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Walking Forward Courageously – How Can We Prepare?
At our March Board of Trustees meeting, we discussed some practical tools we might share with the rest of the congregation to prepare for candidating week (April 14-21) and the congregational vote (April 21) to call a new senior minister.
Last May, the congregation accepted the board’s charge to engage with the ministerial search process in ways that will help keep our community healthy and whole as we ventured through the search process again. Among other things, the congregation agreed to “offer thoughtful discernment about the current and future needs of the congregation.” We asked ourselves – what practices might help reduce anxiety, and help you decide how you feel about the candidate’s ability to serve Unity Church into the future?
Our advice: make a plan and follow it, so you don’t get to the congregational meeting and say, “Dang! I meant to take time to think about this, but I was just so busy!” Choose a practice or two from the ones described below, or create one that works for you.
Committing time and space to ask ourselves powerful questions several times throughout this process is one practice you can implement to help you better understand your thoughts and feelings. You can do this alone, in the form of writing, or with a discernment accountability partner who moves through questions with you. Partners would ask each other questions without judgment (good or bad), keeping in mind that their primary goal is to help each other more deeply understand or build on each person’s own thoughts, not to proliferate ideas.
Whether you are writing or talking, or both, here are some ideas for questions:
- How could the candidate’s unique qualities / skills / values contribute to our church's mission, values, and ends?
- What do I value most about Unity Church? How do the things that I value most about Unity Church fit within the mission, values and ends of the church? How are those similar and different from the needs of the larger church community?
- What stories shared by the candidate resonate with me about how they can serve Unity? Why?
- Try crafting one or two powerful questions from the thoughts you are having. Read The Art of Powerful Questions
The board has a practice of asking each trustee and executive team member participating in our meetings to focus on a characteristic of white dominant culture and to think about how they might live into the antidote for that characteristic during the meeting. Adapted from this, you might choose to focus on a characteristic you think has the potential to be particularly prominent for you during the search. Looking at the antidote for that characteristic you can then strategize and create practices that will help you show up in a better way.
Finally, consider again about how to move into transformational conflict. Several newsletter articles in the March issue of commUNITY focused on that topic. Looking back at them, you might develop a practice around conflict that helps you walk back down the ladder of inference, calm your amygdala by intentional breathing in a steady rhythm, or open yourself to different conversations that can teach you to make complexity your friend.
Whatever you decide to do (some combination of the above or something of your own creation), be sure to check in with your practice regularly. Now, before we know who the ministerial candidate is, again, after you know a little bit about them, and a third time during candidating week, once you’ve had a chance to meet the candidate in person or online. Throughout this time, take the time to engage in practices that will help calm your anxiety, open your heart, and sort through your feelings. Then, engage in candidating week, ready to hear and share stories. Engaging in thoughtful discernment prepares you to cast your vote responsibly, and is not only part of the charge from the board, but also an act of care for yourself, the congregation, and our candidate, laying the foundation for healthy congregational life.
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