual members’ • Post blank newsprint. stated needs. DESCRIPTION In this activity, participants focus on If the participants do not currently work their particular role as a congregational together in a congregational setting, leader and name parts of that role that distribute paper and pens or pencils they find stressful, energizing, or both. and invite them to write down a few If they belong to a leadership group that things that make it more rewarding and is working together, this activity less stressful for them to hold a provides an opportunity for participants leadership role. Invite participants to to ask for specific supports to reduce share their list with a partner. Suggest some of the stress they experience in that they practice framing their list as their leadership roles. requests for the specific supports they need in order to thrive physically, Draw a vertical line to divide the emotionally, and spiritually in their newsprint in half. At the top of one leadership role. column, write “Energizes/feeds me.” At the top of the other, write Spend the last few minutes discussing “Stresses/depletes me.” Allow about (in pairs or as a group) ways that eight minutes for participants to name leadership team members might be one way in which the leadership work able to meet one another’s needs for energizes or feeds them and one way support. in which it stresses or depletes them. Record their responses. Acknowledge ACTIVITY 5: Confessions that since we respond differently to of a Prodigal Volunteer (25 situations, people might list the same minutes) item in two different columns. MATERIALS After each person has named two  Story, Confessions of a Prodigal Volunteer items, ask for any items that belong somewhere between the two. Then ask PREPARATION if there are important items that have • Pre-arrange with one or more not yet been mentioned. participants to read the story and If the participants currently work provide them with a copy of the together as leaders (e.g., as members story in advance. of a governing board), allow time for DESCRIPTION them to consider ways to increase the Invite participants to listen to the “energizing/feeding” experiences and volunteer(s) read the story. decrease the “stressing/depleting” experiences. Guide them to identify Engage the group in conversation with

Harvest the Power, 2nd Edition © Unitarian Universalist Association 2020 | 58 these questions: Introduce this activity:

• What aspects of the author’s story As congregational leaders, we must be resonated for you? aware that we are role models. Our actions and behavior can add to or • What does the story suggest that decrease the stress of others in the leaders can do to support a culture congregation. How we handle that reduces burnout? situations that arise sets the tone for Remind the group that part of their how others respond. covenant is to respect the confidentiality of personal information Distribute Handout 1, and ask the and stories shared here. participant you chose to read it aloud. Invite two or three minutes of comment. ACTIVITY 6: Keeping Point out that the handout suggests Priorities Straight in there is such a thing as keeping Congregations (25 priorities straight. Invite participants to say what they think that might mean, or minutes) look like. MATERIALS Ask participants to indicate whether  Handout 1, Health Versus the Push to they think it might mean “getting things Accomplish Things done quickly and correctly,”  9- x 12-inch construction paper and Now ask whether keeping priorities markers and/or colored pencils for all straight might be more of a moving participants target. Suggest that an effective, nimble  Optional: Newsprint, markers, and wall- process for collaborative, ongoing safe tape decision-making could be one way to “keep priorities straight.” PREPARATION Say: • Copy Handout 1 for all participants. If our congregation has a culture that • Pre-arrange with a participant to prioritizes “getting things done quickly read the story and provide them and correctly,” we may be losing with a copy of the story in advance. opportunities to build relationships • Select an “art area” where within the leadership group. Although it participants will have room to draw may take extra time, listening, and and can easily share materials. Set negotiation to make space for each out the art supplies. person’s gifts and strengths, the more • Optional: Post blank newsprint. connected the leadership team can stay to one another and to people in the DESCRIPTION congregation, the better and more

Harvest the Power, 2nd Edition © Unitarian Universalist Association 2020 | 59 supported will be their decisions. shared as they presented their drawings in Activity 6. Ask: DESCRIPTION • What would a congregation need to Invite committees or other leadership do to keep its priorities straight? groups in the congregation to read • What would that look like in this Handout 1 together and consider its congregation? implications for the work they do. Offer to attend a group meeting and share Invite participants to move to the art the Harvest the Power group’s area you have set up. Ask them to suggestions as to what it means and create a drawing of a congregation that how it looks to keep the congregation’s you believe has its priorities straight. priorities straight. Invite the committee Tell participants that the drawing can or leadership group to add to the be abstract or representational; stick Harvest the Power group’s list or create figures and symbols are welcome. Tell their own. them that they will have 10 minutes to create their drawings. CLOSING (5 minutes) Reconvene the group, and invite each MATERIALS person to share their drawing.  A copy of Singing the Living Tradition, the You may want to record their ideas on Unitarian Universalist hymnbook a sheet of newsprint the leadership group can revisit during a retreat, a  Optional: Copies of the UUA pamphlet goal-setting meeting, or the suggested Spirituality of Service, one for each Faith in Action activity for this participant workshop. PREPARATION FAITH IN ACTION: Keeping • Optional: Customize the Taking It Home handout for your group Priorities Straight before emailing or photocopying it. MATERIALS • Copy Taking It Home for all  Handout 1, Health Versus the Push to participants, or plan to email it. Accomplish Things DESCRIPTION PREPARATION Distribute copies of Taking It Home or • Arrange to attend a meeting of a tell the group when you will email it. committee or other leadership group Invite participants to share two minutes to share the work done in this of silence to honor the important work workshop. the group has done together. • Create a list of the ideas the group Read aloud “Wild Geese” by Mary

Harvest the Power, 2nd Edition © Unitarian Universalist Association 2020 | 60 Oliver, Reading 490 in Singing the exhaustion. I myself prefer to laugh, Living Tradition. since there is less cleaning up to do afterward. — Kurt Vonnegut, 20th- Optional: Give Spirituality of Service century American novelist pamphlets to participants, and invite them to use the pamphlet as a You may wish to journal, pray, or springboard for journaling or for meditate on these questions: conversation with friends and family • In what ways am I currently taking members. good care of myself? LEADER REFLECTION • In what ways could I take better AND PLANNING care of myself? Consider and discuss these questions • Where do I currently feel joy or with your co-facilitator: satisfaction in my congregational work? • Looking at each activity in this workshop, what worked as well as • In what ways does my or better than you had anticipated? congregational involvement feel like What did not work as well as you a chore or an obligation? had anticipated? • Are there changes I need to make in • What issues came up for you my life or in the way in which I personally in trying any activity interact with the congregation? yourself? What came up in the Invite family members and friends to process of facilitating? reflect with you on these questions. • What would you change if you were Find Out More to lead this workshop again? How You may wish to add resources that would you do it differently? informed this workshop to your • What did you learn about yourself congregation’s leadership library: as an individual while facilitating this • Lynne M. Baab, Beating Burnout in workshop? What did you learn Congregations (Herndon, VA: Alban about yourself as a leader? Institute, 1989) • Look ahead to the next workshop in • Margaret Benefiel, Soul at Work: this program. What materials do we Spiritual Leadership in need to request or gather? What Organizations (New York: Seabury, other preparation is needed? 2005) TAKING IT HOME • Ric Masten, Ric Masten Speaking (Watsonville, CA: Paper Mache Laughter and tears are both Press, 1990) responses to frustration and

Harvest the Power, 2nd Edition © Unitarian Universalist Association 2020 | 61 • Mary Oliver, Dreamwork (New York: MATERIALS Atlantic Monthly Press, 1986)  Newsprint, markers, and wall-safe • Parker J. Palmer, Let Your Life tape Speak: Listening for the Voice of  Items to juggle safely, such as Vocation (San Francisco: Jossey- bean bags or small soft balls Bass, 1999) PREPARATION • Thom S. Rainer and Eric Geiger, Simple Church: Returning to God’s • If you or your co-facilitator are not Process for Making Disciples able to juggle, recruit a juggler to (Nashville: B&H Books, 2011) help you with this activity. Here are some additional resources to • Write the following questions on explore online: newsprint, and post where all participants can see it: • “Understanding the radical history of ▪ When you keep all the balls in self-care is essential to practicing it the air, how do you feel successfully” by Sadie Trombetta, physically? Mentally? posted in Hello Giggles, January 2, 2018 ▪ When you drop important balls, how do you feel physically? • “3 Things You Should Know About Mentally? Intersectionality and Self-Care” by Rex Leonowicz, posted in Shine ▪ Are all these balls yours to juggle, or are you juggling • “Self-care isn’t enough. We need someone else’s balls? community care to survive” by Heather Dockray, posted in DESCRIPTION Mashable, May 24, 2019 This is activity is a physical demonstration of having to balance • “25 Cheat Sheets for Taking Care of many demands at the same time. Yourself Like a Damn Adult” by Anna Borges, posted in Mashables, While juggling (or while your guest March 30, 2017 juggles), tell participants that congregational leaders are like jugglers • “8 Ways You Can Practice Self- trying to keep all the balls in the air. Care In the Face of Daily Racism” Embellish the analogy to by Roberta K. Timothy, posted in congregational life as much as Huffpost.ca, May 8, 2018 possible. Invite participants to assign ALTERNATE ACTIVITY 1: specific task responsibilities to each item you have in the air. Juggling Act (10 Minutes) Perform (or encourage the guest to perform) whatever juggling

Harvest the Power, 2nd Edition © Unitarian Universalist Association 2020 | 62 tricks you have. Have fun! While juggling, or after you have finished, indicate the three questions on newsprint. Ask participants to keep these questions in mind as they go about their work as leaders.

ALTERNATE ACTIVITY 2: Burnout – A Misnomer (20 Minutes) MATERIALS  Handout 2, Burnout – a Misnomer PREPARATION • Copy Handout 2 for all participants. • Pre-arrange with a participant to read the poem aloud and provide them with a copy ahead of time. DESCRIPTION Invite participants to listen to a reading of the poem in Handout 2. Use these questions to prompt a group discussion:

• What images or words resonated for you? • Are there times in your life when you have felt burned out? • What do you think of Masten’s prescription: “Find another source of power, and if the cord doesn’t reach, move the set”? Does that image suggest any ways that congregational leaders could support a culture that reduces burnout?

Harvest the Power, 2nd Edition © Unitarian Universalist Association 2020 | 63 STORY: Confessions of a a more expansive view of my place in the world. It encouraged me to Prodigal Volunteer relinquish the illusion of safety for new By Elizabeth Weber, in UU World, Fall ventures. I credit it with giving me the 2007. courage, last spring, to act on Ken’s and my long-deferred desire to move 2,000 miles closer to his grown children As is true for so many Unitarian and grandchildren. We had played Universalists, my first encounter with major roles in leading our congregation the concept of inherent worth and through a multiyear planning process, dignity offered an exhilarating contrast capital campaign, and building addition. to my childhood faith, which taught me I Finally, it was finished, imbuing our was born unworthy of God’s love. I relocation decision with a satisfying abandoned Roman Catholicism upon sense of completion. leaving home for college, feeling guilty yet giddy with relief. Twenty-five years In my case, however, this milestone later, as I resigned my job to join my was muddied by a sense of depletion. partner Ken in his retirement, I joined Following the building project, my the UU fellowship located a magnetic service to my congregation and half-mile from our home. Embarking on community had grown tedious, retirement and my new religion with increasingly burdensome. Instead of equal parts enthusiasm and naiveté, I enlivening me, it made me cranky. soon realized I still needed to work—to Decisions I disagreed with grew harder stimulate my intellect, to cultivate to accept. I was doing less than I once connections, to find purpose. had but enjoying it far less than before. I’d eased up, but apparently too late. Put another way, I needed something to do. I knew I’d erred in gravitating toward roles that, although worthwhile, didn’t Unitarian Universalism obligingly filled feed my spirit. I’d come to care too the void, and myriad volunteer much about the work, for a mishmash opportunities soon drew this introvert of reasons—ego, certainly, and strong from her shell. By my fifth year I’d put convictions based on a by-now my whole self in, racking up a resume prodigious institutional memory. A of leadership roles and committee sense of earned power—that posts within, then beyond, the walls of occupational hazard of intense my congregation. The work was novel, volunteer commitment—also tethered varied, rewarding. It changed me in me. And if I set the work down, I feared ways I liked. It offered me much more it might lie there a good long while than “something to do.” (horrors!) before others picked it up. Unitarian Universalism cultivated in me Meanwhile, believing it was my

Harvest the Power, 2nd Edition © Unitarian Universalist Association 2020 | 64 responsibility to reinvest the social My farewells to my fellowship were capital I’d amassed as a lay leader, I genuinely fond and sad. But when at recruited others relentlessly—to help last I took my whole self out to race the with the canvass, to serve on moving van cross-country, I realized I committee x or y. Even then, I couldn’t felt much as I had upon leaving rest. For how hypocritical it would be to Catholicism behind decades earlier. It enlist others, only to dust off my hands shocked me to think I’d let my and resign from the finance committee! commitment to Unitarian Universalism devolve into a rerun of that old Where I’d once lauded UUism as the defection. antithesis of my childhood religion, I now saw parallels in my reactions to ### the two. My new faith had exhorted me Once settled again, I began rebuilding to do good works, as Catholicism had. my life, balancing Marge Piercy’s But drawn into ever more volunteer summons to be of use with Mary roles at church and beyond, my sense Oliver’s reassurance that I do not have of mission was subsumed by minutiae to be good—at least not all the time. as dutiful old habits of mind held sway. I pondered budget numbers as if they Reflecting on my decade as a UU, I were mysteries of the Rosary. recalled that in my early days, I’d seen Committee meetings now seemed as certain members work hard, then mandatory as Mass once had. disappear. I hadn’t understood why (Afterward, I typed minutes like a dutiful they left. In my newfound zeal, I had penance.) I was burying my talents and been certain I would never burn out. expending my energy not in true After our move I saw that hubris for ministry but in what a friend called what it was. Declaring myself an Emily “administrivia.” Dickinson-style Nobody, I let my A year before we moved, my survival unstructured days wash over me: no instinct belatedly kicked in, with mixed budgets, no meetings, no minutes to results. Weary and protective of my type—just hours to recharge and fragmented free time, I avoided the reflect. Slowly, from silence, clarity very groups and gatherings that might emerged: I was ready to put down roots have nourished my spirit and balanced again. I listened a little longer, but I my involvement. Abandoning my knew just where to plant them. “volunteer obligations” (although I wryly I was fortunate that circumstances noted the paradox therein) remained conspired to save me from myself. unthinkable—until the stronger Unlike many “church ladies” (or people) magnetic pull of family half a continent who unwittingly over-involve away served to end my self-imposed themselves, my perspective was servitude. restored by an abrupt and absolute

Harvest the Power, 2nd Edition © Unitarian Universalist Association 2020 | 65 physical relocation. It granted me the spiritual detachment I needed to recall precisely why I embraced this religion ten years ago—and to understand how I got lost along the way. I brought some lifelong, self-abnegating behaviors to my new faith, I see now. But unlike my old faith, Unitarian Universalism never made me feel unworthy. If anything, it swamped me with a sense of my value and potential. At my new fellowship, I began by confiding to my new minister my need to go slowly. On Sundays, I hearkened to sermons that emphasized the importance of finding one’s own true calling, beyond any organization’s internal needs. When asked to help with sundry small tasks, I hesitated, then said yes, and found I enjoyed renewing old proficiencies while meeting new friends. Later, when offered a larger role, I responded simply but sincerely, “Not yet.” (Watching a talented, more energetic member quickly fill that spot, I felt grateful to her—and humbled by all I had learned.) I’m savoring the sweetness of a fresh start and the prospect of growing into a spiritual community. Best of all, I’ve learned that while I’m not indispensable to any congregation, Unitarian Universalism will always be indispensable to me.

Harvest the Power, 2nd Edition © Unitarian Universalist Association 2020 | 66 HANDOUT 1: Health Versus and concern for children and youth. The congregation has to keep a strong the Push to Accomplish focus on its goals in order for the Things congregation as a whole to be healthy. Reprinted from Beating Burnout in Meeting those goals requires labor. The Congregations by Lynn M. Baab, with congregational system needs to get permission from the Alban Institute. people working and keep them at it. Copyright (C) 2003 by The Alban Hard work is necessary to make the Institute, Inc. Herndon, Virginia. All congregation a place of refuge and rights reserved. rest. This is a tension, an irony that always exists in congregations. The need for hard work pushes We expect our congregations to be congregation members toward diligent places of health and healing, an oasis service, and that kind of service can in the midst of the demands and take away the sense of rest and refuge stresses of daily life. Yet some people that people need. The congregation experience great pain in their that has the goal of bringing life and congregations, pain that robs them of health to its members may also push the comfort their faith could give them. people toward burnout because Burnout is one kind of pain that goes workers are needed. against the very promise of congregational life. The congregation as a system will tend to call people into service for the sake All systems that rely on the labor of of duty, which unfortunately moves so individuals, if left to themselves, will easily into workaholism. It takes effort encourage burnout. The workplace, on the part of leaders to keep priorities nonprofit organizations, and straight. Congregational leaders need congregations all have a tendency to to expend significant energy with push workers toward burnout. That is deliberate intention in order to affirm because these systems have goals and the call to serve God with joy, from the leaders dedicated to meeting these heart, so that burnout will be less goals. The people working within the frequent. system very easily become the means to an end, and that end is the accomplishment of goals. In a congregation, the goals are often lofty and energizing: rich and celebratory worship services, stimulating adult education, outreach to people who are poor and in need, care

Harvest the Power, 2nd Edition © Unitarian Universalist Association 2020 | 67 HANDOUT 2: Burnout – A which of course Misnomer was disconnected By Ric Masten (1929–2008), a in a word “unplugged” Unitarian Universalist poet, folk singer and minister. In Ric Masten Speaking and to think (Watsonville, CA: Paper Mache Press, i nearly went to the dump myself 1990). Used with permission. because someone less than a poet

trying to describe a condition burnout came up with a misleading term you’ve seen the results clearly in the shop on the shelf a case of burnout demands a second row after row of grey empty faces opinion with nothing happening in the glassy and this is mine eyes find an outlet except and if the cord doesn’t reach a little surface reflection move the set burnout you know the symptoms a history of dependable service then suddenly for no reason things go dark and you’re a dead piece of furniture waiting to be removed from the living room burnout the psychological repairman said and shrugged and shook his head having checked everything except the cord

Harvest the Power, 2nd Edition © Unitarian Universalist Association 2020 | 68 LEADER RESOURCE 1: Experience yourself as a stream beginning with rain and melted snow Bodies Of Water Guided somewhere high above sea level. Meditation As you begin your journey, you are but INSTRUCTIONS a tiny stream, bubbling with new Read the meditation in a slow, calm possibilities, exploring and shaping manner, pausing between sentences your own path through crevices in the for a second or two. Pause for about 10 rock or channels left by glaciers that seconds where longer pauses are receded long ago. Feel your energy. indicated in the text. Feel your power and strength as you TEXT shape your own path through the Please sit in a comfortable meditation mountains. Feel the changing nature of position. Close your eyes if you are your being as you grow with spring comfortable doing so, and focus on melts, contract with summer drought, your own breathing. Take three deep and freeze in the depths of winter. breaths, breathing in and out, in and (longer pause) You are full of joy, out, in and out. enthusiasm, and the energy that can literally move mountains. Picture in your mind your favorite body of water. It may be as large as the Now trace your path downstream a bit ocean, or as small as a brook. (longer to a place where you become a pause) Notice the way in which the freshwater lake, with water spilling in water moves, the way it holds its own through the lake’s inlet and leaving at space, the way it impacts that which its outlet. You are constantly renewed surrounds it. Notice how the water by a fresh supply of water, and sending feels. Is it cool? Or warm? Is it icy? Is it your own living waters forth, carrying a refreshing? Notice how it tastes. Notice rich mixture of life and life-giving soil. the color of the water—and its smell. (longer pause) You feel full, but not Be aware of what is carried by the overfull, strong and deep, full of motion, water—small bits of plant or animal, and yet somehow stable in your particles of soil or sand, fish and other lakebed. aquatic creatures, some too small to be Trace your path downstream to the seen by human eyes. (longer pause) mighty river, broad and moving, Become one with the water, carrying carrying not only life, but also what it carries, taking its form. (longer commerce. You are in a hurry, in pause) In your mind’s eye, trace the constant motion, moving things water back to its source, back through relentlessly and powerfully the rivers and streams and lakes and downstream. You remain mostly in your waterfalls—back to its source riverbed, but not always. Sometimes, somewhere in the mountains. the water coming in from melted snow

Harvest the Power, 2nd Edition © Unitarian Universalist Association 2020 | 69 or heavy rains leaves you with not the earth itself. Feel your endless enough space for its volume. You spill motion as your waves rise and fall and over the banks, for blocks, or acres, or churn. miles, covering everything in your path As you breathe, reflect on the ways in with water, bringing destruction and at which your life resembles the different the same time bringing soil and bodies of water. With which images do nutrients that will enrich the earth when you most closely identify? the waters recede and you return to your riverbed. (longer pause) You feel (Pause for about a minute.) powerful, even mighty. You are When you are ready, please return responsible for much, and you receive slowly to your own body, to your chair, from everywhere. And sometimes it to this room. And when you have gets to be just too much, and things returned, open your eyes. spill over.

Now trace your path to the small stagnant pool left behind by the receding waters. There is no inlet or outlet for this pool. You are self- contained. Your warm waters and rich broth support life well, and your ecosystem is isolated from other bodies of water. There is calm here, but there is decay and stagnation as well. (longer pause) And now trace your path to the mighty ocean, constantly in motion, answering to the forces of the moon, and wind, and weather, moving in warm and cold currents interconnected with one another. You are the place where life arose on Earth, the cradle for billions of species. (longer pause) Storms rock you, but only in isolated places. You are too big, too broad, and too deep for one hurricane, one snowstorm, one tsunami to affect more than a small part of who and what you are. You are always in motion, ever restless, always changing, part of the essential nature of

Harvest the Power, 2nd Edition © Unitarian Universalist Association 2020 | 70 WORKSHOP 5: • Explore some ineffective responses to the stressors that challenge INTEGRITY congregations, and consider how The universe sings no less insights from Salsa, Soul, and Spirit Because time and space point to antidotes Wear us thin. • Foster laughter, meditation,

reflection, and artistic expression to The music calls us help participants connect more fully To recognize our limitations, with their spiritual and emotional To recognize that selves. The song is best sung with others. LEARNING OBJECTIVES — Manish K. Mishra-Marzetti Participants will:

INTRODUCTION • Use the story of Fannie Barrier This workshop invites participants into Williams as a springboard to reflect challenging territory. The activities on the supports that sustain them in explore the stresses that are part of the moments of crisis, change, fabric of the life of our congregational challenge, and opportunity community. Participants name and • Reflect on the idea that who a embrace that which sustains and leader is matters as much as what grounds them, and learn how this self- they do knowledge can help them lead from a place of creativity and imagination, • Explore the stresses that permeate rather than reactivity. The workshop our society, our families, and our offers models to help individuals and congregations leadership teams support and reinforce • Become aware of leadership the integrity of those entrusted with practices that act as barriers to leadership positions in our creativity and imagination congregations. • Laugh, meditate, create, share, and GOALS be renewed as spiritual beings and This workshop will: as leaders.

• Demonstrate that a leader’s WORKSHOP-AT-A-GLANCE

personal grounding and spiritual Activity Minutes well-being are crucial to their ability to lead Opening 5 • Help participants understand their Activity 1: Fannie Barrier 15 own responses to challenge, crisis, Williams and opportunity Harvest the Power, 2nd Edition © Unitarian Universalist Association 2020 | 71 Activity 2: Navigating 10 staying in touch with other leaders and Moments of Crisis with the congregation. How will you move toward that vision? Activity 3: The Who of 10

Leadership WORKSHOP PLAN Activity 4: What Sustains 20 You? Opening (5 minutes) Activity 5: Stress in the 15 MATERIALS System  A copy of Singing the Living Tradition, the Activity 6: Barriers 30 Unitarian Universalist hymnbook Faith in Action: Leadership’s varies  Small worship table Spiritual Dimension  Chalice, candle, and lighter, or LED battery-operated candle Closing 5 PREPARATION Alternate Activity 1: Button 10 • Set the chalice on the worship table. Pushing DESCRIPTION Alternate Activity 2: Worship 15 Gather the group in a circle. Ask a with Serenity Prayer participant to light the chalice as you or another participant read these opening

SPIRITUAL PREPARATION words from Theresa Soto, published in Take time to reflect on how and where Spilling the Light: Meditations on Hope you find grounding and sustenance in and Resilience (Skinner House Books, times of crisis and challenge. Read 2019): Handout 1, The “Who” of Leadership, To be free, you must embrace and journal or reflect on how you nurture your own spirit. the breadth of your own existence Read Handout 2, Gridlocked Systems, without apology, even if they try to take and consider the ways that you have it from you. You must know, not that become gridlocked by chronic stress in you your family life or congregational life. How much have you viewed leadership can do whatever you want; you are not as a solo experience? Explore the a kudzu vine, eating entire hillsides for antidotes to the stresses that come from “I” culture, suggested by quotes the purpose of feeding your own lush from Salsa, Soul, and Spirit. Visualize life. You yourself as a person with integrity, a must know instead, that inside you are well-differentiated person who is able to entire move away from “I” toward “we,”

Harvest the Power, 2nd Edition © Unitarian Universalist Association 2020 | 72 Universes—milky blue, magenta, and DESCRIPTION gold— Invite participants to listen as the participant you chose reads the story expanding. But to actually be free, you aloud to the group. Ask the group, as must they listen, to consider the ways that know and you must fight for the entire Fannie Barrier Williams modeled leadership with integrity. Universes inside of everyone else. Engage participants in a discussion Being free is not a license, but with these questions: A promise. • How did Fannie Barrier Williams Tell participants that this workshop show leadership? What kinds of invites them to reflect on their spiritual power did she exhibit in her and emotional lives and the qualities leadership? Invite participants to they bring to their leadership roles. refer to their copies of Handout 2, Types of Power, from Workshop 1. Activity 1: Fannie Barrier • How would you describe the Williams (15 minutes) personal qualities that Williams MATERIALS brought to her leadership? How did her leadership reflect a “we”  Story, Fannie Barrier Williams orientation?  Participants’ copies of Handout 2, Types of • How did Williams develop and use Power, from Workshop 1 the skills and connections she  Optional: Newsprint, markers, and wall- needed to lead effectively? safe tape • What spiritual and emotional PREPARATION support might she have drawn on to • Familiarize yourself with the story. withstand enormous pressure and maintain her integrity? • Pre-arrange for a participant to read the story; provide them with a copy Conclude the discussion by noting that ahead of time. this story is suitable for all ages and is a good one to share with young people • Optional: Write the five types of in your home or congregation. power (referent power, expert power, positional power, reward ACTIVITY 2: Navigating power, and coercive power) from Handout 2 on a sheet of newsprint, Moments of Crisis (10 and post where all participants can minutes) see.

Harvest the Power, 2nd Edition © Unitarian Universalist Association 2020 | 73 MATERIALS for participants to bring a moment of crisis to mind.  Paper and pens or pencils for all participants Indicate the questions you posted on  Newsprint, markers, and wall-safe tape newsprint. Distribute paper and writing implements and tell participants that  Clock or timer they will have ten minutes to write or  Bell or chime silently meditate in response to the questions. Say that they will not be PREPARATION asked to share their reflections with one • Ensure that each participant has a another but, rather, are invited to find comfortable space for writing. some personal grounding to bring into • Write these questions on newsprint, activities that follow in this workshop. and post it where all participants Read the questions aloud. Give can see it: participants time to write. ▪ What were the circumstances? Ring a bell or chime after 10 minutes. ▪ What choices did you have to Invite participants to finish writing or make? reflecting and to return their attention to ▪ What skills or information did the group. Ask for brief feedback about you seek to help you? the experience of considering their own ▪ What spiritual and emotional spiritual and emotional resources. resources did you need? ▪ Did you feel prepared spiritually ACTIVITY 3: The Who of and emotionally for the challenge? Leadership (10 minutes) ▪ How could you have been better MATERIALS prepared?  Handout 1, The “Who” of Leadership ▪ What did you learn? How did this experience change you? PREPARATION ▪ How did or does your experience • Copy Handout 1, The “Who” of contribute to your perception of Leadership, for all participants. yourself as a leader? • Pre-arrange with four participants to DESCRIPTION read aloud the four paragraphs of Invite participants to recall a moment of the handout. You may wish to crisis in their own lives, a moment when provide them each with a copy they had some choices to make. It ahead of time. might be a work, family, or health crisis, or a crisis that emerged out of a DESCRIPTION commitment or goal they were Distribute Handout 1. Ask the four pursuing. Allow a full minute of silence participants to each read aloud a

Harvest the Power, 2nd Edition © Unitarian Universalist Association 2020 | 74 paragraph. Then, invite participants to  Scissors (including left-handed spend five minutes with a partner scissors) for all participants sharing responses to the handout,  Cardboard box, large basket, or using these questions: other large container • What new insights did you gain?  An attractive piece of cloth large • What in the piece rings true for you? enough to cover the container After five minutes, reconvene the PREPARATION group. Ask participants if they are • Set up a work area so that familiar with the work of Margaret participants will each have room to Benefiel. In her book Soul at Work, she work and can easily share the art defines spirituality broadly as “the materials. human spirit, fully engaged.” She goes on to state, “Spirituality includes the • In a central place, such as your intellectual, emotional, and relational chalice-lighting area, set a large depth of human character, as well as box, basket, or other container, and the continuing capability and yearning cover it with the cloth. for personal development and DESCRIPTION evolution.” Point out that the capacity Ask participants to consider what for full engagement is important, sustains them in times of crisis. What especially in a moment of crisis. spiritual practices or disciplines do they find helpful? What keeps them Invite participants to name some grounded and centered when they face spiritual practices that can strengthen challenges? and deepen us and help us to engage more fully in all that life offers. If Invite participants to use papers, glue, participants need prompting, you can and markers to create symbols—words, suggest prayer, worship, small-group pictures, abstract creations, or a ministry, meditation, service, time in the combination—representing the things natural world, singing or making music, that sustain them and help keep their and journaling. spirits fully engaged. For example, they might create a leaf to represent walking ACTIVITY 4: What Sustains in the woods and/or a small book to You? (20 minutes) represent journaling. Tell them that they can create a single symbol or as many MATERIALS as they like.  A variety of color and fancy papers, After 15 minutes, reconvene the group. markers, and glue and/or glue Invite participants to name their sticks sustaining spiritual practices as they place their creations in the container,

Harvest the Power, 2nd Edition © Unitarian Universalist Association 2020 | 75 one person at a time. belong. Acknowledge that people who aren’t in the room might have additional ACTIVITY 5: Stresses in the suggestions if they were present. System (15 minutes) Ask your co-facilitator or a volunteer to MATERIALS scribe while participants name all the changes that they and other members  Newsprint, markers, and wall-safe tape of the congregation have had to adjust  Timer or clock to in the last few years. These may be  Optional: Small wrapped candies and a technological or societal, or they may basket, bowl, or candy dish relate to personal life transitions. Invite people to name all the things they are PREPARATION concerned about, whether related to • Draw the outline of a large soup pot home, the congregation, safety, world on a sheet of newsprint, and post it affairs, or any other realm of life. Have where all participants can see. the scribe write each item inside the soup pot. If you wish, invite participants DESCRIPTION to symbolically add candies to the bowl In this activity, participants identify as they contribute ideas. Approach this issues—both internal and external to part of the activity playfully to ensure the congregation—that cause stress for that it does not raise anxiety. those who are part of the congregation Encourage light-heartedness and and for leaders. laughter. Acknowledge any serious Tell participants that you are going to items that people share, but do not let make a “soup” together that will be a them overwhelm the process. metaphor for some of the changes and If there is a lull, encourage people to challenges that members of our name more changes. You might offer a congregation experience, day to day. small candy for each answer as a way Point out that each person in the room to encourage people to keep going, will have different “ingredients” to while your scribe tries to capture them contribute. Invite participants to take all in the pot (with increasing difficulty!). care when using the words “we” and It is not necessary that each word be “us;” ask them to be specific and name legible from a distance. The important who they mean when they say “we” point is the sheer number of changes (e.g., white Unitarian Universalists are and challenges written in the “soup.” experiencing…; Unitarian Universalists Continue this part of the exercise, who are Millennials are experiencing…; leaving at least five minutes to parents and caregivers are conclude the activity. experiencing...). Ask participants not to After you have created your stress-filled speak for generations, genders, or “soup,” invite the group to silently take other cohorts to which they do not Harvest the Power, 2nd Edition © Unitarian Universalist Association 2020 | 76 in the creation. Invite them to consider ACTIVITY 6: Barriers (30 stresses in the soup as challenges to be met as a faith community seeking to minutes) honor its mission, rather than problems MATERIALS to be avoided. After a pause, invite  Handout 2, Gridlocked Systems people to share one-word reactions to  Pens or pencils the soup that you have created.  Clock or timer If no one has mentioned difficulties that some in the congregation may face PREPARATION based on an identity they hold that is • Copy Handout 2 for all participants. marginalized in the congregation, community, or larger society, lift that up DESCRIPTION now. Then say, using these or similar The concepts presented in this activity words: may be new to participants. Present the concepts, guide participants’ initial When, as leaders, we orient responses, and encourage participants ourselves to “WE” instead of “I,” we to take time to mull over these ideas, have a new responsibility to both in and outside the context of the understand who is in the “we” with workshop. us.” For example, could our “soup” include stress that is happening for Distribute Handout 2 and writing people who hold a marginalized implements. Invite participants to read racial or gender identity? Some may the handout silently and to note feel stress as they encounter responses or questions in the margins congregational practices or as they read. Allow a few minutes. traditions, cherished by some, that Tell the group that they will work with reflect ways of knowing, seeing, and the handout, one section at a time. being in the world that make it Explain that these concepts are impossible for them to bring their full complex and may require time to selves. The important spiritual work digest. Mention that concepts in the leaders do in orienting themselves handout may run counter to to “WE” and transforming practices assumptions and practices that that exclude adds to the soup. participants have engaged in as Conclude by saying: leaders. Invite participants to notice whether feelings come up such as This soup is the context in which our confusion, defensiveness, or anxiety. congregation’s leaders must lead. It Assure the group that many leaders is up to our faith community and to find these ideas challenging. us as leaders to hold us all—as we share this soup together. Read aloud the first section of the handout and the second section, titled

Harvest the Power, 2nd Edition © Unitarian Universalist Association 2020 | 77 “Data.” Invite participants to move into centered and whole, even when you’re triads and to share their responses to under stress? Consider setting aside the questions at the end of “Data.” time in your daily and/or weekly Allow five minutes for this discussion. schedule for practices that sustain you. What times and what practices do you, Reconvene the group. Spend three or could you, choose? How can you minutes sharing highlights and encourage others to do the same? reflections from the small-group discussions. Add to or deepen the spiritual dimension of leadership and other Read aloud the section titled meetings in your congregation. Chalice “Empathy.” Invite participants to move lightings, readings, prayers, songs, and into different triads and to share their meditations can enrich your time responses to that section. Allow five together and lead to leadership with minutes for this discussion. creativity, imagination, clarity, and Reconvene the group. Spend three integrity. minutes sharing highlights and reflections from the small-group CLOSING (15 minutes) discussions. MATERIALS Read aloud the final section, titled  Table or stand for chalice and worship “Self.” Invite participants to move into materials, and a cloth to cover the table yet another triad and to share their  Chalice, candle, and lighter or LED battery- responses to that section. Allow five operated candle minutes for this discussion.  Four candles and a lighter; or, four natural Reconvene the group. Spend three objects such as pinecones, stones, or minutes sharing highlights and shells, and a container to hold them reflections from the small-group discussions.  Bell or chime Conclude this activity by asking, “What PREPARATION thoughts and questions will you take • Prepare a visually appealing away for further reflection?” worship table. Arrange four unlit candles, or display the empty FAITH IN ACTION: container with the four natural objects arranged near it. Leadership’s Spiritual Dimension • Optional: Customize the Taking It Home handout for your group DESCRIPTION before emailing or photocopying it. Consider ways to nurture your spiritual well-being. What practices help you feel • Copy Taking It Home for all participants, or plan to email it.

Harvest the Power, 2nd Edition © Unitarian Universalist Association 2020 | 78 DESCRIPTION and minds all those who have This worship time offers a model for offered their gifts of love and service leaders to acknowledge the stresses to the congregation. Enter into and challenges in the congregation silence for a time and call to mind while lifting up what supports and those who bring their creativity, their deepens the congregation’s vision and dedication, their labor, their financial mission. It is a technique to help support, and their passion to congregational leaders intentionally support the congregation and its hold space for creative ideas and mission and work in the world. Call emerging leadership. to mind those who are newly emerging as leaders, both adults Distribute copies of Taking It Home. and youth, and feel your heart fill Say: with gratitude for the gifts they bring. I invite you to enter into a time of After a minute, ring the bell. While silence, and bring into your hearts lighting a second candle or putting the and minds all those in the second object into the container, say: congregation and in our families We hold in our hearts gratitude for who are facing challenges—the the many ways in which people death of a loved one, difficulties with bring their gifts to serve the mission a child or an elderly parent, physical of this congregation. and mental health concerns, racial or gender-based marginalization or Now say: violence, sadness, job loss, financial I invite you to hold in your hearts difficulty. and minds the challenges faced by Pause for a moment, and then ring the this congregation. Enter into silence bell. While lighting one candle or for a time, and call to mind, one at a putting one of the natural objects into time, all the myriad issues facing the the container, say: leadership at this time. In the silence of your heart, embrace the We hold in our hearts and minds challenges, knowing that these are and prayers all those in the signs of a living institution. congregation who are facing a difficult time. In this moment, you After a minute, ring the bell. While are invited to speak the names of lighting a third candle or putting the those we hold in thought and third object into the container, say: prayer. In the silence, we number our Wait an appropriate interval while challenges with humility, rejoicing in people speak. Then say: the opportunity to take our own turn in guiding this community in living I invite you to hold in your hearts

Harvest the Power, 2nd Edition © Unitarian Universalist Association 2020 | 79 the values of our liberal faith. • What did you learn about yourself as an individual while facilitating this Now say: workshop? What did you learn I invite you to embrace your role as about yourself as a leader? leader, understanding that you and • Look ahead to the next workshop in your spiritual well-being are crucial this program. What materials do we to the well-being of the need to request or gather? What congregation. In the silence, I invite other preparation is needed? you to honor your own spirit and your own service to your faith TAKING IT HOME community. The universe sings no less After a minute, ring the bell. While Because time and space lighting a fourth candle or putting the Wear us thin. fourth object into the container, say: We honor ourselves and one The music calls us another as leaders in this faith To recognize our limitations, community, and we embrace our To recognize that need to care for our own spirits that The song is best we may serve with integrity and with sung with others. love. So may it be. — Manish K. Mishra-Marzetti Reread the handouts at home. Reflect LEADER REFLECTION on your own responses to the situations that arise in your life and in your work. AND PLANNING When are you responding with integrity, Consider and discuss these questions out of a clear and healthy sense of with your co-facilitator: self? When are you reactive, responding to the chronic anxiety that • Looking at each activity in this surrounds us? What practices will help workshop, what worked as well as you nurture your spiritual well-being? or better than you had anticipated? What did not work as well as you Find Out More had anticipated? You may wish to add resources that • What issues came up for you, informed this workshop to your personally, in trying any activity congregation’s leadership library: yourself? What came up in the • Margaret Benefiel, Soul at Work: process of facilitating? Spiritual Leadership in • What would you change if you were Organizations (New York: Seabury to lead this workshop again? How Books, 2005) would you do it differently?

Harvest the Power, 2nd Edition © Unitarian Universalist Association 2020 | 80 • Robin DiAngelo, White Fragility: “How are your ‘buttons’ related to Why It’s So Hard for White People experiences you have had? How are to Talk About Racism (Beacon they related to power you hold—or Press, 2018) don’t hold—in a given situation?” Invite those who wish to share their thoughts • Jeffrey D. Jones, The “What” and to do so. the “Who” of Leadership (Alban Institute, 2008) ALTERNATE ACTIVITY 2: ALTERNATE ACTIVITY 1: Worship with Serenity Button Pushing (10 Prayer (15 minutes) minutes) MATERIALS DESCRIPTION  Table or stand for chalice and worship The purpose of this activity is to raise materials, and a cloth to cover it participants’ awareness of their own  Small candles, enough for all participants, stressors and to consider how they and a sand-filled container, OR a bowl of react and respond to stress. water and small stones, enough for all Ask participants to think about these participants questions: PREPARATION • As a congregational leader, what • Prepare an attractive worship table “pushes your buttons”? in the center of the circle, including a lit chalice and the sand-filled • What do you do when your buttons container and candles or the bowl of get pushed? water and stones. After participants have reflected for a minute or so, invite them to move • Write the words to the Serenity around the room and to share brief Prayer on newsprint, and post it answers to each question with others, where all participants can see it: one person at a time. “God grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, After five minutes, or when the activity the courage to change the things I slows down, call the group back can, and the wisdom to know the together. Ask participants if they saw difference.” similarities between their own and DESCRIPTION others’ buttons or responses, and if This worship time offers a model for anything surprised them. Allow some leadership groups to acknowledge the discussion. anxieties and the challenges in the Ask the group to consider what it is that congregation while lifting up that which makes their buttons “pushable.” Ask, supports and deepens the

Harvest the Power, 2nd Edition © Unitarian Universalist Association 2020 | 81 congregation’s vision and mission. It is congregation. In the silence, I invite a technique to help congregational you to honor your own spirit and leaders intentionally hold space for your own service to your faith creative ideas and emerging community. In the moments that leadership. follow, I invite each of you to light a candle [or put a rock into the water] Say: in silence, symbolizing your own I invite you to enter into a time of spirit, fully engaged and ready to silence and to bring into your hearts face the challenges of leadership. and minds all those in the After everyone has lit a candle or congregation and in our families placed a stone, invite participants to who are facing challenges. follow your lead and repeat together a Pause for 30 seconds. Then say: prayer that will be familiar to some, often attributed to theologian Reinhold I invite you to hold in your hearts Niebuhr: and minds all those who have offered their gifts of love and service God grant me the serenity to accept to the congregation. Enter into the things I cannot change, the silence for a time and call to mind courage to change the things I can, those who are newly emerging as and the wisdom to know the leaders, both adults and youth, and difference. feel your heart fill with gratitude at INCLUDING ALL PARTICIPANTS the gifts they bring. If any participants have mobility Pause for 30 seconds. Say: impairments that make it difficult for them to move to the worship table, I invite you to hold in your hearts distribute stones before beginning this and minds the challenges faced by activity. When the time comes, pass the this congregation. Enter into silence bowl so that all can put their stones in for a time, and call to mind, one at a the water. time, the myriad issues currently facing the leadership. In the silence of your heart, embrace the challenges, knowing that these are signs of a living institution. Pause for one minute. Then say: I invite you to embrace your role as leader, understanding that you and your spiritual well-being are crucial to the well-being of the

Harvest the Power, 2nd Edition © Unitarian Universalist Association 2020 | 82 STORY: Fannie Barrier had to leave the school because some white students were threatening to quit Williams (1855–1944) if they had to go to school with a Black By Gail Forsyth-Vail with Jamaine person. Cripe. Sources include “Fannie Barrier Williams” by June Edwards, in Fannie Barrier had a lot of gifts. She Darkening the Doorways: Black was a talented painter and pianist, a Trailblazers and Missed Opportunities good student, and a good friend. She in Unitarian Universalism, edited by had grown up in Brockport, New York, Mark Morrison-Reid (Skinner House, a mostly white town outside of 2011); “A Northern Negro’s Rochester, during and after the Civil Autobiography” by Fannie Barrier War, where she felt accepted as a Williams, The Independent, Vol. 57, social equal. It was only when she set July 14, 1904; and Fannie Barrier out to do something “large or out of the Williams (1855–1944), contributed by ordinary” in her life that she smacked Candace Staten to BlackPast.org, right up against a system that said she March 31, 2014. was of less value than white people. But it was also when she bumped up against this system that she found her What can religion further do to advance greatest gifts and then used them to the condition of the colored people? help people whose lives were more More religion and less church. . . . Less difficult than her own. theology and more of human Fannie Barrier met and married Samuel brotherhood (sic), less declamation and Williams, a young lawyer. They moved more common sense and love for truth. to Chicago, where they lived on the — Fannie Barrier Williams, 1893 South Side, a predominantly Black part Fannie Barrier was furious. She was of town. She made friends with many embarrassed and hurt and disgusted. people, Black and white, who were She had discovered that no matter how interested in the arts, music, and talented, educated, and polite she was, discussions about all sorts of her race made her a second-class interesting things. She also worked citizen. In Washington, D.C., where she hard to help those in her community, was a teacher, she had decided to take especially the Black women who, a painting class. But she discovered because of prejudice, were unable to that her art instructor had erected find jobs to help support their families. screens to separate her from the white Because she had so many white students in the class. Thinking that friends, she decided to try to persuade things would be better in the North, she some of them to offer jobs to skilled enrolled in a music school in Boston. Black women. She soon discovered The principal there told her that she that just because a white person was

Harvest the Power, 2nd Edition © Unitarian Universalist Association 2020 | 83 kind to her as an individual did not to deliver her message everywhere. mean that they would give Black She became a paid speaker, women a chance to prove themselves sometimes pairing her speeches with a as workers. One manager, when piano concert. Williams asked him to hire Black Fannie Barrier Williams, whose gifts women, went on and on about how his and talents were many and who was parents raised him to believe that herself financially comfortable, never slavery was wrong. But when she forgot the Black women whose paths pressed him to offer Black women jobs, were even more difficult than hers. All he said no, it would be too disruptive to her life, she fought the racism that kept his business. When she reminded him Black people from the jobs and that his Christian faith called him to do education they needed to survive so better, he disagreed. they could offer their own talents to the During her years in Chicago, Fannie world. We honor her memory and her Barrier Williams met and became place among our UU ancestors. friendly with Jenkin Lloyd Jones, minister of the Unitarian Church of All Souls. She joined the church and was active in the establishment of the Abraham Lincoln Centre, As the City of Chicago prepared to host the 1893 World’s Fair, Williams’ minister organized a World’s Parliament of Religions. This would be a gathering where people from all over the world could learn about one another’s religions. Fannie Barrier Williams discovered that there were no women of color on the planning team, and she pushed hard to fix that. Eventually she was invited not only to be part of the organizing team, but also to speak at the gathering. In her moving speech, “Religious Duty to the Negro,” she demanded that churches do a better job of practicing what they preached when it came to justice for Black people. Because of this powerful speech, Fannie Barrier Williams became famous. Soon, she was invited

Harvest the Power, 2nd Edition © Unitarian Universalist Association 2020 | 84 HANDOUT 1: The “Who” of nurtured through spiritual disciplines shapes who we are and how we relate Leadership to others in profound ways. Without that Excerpted from a blog post, “The ‘What’ depth, our “who” is something less that and the ‘Who’ of Leadership,” by it can be. Jeffrey D. Jones, Alban Weekly (No. 231, December 29, 2008). Jones Another dimension of the “who” of adapted this piece from his book, leadership is our own self-knowledge. Heart, Mind, and Strength: Theory and Years of therapy aren’t essential, but a Practice for Congregational Leadership good understanding of what makes us (The Alban Institute, Inc., 2008). tick is. What issues tend to threaten us? What strengths can we rely on, what preconceived notions can get us The “who” aspect of leadership is into trouble? How has our past based on the reality that not everything experience shaped the way we relate to a leader needs can be learned from people? What are the needs, the books or reduced to a step-by-step plan hopes, and the fears that drive us? All that can be universally applied; rather it of this (and much more) influences our must come from an internal sense of ability to lead. To lead effectively, we the situation and what the leader brings need to be aware of these personal to it. traits and the way they shape our leading. Given sufficient time, almost all The “who” is often revealed under of those traits will become apparent to pressure. Your “who” is revealed in those we lead, so we had best be what comes out of your mouth when honest with ourselves right from the you need to respond instantly, without beginning. the benefit even of personal reflection. It also becomes evident in the long haul, perhaps when there’s nothing dramatic going on at all—how you handle day-to-day interactions with members of the congregation, how the way you live your life outside the congregation reflects that which you value and believe as a member of a religious community. The “who” of leadership has many dimensions. Our spiritual lives affect both our self-understanding and our relationships. The depth and strength of our faith and the way that faith is Harvest the Power, 2nd Edition © Unitarian Universalist Association 2020 | 85 HANDOUT 2: Gridlocked in white-dominant-culture organizations, in Salsa, Soul, and Systems Spirit: Leadership for a Multicultural Adapted from A Failure of Nerve: Age, Juana Bordas explores leadership Leadership in the Age of the Quick Fix styles in communities of color. by Edwin H. Friedman (New York: Considering these insights together can Seabury Books, 2007), and Salsa, strengthen the ability of all Unitarian Soul, and Spirit: Leadership for a Universalist lay leaders to lead with Multicultural Age by Juana Bordas creativity, humility, and integrity. (2012, Berett-Koehler Publishers). DATA Friedman writes of the current obsession with gathering data and with In his book A Failure of Nerve: finding the right technique to move the Leadership in the Age of the Quick Fix, institution forward. He speaks of a Edwin H. Friedman writes that chronic “quick fix” mind-set that focuses on anxiety “influences our thoughts and problems rather than strengths, and our leaders toward safety and certainty demands certainty and easy answers rather than boldness and adventure” (p. rather than creativity and adaptation: 37). He suggests that we are “imaginatively stuck” and that leaders What I am driving at is this: As long as have developed barriers that prevent leaders—parents, healers, managers— new and creative thinking. He names base their confidence on how much “imagination limiting” notions that keep data they have acquired, they are today’s leaders gridlocked. He identifies doomed to feeling inadequate, forever. three sticking points for effective . . . The data deluge can only be leadership: data collection, empathy, harnessed to the extent that leaders and lack of self-differentiation: realize that not all information is worth gathering [and]... develop criteria for • Data: The notion that when enough discerning what information is important “data” are collected, a decision will to leadership. (p. 104) become clear. . . . • Empathy: The notion that leaders must be sure that every individual in Ultimately, the capacity of leaders to the community is happy with a distinguish what information is decision as presented. important depends less on the development of new techniques for • Self: The notion that self- sorting data than on a leader’s ability to differentiation and self-care are avoid being driven by the regressive “selfish.” anxiety that is often the source of the While Friedman’s work explores unregulated data proliferation to begin leadership barriers that lead to gridlock with. (p. 105) Harvest the Power, 2nd Edition © Unitarian Universalist Association 2020 | 86 In Salsa, Soul, and Spirit, Bordas lifts creativity of the healthier, more mature up the collaborative nature of members of the organization. leadership in communities of color: Bordas writes: Whether I or We is central to a society The American belief that only contours the shape of its leadership. A democratic voting can ensure equal We identity promotes a collective and participation runs contrary to many people-centered leadership that indigenous forms and traditional espouses the well-being of the people cultures in which building consensus, as a whole . . . (p. 79) integrating people’s needs, and . . . Collaborative leadership transforms strengthening the collective is the goal. the I orientation of hierarchical In democratic systems, voting signifies leadership to a group-centered or We that the majority rules. In some orientation. Instead of supplying all the instances 49 percent of the group might answers, the collaborative leader not agree with the other 51 percent, creates an environment that promotes and rarely is there unanimity. In teamwork and learning together. (p. 80) collectivist cultures, in which relationships are lifelong and ongoing, Consider these questions: this would weaken the community • How might the collaborative fabric. . . . Building consensus and approach that Bordas describes integrating everyone’s opinions takes serve as an antidote to the “data time and a great deal of patience and deluge” problem Friedman dialogue! Encouraging everyone’s identifies? participation may seem cumbersome. However, it is a surefire way to garner • Might your leadership team consider the collective wisdom and to secure the addressing any current issues by commitment of all involved. (p. 180) turning away from data collection and instead toward creating an Consider these questions. environment of teamwork with the • As a member of the leadership people you serve? team, how do you take care not to EMPATHY silence the voices of those often on A second imagination-limiting notion is the margins (including members of a focus on empathy rather than the leadership team) in the name of responsibility, and weakness rather moving forward? than strength. Friedman writes of the tendency of chronically anxious • How can your leadership team organizations to work to lessen the pain distinguish between individuals or of some needy or immature members voices blocking the congregation and to organize themselves around from staying true to your mission their needs, rather than nurture the and those that are, in their Harvest the Power, 2nd Edition © Unitarian Universalist Association 2020 | 87 disagreement or protest or the system’s integrity. (pp. 230–231) complaints, keeping the leadership Read this quote from Salsa, Soul, and true to that mission? How do you, Spirit: as a team, need one another in this discernment? Leaders in communities of color receive SELF their legitimacy from the people they Friedman writes about the importance serve. They garner this respect by of the leader’s capacity for self- exhibiting a high level of morality, differentiation, that is, one’s ability to including being generous, honest, and remain grounded in one’s own sense of humble, and by serving. As they model purpose and identity and to avoid being these behaviors, they lift up the morality swept into the anxiety of the of their followers and community as organization’s system. He writes: well. With limited resources, leaders must be adept at mobilizing people to The key . . . is the leader’s own self- address critical issues, including an differentiation, by which I mean [their] examination of the social structures that capacity to be a non-anxious presence, limit equal participation. (p. 71) a challenging presence, a well-defined presence, and a paradoxical presence. Consider these questions about your Differentiation is not about being leadership group: coercive, manipulative, reactive, • What qualities are most important pursuing or invasive, but being rooted for leaders to exhibit? in the leader’s own sense of self rather • How does your leadership team pay than focused on that of [their] followers. attention to the spiritual and It is in no way autocratic, narcissistic, or character development of its selfish, even though it may be members, both as individuals and perceived that way by those who are as a team? not taking responsibility for their own being. Self-differentiation is not “selfish.” Furthermore, the power inherent in a leader’s presence does not reside in physical or economic strength but in the nature of [their] own being, so that even when leaders are entitled to great power by dint of their office, it is ultimately the nature of their presence that is the source of their real strength. Leaders function as immune systems of the institutions they lead— not because they ward off enemies, but because they supply the ingredients for Harvest the Power, 2nd Edition © Unitarian Universalist Association 2020 | 88 WORKSHOP 6: FAITH patterns within the congregation as they examine congregational changes AND CONFLICT and challenges. They consider how ...Meaningful change is hard, leaders can build the system’s health especially as it relates to identity and resilience by focusing on and power. It raises essential strengthening and supporting questions about whose voices are relationships within the leadership team heard, who is asked to take risks, and with the congregation. A leadership how we negotiate our relationships, team that nurtures authentic and what our priorities are as a relationships and stays in touch with community. False divisions like the people they lead can more “political correctness” versus effectively help the congregational “inclusive speech,” or the question system respond to conflict, challenge, of whether to focus critiques inward and change. in our communities versus outward Participants reflect on how leaders toward the world, distract from the might move a congregation from the core calling of our faith to move habit of engaging in proxy fights where toward equity and compassion in a seemingly intractable conflict really is every way. — September 2019 a stand-in for a larger issue. They learn letter to congregations from leaders to recognize how a “fake fight” can of the Unitarian Universalist reinforce the status quo and prevent Association, Allies for Racial Equity, conversations about deeper issues. Association of Unitarian Universalist Instead, participants are invited to Administrators, Association for embrace the practice of leaning into Unitarian Universalist Music conflict as a pathway to spiritual Ministries, Diverse & Revolutionary deepening and transformational Unitarian Universalist Multicultural change. As they conclude the Harvest Ministries, Liberal Religious the Power program, participants set Educators Association, Transgender forth to lead a congregation or Religious Professional Unitarian community to meet dilemmas, Universalists Together, and disagreements, and conflicts with Unitarian Universalist Ministers faithful curiosity and attention to Association relationship, so that the congregation INTRODUCTION might grow as covenanted community living its mission in the world. In this workshop, participants practice looking at the structures, committees, GOALS and formal and informal groups of the This workshop will: congregation as an inter-related, interconnected system. They will • Introduce the concept of systems identify relational and emotional Harvest the Power, 2nd Edition © Unitarian Universalist Association 2020 | 89 thinking community and to plan a way forward. • Explore the roles of relationships and connections in strengthening a WORKSHOP-AT-A-GLANCE faith community Activity Minutes • Offer an opportunity for leaders to consider real-world dilemmas and Opening 5 conflicts facing their faith community Activity 1: Story, Tapping 15 and to apply their learning to chart a Out of “Fake Fights” way forward Activity 2: Congregations as 40 • Invite leaders to become aware of Systems their own role in the congregation and to develop an approach and Activity 3: Leadership 15 leadership skills to guide a Lessons for the Real World community toward a faithful Activity 4: Faith and Conflict 40 response to conflict. Faith in Action: Through a LEARNING OBJECTIVES Systems Lens Participants will: Closing 5 • Be introduced to the idea that Alternate Activity 1: 45 paying attention to relationships and Alternate Systems Thinking to the congregation’s mission will Scenarios steer a congregation away from proxy fights that damage congregational life SPIRITUAL PREPARATION Consider a challenge facing your • Use a scenario to learn about some congregation right now. Read Activity 2, systems that are in play in a and use this process to identify some of congregation and to gain an the emotional and relational systems at understanding of systems thinking play in your congregation. With your co- • Learn about and reflect on Margaret facilitator, talk with your parish minister Wheatley’s Leadership Lessons for or congregational president about your the Real World observations. • Develop a deeper understanding of Ask yourself: How are you attending to themselves as leaders and their role relationships and connections in your in the community role as the workshop facilitator? In meditation or prayer, express • Use all they have learned in Harvest compassion and a wish for spiritual and the Power to examine dilemmas emotional health for yourself and for all and conflicts in their own faith the participants in this workshop. Harvest the Power, 2nd Edition © Unitarian Universalist Association 2020 | 90 ACTIVITY 1: Tapping Out of

“Fake Fights” (15 minutes) MATERIALS WORKSHOP PLAN  Story, Tapping Out of “Fake Fights” PREPARATION OPENING (5 minutes) • Arrange for a participant to read MATERIALS Tapping Out of “Fake Fights”  Small worship table aloud; you might provide them with a copy of this reading in  Chalice, candle, and lighter or LED advance. battery-operated candle DESCRIPTION  Covenant created in Workshop 1 Have the participant you chose read and wall-safe tape the story to the group. Then, point out PREPARATION examples of fake, or proxy, fights that • Set up the chalice on the worship Ladd names: disagreements about by- table. laws at the annual meeting, or paint colors, or whether and how to speak Post the covenant created in • out on public issues. Ask participants to Workshop 1. identify any fake fights that have roiled DESCRIPTION their own congregation. What conflict Light the chalice, and share this was the fake fight a proxy for? reading from Emergent Strategy by Next, ask them to name instances of adrienne maree brown: conflicts that led to better, more faithful Many of us have been socialized to decisions about the congregation and understand that constant growth, its mission. Allow a couple of minutes violent competition, and critical for reflection. mass are the ways to create Ask participants to consider how change. But emergence shows us untended or broken relationships that adaptation and evolution contribute to fake fights. Ask how depend more on critical, deep, and attention to relationships could support authentic connection, a thread that conflict that generates healthy change. can be tugged for support and resilience. The quality of connection Repeat the closing part of the story: between the nodes in the patterns. The real fight beckons—the real Dare I say love. conversation about our history, our identity, our relevance, our And we know how to connect—we resistance. The world does not need long for it. Harvest the Power, 2nd Edition © Unitarian Universalist Association 2020 | 91 another place for like-minded wish to use the alternate activity if liberal-leaning people to hang out the group is, in fact, engaged in a together and fight about who’s in challenge resembling the Heavenly charge. The world does not need a Unitarian Universalist scenario or if place where you or I or any of us is unpacking two simple scenarios going to get what we want. would work better for your group than exploring a single, more What the world needs is a complex one. movement like ours to step more fully into our higher calling; to serve • Make copies of Handout 1 (or, as an instrument for encounters with Handout 3, if you are using one another, with the holy, and with Alternate Activity 1 and not this the world, so that we might love activity). more fully, and speak more truly, • Post a sheet of newsprint. and serve with greater efficacy. • Prepare, but do not post, a sheet of Invite participants to begin thinking newsprint with these reflection about how we might develop the prompts (Note: The Alternate capacity to do just that. Activity offers different prompts.): ACTIVITY 2: Congregations ▪ How is this congregation affected by the music director’s as Systems (40 minutes) resignation? MATERIALS ▪ What emotions might come to  Handout 1, Heavenly Unitarian Universalist the fore for the congregation as Congregation they work through this change? ▪ What long-standing patterns of  Optional: Handout 3, Alternate Systems behavior in this group may have Thinking Scenarios been revealed by the music  Newsprint, markers, and wall-safe tape director’s resignation? • Prepare, but do not post, a second PREPARATION sheet of newsprint with these • Review this activity and Handout 1. reflection prompts: Also, review Alternate Activity 1, ▪ What relationships in this Alternate Systems Thinking congregational system need Scenarios; its accompanying tending? handout presents two scenarios ▪ How might this scenario play out less complex than the Heavenly if the leaders commit to being Unitarian Universalist Congregation guided by covenant, their scenario, both involving stresses Unitarian Universalist faith, and that come from outside rather than the congregation’s mission? inside the congregation. You may DESCRIPTION

Harvest the Power, 2nd Edition © Unitarian Universalist Association 2020 | 92 Share with participants the scenario in Draw solid lines to connect the music Handout 1. director to groups or individuals who have a direct relationship with the Share this definition of systems director. Use dotted lines to indicate thinking, adapted from multiple sources indirect relationships. Draw wavy lines including the book, How Your Church between the director and those who Family Works: Understanding might have feelings about her Congregations as Emotional Systems departure. If you need to combine the by Peter Steinke and the website, type of line for some groups or Learning for Sustainability: individuals (such as dotted and wavy), Systems thinking posits that a complex do so. system—for example, a congregation— Invite the group to examine the drawing cannot be fully understood from only and consider other connections in the one perspective. Systems thinking congregation that have nothing to do focuses on how the parts of a system with the music director or the music interrelate and mutually influence one program; for example, teachers might another. Systems thinking can help us be connected directly to the religious understand the patterns of thought and educator. Draw and label those stick action that hold the system together. figures, and represent their connections Tell the group that you are going to with solid, dotted, or wavy lines, as create a drawing of “the system” at appropriate. Heavenly. Draw a stick figure of the Pause for a moment to let participants music director in the center of the take in the drawing. Tell them that you newsprint, labeled “Music Director.” Ask are going to add complexity by participants to name individuals or identifying the emotions and long- groups affected in any way by the standing patterns of behavior involved music director’s work. As each in these relationships. Post the first individual or group is named, draw sheet of newsprint where all them as stick figures on the newsprint, participants can see it. Ask participants and label each one. If they have not to form four small groups, and assign done so already, prompt the group to groups as follows: add groups or individuals in the congregation who don’t have a direct • Group 1: The straight lines, connection to the music director but still representing direct connections with might have feelings about her the music director departure (e.g., new members who • Group 2: The dotted lines, were planning to join the choir once representing indirect connections they felt a bit more acclimated). Add with the music director these folks to the picture as well. • Group 3: The wavy lines,

Harvest the Power, 2nd Edition © Unitarian Universalist Association 2020 | 93 representing those who don’t have a insights from their conversations. direct connection but still have Ask: “If you were a leader at Heavenly feelings about the music director’s Unitarian Universalist Congregation, departure what would you need to do to help the • Group 4: The solid, dotted, and congregation clearly face the conflicts wavy lines representing connections uncovered by the music director’s among groups or individuals in the resignation and discover the congregation who have nothing to opportunities that have opened?” Allow do with the music director a few participants to respond. Tell groups that they will have 10 INCLUDING ALL PARTICIPANTS minutes to discuss the posted If any participants cannot see your questions. Provide each small group drawing of Heavenly’s system on with newsprint and a marker to list key newsprint, explain the drawing in detail points from their conversation. as the large group works together to After 10 minutes, invite each group, create it. one at a time, to post their lists near the diagram and share the highlights of ACTIVITY 3: Leadership their discussion. Lessons for the Real World Explain that systems theory tells us that (15 minutes) an organization, family, or congregation MATERIALS desires stability or balance and will find  Handout 2, Leadership Lessons for the ways to keep things stable, whether or Real World not those ways are entirely healthy. When something upsets the balance, it  Newsprint, markers, and wall-safe tape is human nature to want to return to PREPARATION what was perceived as stable and safe. The music director’s resignation upset • Copy Handout 2 for all participants. the congregation’s balance and brought • Arrange for a participant to read the into play a variety of factors and issues handout aloud. You might provide that had been latent or dormant when them with a copy of it ahead of time. the congregation was stable. • Title a sheet of newsprint “Key Post the second set of questions you Learnings from Margaret Wheatley prepared. Invite participants to move summarized by adrienne maree back into their small groups to consider brown.” Write the following points the new set of questions. Tell them they and post where all participants can have 10 minutes for this discussion. see: After 10 minutes, reconvene the group. ▪ Everything is about Invite small groups to share key relationships—critical

Harvest the Power, 2nd Edition © Unitarian Universalist Association 2020 | 94 connections • Decide whether each small group ▪ Chaos is an essential process will choose the issue that most that we need to engage interests them or if all groups will ▪ Sharing information is examine the same issue. fundamental for organizational • Prepare, but do not post, a sheet of success newsprint with these questions: ▪ Vision is an invisible field that binds us together, emerging ▪ What is a current conflict or from relationships, chaos, and dilemma in your congregation? information Is it a “fake fight,” that is, a proxy DESCRIPTION conflict for something else? Say, “Margaret Wheatley is an author, ▪ Where is the system unbalanced speaker, teacher, community worker, or in chaos? and leadership consultant.” ▪ Is there a “we” in the way you frame the conflict or dilemma? Distribute Handout 1 and ask the Whom do you mean when you participant you chose to read it aloud. say “we”? Does that “we” Call attention to the summary of exclude some and center learnings from Wheatley that you others? posted. Invite participants to reflect on ▪ How is this conflict or dilemma the reading and to share any insights related to your Unitarian and questions that arose for them. Universalist faith? Your Conclude the discussion by inviting congregation’s mission? participants to apply what they are ▪ Where are the voices calling for learning to congregational dilemmas, the congregation to honor its conflicts, and challenges. This will covenant and its mission? How provide a seamless transition to the are you amplifying those calls? next activity. ▪ Are there ways in which the leadership team has used power ACTIVITY 4: Faith and or process to silence voices? Conflict (40 minutes) What relationships do you, as leaders, need to tend to or MATERIALS repair?  Newsprint, markers, and wall-safe ▪ Are you—as an individual and/or tape for each small group of four to as a leader—connected to or in six relationship with those who might be able to offer necessary  Clock or timer information to address the PREPARATION conflict or dilemma? ▪ What might be some next steps for the leadership and the Harvest the Power, 2nd Edition © Unitarian Universalist Association 2020 | 95 congregation to take? congregation engages in carrying its DESCRIPTION faith into the world? Consider inviting Have the group brainstorm conflicts or interested congregants to examine the dilemmas facing their congregation(s) social justice work of the congregation and select two or three to examine to discern how to support healthy closely. Invite participants to form patterns and shift unhealthy ones. groups of four to six to examine an issue (either the issue that most CLOSING (5 minutes) interests them or a single issue, PREPARATION whichever you chose). Allow 10 • Optional: Customize the Taking It minutes for this portion of the activity. Home handout for your group Then, post the questions you wrote on before emailing or photocopying it. the newsprint. Invite the small groups to • Copy Taking It Home for all use the posted questions and their participants, or plan to email it. learnings from both this workshop and the entire Harvest the Power program DESCRIPTION to consider the dilemma or conflict and Distribute copies of Taking It Home or to note key points from their discussion tell the group when you will email it. on newsprint. Allow 15 minutes for this Invite participants to reflect on their own portion of the activity. leadership style by asking, “Are there things that you plan to approach Ask small groups to post their ideas differently as a result of this workshop?” and share them with the whole group. Invite each person, as they are ready, Engage the group in making plans to to name one thing that they will continue the conversations and seek approach differently as they continue ways to move forward on these issues. their leadership journey. Thank the group for their participation FAITH IN ACTION: Through in Harvest the Power. a Systems Lens DESCRIPTION LEADER REFLECTION Consider some of your congregation’s AND PLANNING social justice projects and programs, Consider and discuss these questions using a systems lens. How does your with your co-facilitator: congregation engage with the community? What relationships, both • Looking at each activity in this within and outside the congregation, workshop, what worked as well as comprise your congregation’s social or better than you had anticipated? justice system? What healthy or What did not work as well as you unhealthy patterns appear as your had anticipated?

Harvest the Power, 2nd Edition © Unitarian Universalist Association 2020 | 96 • What issues came up for you, Religious Professional Unitarian personally, in trying any activity Universalists Together, and yourself? What came up in the Unitarian Universalist Ministers process of facilitating? Association • What would you change if you were Make plans with other members of the to lead this workshop again? How congregation’s leadership team to would you do it differently? follow up on ideas that emerged from examining the congregation’s • What did you learn about yourself challenges from a systems point of as an individual while facilitating this view. workshop? What did you learn about yourself as a leader? Find Out More Resources that informed this workshop TAKING IT HOME may enhance your congregation’s ...Meaningful change is hard, leadership library: especially as it relates to identity • adrienne maree brown, Emergent and power. It raises essential Strategy: Shaping Change, questions about whose voices are Changing Worlds (AK Press, 2017) heard, who is asked to take risks, how we negotiate our relationships, • Nancy McDonald Ladd, After the and what our priorities are as a Good News: Progressive Faith community. False divisions like Beyond Optimism (Skinner House “political correctness” versus Books, 2019) “inclusive speech,” or the question • Donella H. Meadows, Thinking in of whether to focus critiques inward Systems: A Primer (Sustainability in our communities versus outward Institute, 2008) toward the world, distract from the core calling of our faith to move • UUA Congregational Life Staff toward equity and compassion in Group, The Congregational every way. — September 2019 Handbook (Unitarian Universalist letter to congregations from leaders Association) of the Unitarian Universalist • Margaret J. Wheatley (website) Association, Allies for Racial Equity, Association of Unitarian Universalist ALTERNATE ACTIVITY 1: Administrators, Association for Alternate Systems Thinking Unitarian Universalist Music Ministries, Diverse & Revolutionary Scenarios (45 minutes) Unitarian Universalist Multicultural MATERIALS Ministries, Liberal Religious  Handout 3, Alternate Systems Thinking Educators Association, Transgender Scenarios

Harvest the Power, 2nd Edition © Unitarian Universalist Association 2020 | 97  Newsprint, markers, and wall-safe tape you are working with is, in fact, engaged in a challenge resembling the PREPARATION Heavenly Unitarian Universalist • Copy Handout 3 for all participants. scenario, or if unpacking two simpler • Read Activity 2, Applying Systems scenarios would work better for your Thinking, to become familiar with group than exploring the single, how to diagram a congregational complex one. These scenarios will take issue or challenge from a systems less time to process, so you will likely perspective. have time for both of them. You might change the configuration of small • Post a blank sheet of newsprint. groups for the second scenario. • Prepare, but do not post, a sheet of Read aloud the first scenario to the newsprint with these reflection group. prompts: Tell the group that you are going to ▪ Who in the congregation is create a drawing of “the system” at the affected by the issue? congregation. Draw and label stick ▪ What emotions might come to figures of the capital campaign the fore as the congregation committee. Ask participants to name works through this challenge? individuals or groups affected in any ▪ What long-standing patterns of way by the capital campaign to repair behavior in this congregation and upgrade the congregation’s might be revealed by this building. As each individual or group is challenge? named, draw them as stick figures on ▪ What relationships in this the newsprint, and label each one. If congregational system need they have not done so already, prompt tending? the group to add groups or individuals ▪ How might this scenario play out in the congregation who don’t have a if the leaders commit to being direct connection to the project but still guided by covenant, their might have feelings about it. Add these Unitarian Universalist faith, and folks to the picture as well. the congregation’s mission? DESCRIPTION Draw solid lines to connect the capital The two scenarios in Handout 3 are campaign committee to groups or less complex than the Heavenly individuals who have a direct Unitarian Universalist Congregation relationship with that group (such as scenario presented in Activity 2, the building and grounds committee, Handout 1, and the events that cause the governing board, and the parish the system to react come from outside minister). Use dotted lines to indicate rather than inside the organization. Use indirect relationships (such as those these alternate scenarios if the group who have pledged to the campaign).

Harvest the Power, 2nd Edition © Unitarian Universalist Association 2020 | 98 Draw wavy lines between the capital among groups or individuals in the campaign committee and those who congregation who, on the surface, might have feelings about the project. If seem to have nothing to do with the you need to combine the type of line for project some groups or individuals (such as Tell groups that they will have 10 dotted and wavy), do so. minutes to discuss the posted Invite the group to examine the drawing questions. Provide each small group and consider other connections in the with newsprint and a marker to list key congregation that have nothing to do points from their conversation. with the capital campaign project; for After 10 minutes, invite each group, example, teachers might be connected one at a time, to post their lists near the directly to the religious educator, whose diagram and share the highlights of work will be impacted by the project. their discussion. Draw and label those stick figures, and represent their connections with solid, Explain that systems theory tells us that dotted, or wavy lines, as appropriate. an organization, family, or congregation desires stability or balance and will find Pause for a moment to let participants ways to keep things stable, whether or take in the drawing. Tell them that you not those ways are entirely healthy. are going to add complexity by When something upsets the balance, it identifying the emotions and long- is human nature to want to return to standing patterns of behavior involved what was perceived as stable and safe. in these relationships. Post the first The letter from the local government sheet of newsprint where all officials upset the congregation’s participants can see it. Ask participants balance and brought into play a variety to form four small groups, and assign of factors and issues that had been groups as follows: latent or dormant when the • Group 1: The straight lines, congregation was stable. representing direct connections with Post the second set of questions you the capital campaign committee prepared. Invite participants to move • Group 2: The dotted lines, back into their small groups to consider representing indirect connections the new set of questions. Tell them they with the committee have 10 minutes for this discussion. • Group 3: The wavy lines, After 10 minutes, reconvene the group. representing those who don’t have a Invite small groups to share key direct connection but still have insights from their conversations. feelings about the project Ask: “If you were a leader at this • Group 4: The solid, dotted, and congregation, what would you need to wavy lines representing connections do to help the congregation clearly face Harvest the Power, 2nd Edition © Unitarian Universalist Association 2020 | 99 the conflicts uncovered by the music director’s resignation and discover the opportunities that have opened?” Allow a few participants to respond. If time allows, repeat this process for the second scenario.

Harvest the Power, 2nd Edition © Unitarian Universalist Association 2020 | 100 STORY: Tapping Out of the ultimate prize we must reach out for in community is greater than the “Fake Fights” imagined divisions and trumped-up Excerpted from the sermon delivered arguments that pull us apart. by Rev. Nancy McDonald Ladd at General Assembly 2016. Here’s a segue way you won’t see coming: you know in Wrestlemania, when professional wrestlers have those fake fights? Sometimes they really are For as long as two or more have at risk of getting hurt. And do you know gathered in the name of the spirit, those what they do, before the muscle snaps two or more have fought some fake or the bones break in that fake fight? fights. They tap out. They bang the mat. When You remember, perhaps, the classic the fake fight gets close to having real wedding reading from Corinthians, consequences, they tap out. which says, If I speak in the tongues of I tell you what, I’m tapping out—right mortals or of angels, but do not have now—and I invite you to join me. I’m love, I am only a resounding gong or a tapping out of every fake fight in our clanging cymbal . . . if I have a faith that congregations and our movement can move mountains, but do not have about getting what I want or what you love, I am nothing. want or what we think we want, That letter from the Apostle Paul to the because the stakes are too high and early Christian community in Corinth we don’t have time for fake fights has nothing whatsoever to do with anymore. weddings. A fake fight about the bylaws in the That’s a letter from an overextended annual meeting is most often a carefully pastor with occasionally dubious concealed real fight about the values judgment to a congregation whose that undergird our history coming into leaders are in a constant state of fierce relationship with the values that may and unremitting conflict. The early undergird our future. If we can get past Christians in the Corinth congregation duking it out over the paint color in the were literally shouting their prayers like church bathroom, we may encounter a clanging cymbals overtop of one pastoral window into the inner life of another to try and prove who was better one whose voice in the world seems at praying. They were making faith into increasingly powerless. And All Lives a contest, and whether he was Saintly Matter—yes, that one, chief among the or not, Paul was having none of it. fake fights and cover conversations that distract from the work at hand—is not The collective wisdom of the ages about the slogan. More often than not, reminds us that the stakes are high and it’s about our deep and abiding

Harvest the Power, 2nd Edition © Unitarian Universalist Association 2020 | 101 resistance to actually taking on the systemic white supremacy that eats at the heart of us and of our culture. I know, for a fact, that the real conversations are waiting. Just beneath the surface of the fake fight is the actual encounter: soul to soul and hand to hand, in which change is possible. So let’s have that conversation—the real one, the hard one, the one that requires us to keep showing up—and let’s do it with edge and forgiveness, calling out and calling in, calling forth a new kind of community both in our congregations and in the world. The real fight beckons—the real conversation about our history, our identity, our relevance, our resistance. The world does not need another place for like-minded liberal-leaning people to hang out together and fight about who’s in charge. The world does not need a place where you or I or any of us is going to get what we want. What the world needs is a movement like ours to step more fully into our higher calling; to serve as an instrument for encounters with one another, with the holy, and with the world, so that we might love more fully, and speak more truly, and serve with greater efficacy.

Harvest the Power, 2nd Edition © Unitarian Universalist Association 2020 | 102 HANDOUT 1: HEAVENLY Universalist Congregation, until . . . UNITARIAN UNIVERSALIST The Heavenly music director receives CONGREGATION an offer to teach harp at a world- famous conservatory and decides to Heavenly Unitarian Universalist accept. It means that she and her Congregation has a lovely building in a partner will be moving out of the area, suburban community. It is a so she tenders her resignation as congregation well-known for its music. Heavenly’s music director, effective at They have a beloved music director the end of the year. The Heavenly who has been with the congregation for Music Committee and the Heavenly 20 years. She believes that ethereal Choir make plans for a gala goodbye music is best for congregational celebration. The Board decides to worship and favors the harp. The appoint a search committee for a new Heavenly Choir loves her as a director music director; in the interest of being and cannot imagine singing with inclusive, the Board appoints a parent, anything other than harp as a young adult, and a jazz musician to accompaniment. the search committee, along with a The Heavenly Music Committee meets member of the choir and a member of only twice a year. Things are going so the Music Committee. The smoothly with the congregation’s music appointments raise eyebrows among program in the music director’s hands, those in the Heavenly Choir and those there is no need for more frequent on the Heavenly Music Committee, who meetings. The staff members, thought they would be the ones to find particularly the parish minister, love a new harpist to continue their working with the music director; the successful ethereal music program in music is reliably excellent, and the the congregation. They begin to congregation seems happy with that murmur, wondering what the Board is aspect of worship. thinking, and feeling somewhat underappreciated. However, there are rumblings from the younger people in the congregation that After a grand goodbye party, the search although ethereal music is lovely, they committee meets to begin its work in might like to hear something more earnest. They find very quickly that earthly now and again. Parents have committee members have entirely commented to the religious education different ideas about the person who director that it would be wonderful to should be their next music director. have music that children can sing and Soon they are divided into two enjoy from time to time. Still, this is not factions—lovers of ethereal music, and a big issue in the congregation. All is those desirous of something different— tranquil at Heavenly Unitarian with both sides planning surveys to

Harvest the Power, 2nd Edition © Unitarian Universalist Association 2020 | 103 prove that the majority of the congregation is on their side. The conflict spreads to the congregation at large. People choose sides. The Board is stunned by what is happening in their once tranquil congregation and wants to do whatever is necessary to restore harmony and balance. The minister and Board chair wisely seek help from their UUA Regional staff, who help them examine their problem by looking at Heavenly’s issue from a systems point of view.

Harvest the Power, 2nd Edition © Unitarian Universalist Association 2020 | 104 HANDOUT 2: Leadership world demands that we learn to cope with chaos, that we understand what Lessons for The Real motivates humans, that we adopt World strategies and behaviors that lead to “Leadership Lessons for the Real order, not more chaos. World,” Leader to Leader, Summer Here is the real world described by new 2006. Copyright © 2006 by Margaret J. science. It is a world of interconnected Wheatley. Fair use. networks, where slight disturbances in one part of the system create major impacts far from where they originate. People often comment that the new In this highly sensitive system, the most leadership I propose couldn’t possibly minute actions can blow up into work in “the real world.” This “real massive disruptions and chaos. But it is world” demands efficiency and also a world that seeks order. When obedience and is managed by chaos erupts, it not only destroys the bureaucracy and governed by policies current structure, it also creates the and laws. It is filled with people who do conditions for new order to emerge. what they’re told, who sit passively Change always involves a dark night waiting for instructions, and it relies on when everything falls apart. Yet if this standard operating procedures for period of dissolution is used to create every situation, even when chaos new meaning, then chaos ends and erupts and things are out of control. new order emerges. This real world was invented by This is a world that knows how to Western [European] thought. We organize itself without command and believe that people, organizations, and control or charisma. Everywhere, life the world are machines, and we can self-organizes as networks of organize massive systems to run like relationships. When individuals clockwork in a steady-state world. The discover a common interest or passion, leader’s job is to create stability and they organize themselves and figure control, because without human out how to make things happen. Self- intervention, there is no hope for order. organizing evokes creativity and leads It is assumed that most people are dull, to results, creating strong, adaptive not creative, that people need to be systems. Surprising new strengths and bossed around, that new skills only capacities emerge. develop through training. People are In this world, the “basic building blocks” motivated using fear and rewards; of life are relationships, not individuals. internal motivators such as compassion Nothing exists on its own or has a final, and generosity are discounted. fixed identity. We are all “bundles of This is not the real world. The real real potential” (as one scientist described

Harvest the Power, 2nd Edition © Unitarian Universalist Association 2020 | 105 quantum particles). Relationships evoke these potentials. We change as we meet different people or are in different circumstances. In this historic moment, we live caught between the mechanical worldview that no longer works and a new paradigm that we fear to embrace. But this new paradigm comes with the promise that it can provide solutions to our most unsolvable challenges.

Harvest the Power, 2nd Edition © Unitarian Universalist Association 2020 | 106 HANDOUT 3: Alternate the door handles difficult to negotiate. They have never told Systems Thinking anyone about this difficulty and is Scenarios not sure that they are ready to share Note: These scenarios her experience with this group. appeared in a different form in • A member who believes in their Workshop 3. heart that making the congregation more accessible to those with mobility impairments is the right Accessibilities Audit Scenario thing to do, and is convinced that a A congregation is planning to do some way can be found to do it. They are major work to repair the foundation of often seen as the “impractical” one the building and to upgrade the space. in the group. After a successful capital campaign, • A member who wonders if the they have raised nearly enough accessibility upgrades make money—but not quite enough. Now financial sense. From this member’s they have heard from local government point of view, the planned upgrades officials that they will not be granted a will benefit many people, and the building permit until they have accessibility upgrades will benefit addressed some major accessibility only a few. issues in the building. • A member who has been the This project will be costly. The chair of representative to the building task the governing board believes that there force and is exhausted. They have is no more money to be had from the done all that she can do to get this congregation. They convene a meeting project ready to the point where of the governing board, which includes: construction and renovation can begin, and she finds this news • A member who is angry with the deeply discouraging. She is also local officials for imposing this on feeling unappreciated. the congregation and who believes that they have no right to do so. Safe Congregation Scenario This member’s attitude is that the A congregation’s insurance company local government should support the has informed them that the building repairs and upgrades the congregation will no longer be able to congregation is undertaking, rather purchase liability coverage unless they than undermine them. have a policy in place to address the prevention of sexual abuse and • A member who has arthritis in their misconduct. The prevention policy must hands and her knees and include the use of criminal background sometimes finds the front steps and checks for volunteers and staff. As the

Harvest the Power, 2nd Edition © Unitarian Universalist Association 2020 | 107 governing board convenes to consider violate their worth and dignity? this challenge, members of the board • A long-time member trusts everyone are of several minds: in the congregation. Required • The chair of the board believes that background checks and other liability coverage is crucial to the policies seem unnecessary. This well-being of the congregation and member wonders if liability that the board has a fiduciary insurance is really needed—and responsibility to see to it that a safe resents the insurance company for congregation policy is adopted. pushing the congregation around. • One board member is concerned about finances, especially about the potential cost of criminal background checks. This board member is also concerned because a large donor has stated that they view background checks as an invasion of privacy. • Another member is concerned about the implementation of any safe congregation policy. Who will be responsible? How will they get training? Do the current staff members have enough time and bandwidth to take this on? • One member has been reading the latest news about child sexual abuse among volunteers and professionals entrusted with the well-being of children, and believes that a safe congregation policy cannot come soon enough. • One member keeps thinking about the first Unitarian Universalist Principle, the inherent worth and dignity of every person. How does this Principle apply when it comes to protecting children? What about our volunteers? Do background checks