Tuesday, March 03, 2009

"Right Relationship Team" for congregations?

Does anyone know of a church that has taken the "Right Relationship Team" concept and narrowed it down for use at the church level?

I'm not talking about covenanting, I'm talking about the actual "rapid response team" approach.

7 comments:

Kari said...

I love the idea of "rapid response" team!

Our Committee on Ministry has evolved (with the help of a lovely student minister) into a Compassionate Congregation Committee who live to uphold our congregation's Covenant of Right Relations. They hope to have this kind of role, responding to things before they get too big, and are working hard to weave compassion and care into every aspect of our congregation.

It's a good start, anyway.

Anonymous said...

What do you mean by Rapid Response Team approach? Say more...

The reason I ask is that my home community after a series of hate crimes, several congregations came together to form a "rapid response network" to provide support to the person / or group attacked by the hate crime. They also would write letters to the editor regarding tolerance and acceptance, etc. There were other actions they might take as well. So I am wanting clarification of what you are describing because it probably is not exactly what this community did.

Lizard Eater said...

@serenityhome -- I was thinking more within the church, the way they use it at GA/ICUUW/etc, but I really like the more expansive idea, too. Hmmm ...

Within the church, my idea is that we would have an identified, trained team to help with the learning experience of right relations. So -- I'm talking to some kids, I tell them to take their cotton-pickin' hands off my chocolate chip cookies, they (and a bystander) talk to the Right Relations team, RR Team talks to me about my demeaning method of communication, then (with my permission) shares with the congregation that the phrase cotton-pickin' has a racist derivation, etc. etc ...

I don't know how it all would work. I'm hoping some other church has done something like this.

Robin Edgar said...

"They hope to have this kind of role, responding to things before they get too big, and are working hard to weave compassion and care into every aspect of our congregation."

Yes, it's definitely a very good idea to *responsibly* respond to *things* before they get *too* big. . . Where might the U*U World be today if the Unitarian Church of Montreal and/or the UUA had had a "Right Relations" Rapid Response Team to deal responsibly with my legitimate serious complaints arising from Rev. Ray Drennan's "less than right", indeed just plain wrong. . . relations with me? The only "rapid response" from the negligent and incompetent leaders of both of these corrupt U*U institutions was to foolishly and complicitly pretend that Rev. Ray Drennan had done absolutely nothing wrong when he belittled and maligned my quite Unitarian monotheistic religious beliefs as nothing but "silliness and fantasy", contemptuously dismissed the revelatory religious experience that informed those beliefs as "your psychotic experience", and put the icing on the proverbial cake by falsely and maliciously labeling Creation Day as "your cult". And look where we are today thanks to the want of a "nail" in the form of a retraction and sincere and adequate formal apology that could have and should have nipped Rev. Ray Drennan's antireligious intolerance and bigotry in the bud before "things* got quite a bit bigger as a result of foolish Unitarian*Universalist U*Us repeatedly compounding, aggravating, and escalating the initial injustices and abuses that I complained about. . .

BTW getting around to very belatedly providing that "nail" is still better than never providing it, or any further delay in providing it, because *things* can and God willing aka Insha'Allah will get bigger than they already are if Unitarian*Universalist U*Us in Boston and Montreal continue to abjectly fail and obstinately refuse to authentically stand on the side of love and do what is necessary to restore "right relations" with me and all other victims of U*U clergy misconduct, clergy sexual misconduct or otherwise, by providing some long overdue restorative justice for ALL victims of ALL forms of U*U clergy misconduct.

Robin Edgar said...

Just in case it is not immediately apparent the above cautionary tale is a strong personal endorsement of Lizard Eater's suggestion that individual U*U churches could and should take the "Right Relationship Team" concept and narrow it down for use at the church level for an actual "rapid response team" approach that responds to complaints in a manner that genuinely honors and upholds the second principle of Unitarian*Universalism rather than making a total mockery of it as was done (indeed still *is* done. . .) in my case and too many other cases.

Chalicechick said...

My mother used to say "Bless your little pea-pickin' heart" somewhat sarcastically, usually when she had the sense that one of her offspring was trying to snow her with something, which, let's face it, was frequently.

Is "pea-pickin'" racist? I'm not southern enough to pull it off myself anyway, I'm afraid, but I always thought it was sort of cool.

SLSW

Robin Edgar said...

The expression "Bless your little pea-pickin' heart" may be somewhat more racist than the phrase "brown bag lunch" if I am to believe the content of this Phrase Finder webpage. Apparently it is very closely related to the term "cotton picking" aka "cotton pickin'". . .