Monday, January 03, 2011

Group Discernment and Superheroes

One of the advantages of my seminary is that it is interdenominational. My professor for Spirituality was an evangelical Friend, or Quaker.

I learned so many things from her, both from the class syllabus and from how she lives her life. One of the big things came at the end of the semester. It was one of those unplanned things. Being a Friend, she has great respect for the Spirit moving in amongst our days, and so she is flexible in letting it guide our discussions.

On this particular day, it led to her telling us the story of how she wound up at our seminary. Or specifically, the discernment process involved.

Friends place great value on communal discernment and there is a tremendous amount of trust and respect in these discernment meetings. Cutting and pasting from my notes:

The Role of Leadership
•    The leader finds a responsible place within the process, as part of the group
•    Leadership is one of the gifts given to the community
•    The community takes seriously the perspective, skills, and gifts of the leader
•    The leader listens to the community and to the voice of the Spirit through the community

The Voices of the Community
•    Each member plays a significant role
•    Communal discernment seeks to affirm the appropriate voice and contribution of each person, corresponding to each person’s giftedness and role within the community

Gift of discernment
•    Individual contributions that enable the group to discern well
•    Varieties of expression
     --- Seeing beyond the immediate (vision)
     --- Understanding the issues and facts (critical analysis but beyond rational analysis)
     --- Identifying the emotional dimension
     --- Sharing of wisdom and insight (sage)

Conditions for Communal Discernment
•    Common Purpose
•    Resolve to Decide Together
•    Mutual Regard and Acceptance
•    Clearly Framed Matter for Discernment
•    Good information and good research

Now. getting back to my professor's story:

She and her husband were pastors in another state. She received the invitation to teach at our seminary.  What to do?

She called for a "Meeting to Discern," with her Board and church leaders. They went through the Friends' process:

* Open Discussion (Threshing):  The person calling the meeting explains just the facts.  Then, all individuals in the meeting may express any and all concerns. Issues, concerns, fears of the members, perspectives, etc.  It's all open -- no need to pretend to have no selfish interest, we all do. Here is where it is honestly exposed, rather than being hidden away.

* Prayer and Silent Reflection (Meeting for Clearness): an extended time of listening prayer. This can be done in different ways. They broke into small groups.

* Discussion toward Resolution ("Sense of the Meeting"): Moderator asks for comments and observations that have arisen out of prayer. A “sense” may emerge that there is more agreement among the group than originally thought possible.

Describing the meeting, my professor explained that the whole purpose was to discern whether the move to the seminary was a genuine God-directed call. After the threshing part of the meeting, selfish concerns (including hers and her husband's) were put to the side. It wasn't even about "what is the best thing to do," it was all on "Is this a call from God?"

They discerned that yes, it was. She said she can't imagine making the decision without that meeting. Even when things haven't been perfect since then, she and her husband can look back on the meeting and say with confidence, "We believe this was a genuine call." The process worked.

I was touched, bewildered, and quite a bit in awe at the process.  "That must take a tremendous amount of trust, to put your life in the hands of others," I said. She looked me right in the eye and said, "Absolutely."

I have thought of this often since then, wondering how, and if it's possible, for this to be played out in a UU community.  Are the differences between UUs and Friends such that the process would be impossible?

UUs do not necessarily believe in "God," and those who do usually have different definitions of the term. Of those who believe in a force outside themselves, there is a smaller group that believe this force intervenes or can be accessed in any way.  So, how could you discern a "call from God" in such a group?  How would it need to be reframed?

And then there's the independence thing. We are often so fiercely independent. Is it possible to be that independent and still have such a high degree of trust in others?

Doug Muder writes about a generational difference in UU churches between those who are fiercely independent, and those looking for a mentor, a community, to support their superhero activities. Will younger UUs be more open to group discernment?

If we feel it is of value, it seems we have a great deal of work ahead. I don't know about you, but certain things in my notes jumped out at me, red underlined sentences that shout with disbelief, "Really???"


The community takes seriously the perspective, skills, and gifts of the leader.
Resolve to Decide Together
Mutual Regard and Acceptance


Part of me says, "No, that just wouldn't work in a UU setting. We're too different. Too independent. Too focused on self-sufficiency."

But it just won't leave me alone, this idea. I heard a story filled with humility, interdependence, and love. A story that said, "We don't have to each go it alone."

I guess I am one of those that Muder writes about.  I don't want to be an orphan. I want my Scooby gang.

10 comments:

Heather said...

Count me in as another community-seeking, interdependence-loving UU.

I've been reading a lot of UU history for a January Intensive at Meadville, and the theme of independence has really stood out for me. But I think that Muder's right about something changing. It's not a change to being completely enmeshed with each other, or walking in lock-step. We still want to be strong, responsible, unique individuals. But we also want to be deeply connected to each other.

Anonymous said...

To enter the process you describe, you have to have a lot of trust in the group participating, which to me stems from respecting each other.

Do we always, in our uu communities, model and share that respect for each other? Our own uu local community goes up and down on that, and I believe a lot of that stems from modeling/leadership, especially paid leadership (the minister).

What you described does sound like a great process, but I would venture that the Friends community had more of that tone of respect and trust than most of our uu communities have right now. I'm a less engaged member of a uu congregation at this point than I have ever been, due to issues of trust and respect within our congregation, and haven't been able to figure out a good way to work/resolve them. Our com. on ministry really isn't functioning right now, and the minister to me isn't functioning in a pastoral role. I don't have the energy really to deal with it, and don't see the possibilities of change. My solution is to withdraw at this time.

So your idea of community and trust and discernment sounds great, but I think we are very far from it right now, in most uu communities, including my own.

What I can relate that is akin to the discernment process is that I was offered a job in another city that would have the impact of my husband leaving the place he was born and raised, and selling his small business. I was not willing to go without him, and I wanted him to freely decide whether he could do this. We had been married only a year at that time. We were not Friends, or even in a religious community at that time.

What we did instead was to consult a university counselor to help us lay out the issues and concerns about the decision for both of us. Then we sought out a couple who had once lived in the city we were considering, and the husband had worked for the company I was offered a job with. We also consulted with my graduate advisor, who knew both of us pretty well.

We tried to use this input and our own discussions to help with our decision. It was still a difficult move, especially for my husband, but the discernment process was very helpful and my husband still refers to it as having been a good process for us to go thru.

Thanks for sharing your experience with the Friends' process.

Masasa said...

I have a comment I have been composing in my head but haven't yet had a chance to sit down and actually type out. I definitely do plan to comment!

In the meantime, totally unrelated question. What program do you use to get music into the videos you make of your kids?

Lizard Eater said...

@Masasa -- can't wait to hear your comment!

And I use iMovie to do the videos, which includes an option to add music to the videos. (Though youtube will strip some of the songs.)

Liz Hill said...

I have used this process in several non UU settings, and it can be helpful in decision making. You have to trust that the people involved really want to come to the right and best possible decision. Which means that when "selfish motives" exist (and they always do) we have to recognize them, and we don't always even know they're selfish (consciously). I can see the process working with a small group of UUs to help make a decision but I can't envision a congregational-meeting-style clearness committee. Much as I would love to....

What I can and have seen is small group discussion where all the angst and issues come out, so that in a "big decision meeting" where voting occurs, a meeting leader can summarize the pros and cons before the vote, thereby minimizing discussion in a large meeting.

But that's not really the kind of decision you're talking about. You're talking of personal discernment, not democratic vote, which takes me back to - in small group of trusted people of any stripe, this can work.

goodwolve said...

I would love this - the clarity of issues. I find that meetings at church are rushed and filled with no sense that it is a church meeting at all. The idea that we could have a place to work through issues as a community - prayer or no prayer - would give each person a moment to share and reflect on what was happening in their lives.

Do you HAVE to follow the advice or guidance - no, but it would be great to hear it.

Masasa said...

In the journey I've started in living out a call in ministry, I had a whole series of lengthy and numerous conversations with the ministers (ordained and otherwise) in my life, family members, and friends.

Once I got accepted into several seminaries, I literally held a conference call with a handful of these folks to discuss my next steps. While the decision at the time was less important than that of actually discerning a call (and really was mostly about which seminary was the best fit for where I was in my journey), drawing on the wisdom of a community of folks felt important to me.

When I set up the structure for the conference call, some family members gave me a hard time because I did things like ask folks to leave a minute or two of silence between each person talking. We didn't end up sticking to it exactly, but I feel that just by sharing my hope that we could really hear one another, it created sort of an open, ongoing silent prayer in the conversation that was ultimately important to the level of clarity reached.

What I really want to say, though, is that I think in an ideal world, the communal discernment is really what the MFC process would be. I am not confident that's what it is (it may be in part, but I doubt it is in whole), yet I do think it should be. Communal discernment looks, feels, and *is* much different than gatekeeping, standards-measuring, determining, evaluating, or testing.

For UUs, the call comes from community (even if it also comes from God). We call one another into ministry. Unfortunately, in current form, I think that all too often seems to translate into more of a reality of people trying to discern their call on their own.

I can imagine an ideal world in which, when a person first is told or begins to feel that they have a call to the ministry arising, and they want to explore that, a community of folks -- both people who know them and people who don't -- are gathered to walk with them in the continual discernment required to uncover a true calling and then refine it. The end result may or may not be ordained ministry in any of its current forms (community, RE, or parish). But no particular outcome is a goal in the beginning except to help the individual uncover the nature of his or her call.

This could be the start, middle, and end, of the credentialing process.

Can you imagine, for example, after you get the required career assessment, and you get your evaluation back, being able to go to this community whose soul purpose is for you to uncover the nature of your call, and really *process* it with them in such a way that more and more the specificity of your call emerges. There is so much rich stuff in the assessments, why not?

It would be a whole different form, and much more powerful. I also think it would make room for the emergence of other uses for the spiritual gifts of UUs in the world, other than ordained ministry (as in what Peter Bowden has been talking about).

Sorry to have gotten long.

Masasa said...

In the journey I've started in living out a call in ministry, I had a whole series of lengthy and numerous conversations with the ministers (ordained and otherwise) in my life, family members, and friends.

Once I got accepted into several seminaries, I literally held a conference call with a handful of these folks to discuss my next steps. While the decision at the time was less important than that of actually discerning a call (and really was mostly about which seminary was the best fit for where I was in my journey), drawing on the wisdom of a community of folks felt important to me.

When I set up the structure for the conference call, some family members gave me a hard time because I did things like ask folks to leave a minute or two of silence between each person talking. We didn't end up sticking to it exactly, but I feel that just by sharing my hope that we could really hear one another, it created sort of an open, ongoing silent prayer in the conversation that was ultimately important to the level of clarity reached.

What I really want to say, though, is that I think in an ideal world, the communal discernment is really what the MFC process would be. I am not confident that's what it is (it may be in part, but I doubt it is in whole), yet I do think it should be. Communal discernment looks, feels, and *is* much different than gatekeeping, standards-measuring, determining, evaluating, or testing.

For UUs, the call comes from community (even if it also comes from God). We call one another into ministry. Unfortunately, in current form, I think that all too often seems to translate into more of a reality of people trying to discern their call on their own.

I can imagine an ideal world in which, when a person first is told or begins to feel that they have a call to the ministry arising, and they want to explore that, a community of folks -- both people who know them and people who don't -- are gathered to walk with them in the continual discernment required to uncover a true calling and then refine it. The end result may or may not be ordained ministry in any of its current forms (community, RE, or parish). But no particular outcome is a goal in the beginning except to help the individual uncover the nature of his or her call.

This could be the start, middle, and end, of the credentialing process.

Can you imagine, for example, after you get the required career assessment, and you get your evaluation back, being able to go to this community whose soul purpose is for you to uncover the nature of your call, and really *process* it with them in such a way that more and more the specificity of your call emerges. There is so much rich stuff in the assessments, why not?

It would be a whole different form, and much more powerful. I also think it would make room for the emergence of other uses for the spiritual gifts of UUs in the world, other than ordained ministry (as in what Peter Bowden has been talking about).

Sorry to have gotten long.

Ellen C said...

I encountered Friends' discernment methods before seminary and then ended up at a UU seminary. My spouse and I used a clearness committee similarly to how Quakers do (clerked by my Quaker aunt but with several UU's on it and part of the ministerial formation at seminary was a clearness committee around call. Participated in a few others...and recently clerked one for a colleague facing some professional decisions. This method DOES translate to UUism, but I think it works best with someone with personal experience of the process and with the focus person having choice in who is on the committee. I would LOVE to find some partners in creating materials and workshops to help more UU's learn this kind of communal, structured, discernment process. -- Ellen Carvill-Ziemer (that's enough information to google my email...)

Phil Schulman said...

I feel some encouragement in your acknowledging some things that have long troubled me. I think I'll give a blog post in response.