Associational

“What is the magic behind the Innovative Learning Circles?”  “How can I start one in my area?”  I get these questions more and more as word is getting out about the success of Innovative Learning Circles.

The purpose is to bring innovative leaders together to spark, inspire, and cross-pollinate each other.  Let’s be honest.  Being an innovator can be isolating and lonely.

Innovative Learning Circles is a cross between small group ministry, video conference, and case study. We meet monthly at a consistent time for an hour and a half by video (if you do not have a camera for your computer you will receive one in the mail.)  The regular agenda looks like this:

• Chalice Lighting
• Check-in
• Shared Case Study
• Reflection and/or feedback
• Take-Away (What nugget of wisdom or observation are you taking away)

Each group has a question they explore. Some of the questions the Innovative Learning Circles I shepherd are exploring are:

• How can leaders navigate challenges to plant Unitarian Universalist communities that meet the needs of the 21st century?
• What experiments might be replicable in other Unitarian Universalist settings?
• How can campus ministry programs reach beyond their identified UU group and make an impact? How can Campus Ministry impact area congregations?
• How can leaders adaptively shift congregational systems to break open and make way for concepts in the Faith Formation 2020 (John Roberto) training?
• How can small congregation focus on health and lower their walls for bigger impact in the world?
• How can prison ministry programs reach beyond their identified UU group and make an impact? How can prison ministry impact area congregations?
• How can leaders use worship to shift congregational systems to meet the needs of the 21st century?

So, if you were gathering your own circle, what question would you like to explore?  Who within your community or perhaps in the surrounding, larger community would you like to learn with?  This is a great opportunity to meet your counterparts or peers from other UU congregations in your cluster.

What kinds of challenges could you explore together?  This is the outline for the first meeting:

• Chalice Lighting
• Check-in
• What you need from this group? This experience?
• Sharing: What are challenges we deal with that other positions/leaders just couldn’t understand.  What do we wish the board/minister/UUA/<fill-in-the-bland> understood? What are challenges we might explore together?
• Reflection and/or feedback
• Take-Away (What nugget of wisdom or observation are you taking away)

 

Those questions about challenge are where the gold is.  Those will be where the “case studies” come from. Each participant takes turns giving a “case study,” which is a story or description about a challenge related to your ministry.  It’s almost always about an adaptive challenge – one that won’t go away. Some guiding questions:

• What is the current situation? Where do I want the situation to be?
• Who else is involved? What are our roles and responsibilities in this situation?  What part have I played?  Not played?
• What is within my control? Outside of my control?
• When things change a bit, what happens to the rest of the system?
• What do I need to learn?
• What do I need to let go of in order to embrace something new?
• Who else needs to be involved to make possible adaptations stick?

The group listens with pastoral and wondering ears, not “fix it” ears.  It takes great vulnerability and trust to reveal a challenge one isn’t sure about.  And that is where the real learning happens.  It is an affirming process.

An Innovative Learning Circle lasts between 7-9 months.  There’s an opening circle, a case study session for each participant (between 5-7 people is recommended), and then a closing circle.

In the closing circle, the final session, we take time to capture the over-all, meta-learnings from our sharing. Were there patterns in each other’s stories? Is there feedback we need to give to our regional staff (or other resource people) about what we’ve learned?  Might a workshop or training come out of anything you’ve learned together? The final go-around is gratitude from each other. Hold up each person and allow circle members to tell then what they’ve learned and appreciated from their presence.

This model is still in beta.  I use a virtual model, because of geographic challenges, but a face-to-face format would be lovely.  What makes it an Innovative Learning Circle is the guiding question, the gathering of innovators, and the sharing of the challenge stories. Feel free to experiment! And let me know what works for you. I’d love to hear from you!

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 Tandi Rogers facilitates eight different, virtual Innovative Learning Circles during the third week of every month. At the end of every Innovative Learning Circle she bursts out of her office and says, “These may be the most important thing my office does for growth! Wow! That was amazing.”

Announcing the 2013-14 Innovative Learning Circles!  Perhaps you or someone you know might be interested in being a part of a year-long, virtual learning community with other leaders in one of the groups listed below. If this is you, please pop me an email: trogers@uua.org.

All groups follow a 7-8 month, virtual, hybrid model of small group ministry, Shalem, and case-studies.

• Campus Ministry Coordinators: How can campus ministry programs reach beyond their identified UU group and make an impact? How can Campus Ministry impact area congregations?
• Community Ministries:  What impact does a learning cohort make on the impact of community ministries?
• Congregations & Beyond: What experiments might be replicable in other Unitarian Universalist settings?
• Emerging Congregations: How can leaders navigate challenges to plant Unitarian Universalist communities that meet the needs of the 21^st century?
• Faith Formation 2020: (prerequisite: taking John Roberto’s training and reading Steinke) How can leaders adaptively shift congregational systems to break open and make way for FF2020
• Presidents of Congregations: (61-160) How can small congregation focus on health and lower their walls for bigger impact in the world?
• Presidents of Congregations: (301-400) Using some of Alice Mann’s work, how can leaders help their congregations break through this awkward size?
• Prison Ministry: How can prison ministry programs reach beyond their identified UU group and make an impact? How can prison ministry impact area congregations?
• Worship: How can leaders use worship to shift congregational systems to meet the needs of the 21^st century?

These groups are already filled:

• UU Membership Professionals: How do membership professionals impact the health and vitality of congregations and beyond? What is the role of Membership Professionals in the 21^st century?
• UU Funding Program: What impact does a learning cohort make on the impact and fulfillment of strategic plans?

Each month, starting in November, we will report back some of the “gold nuggets” of learning from the various groups.  So stay tuned for some rich, community learning!

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Tandi Rogers is a former enthusiastic school teacher and has simply switched classroom venues.

What would happen if we gathered some of our religion’s best, innovative leaders together from around the Association to spark, inspire, and cross-pollinate each other?  This was the question behind the experiment Innovative Learning Circles.  The break down of the experiment was this:  5-6 leaders gather virtually for a monthly hour-and-a-half-long meeting over a span of nine months starting in September.

Similarly to small group ministry there was a group agreement as to how to be together and what could be shared outside of the group. Most participants were familiar with the model and very little adaptation was needed.

We experimented with various kinds of videoconference software to see what served our purposes best. I am eternally grateful for the patience (and humor) of the groups, as some of the early products were disastrous. Most of the groups settled into (free) Google Hangout or a paid-for version of Skype.

Two flavors of Innovative Learning Circles emerged:

• Think Tank Groups wrestled with questions I would bring from the UUA Leadership Council or around a specific and timely issue. These groups developed respect and affection for each other, and I watched them reach out to one another outside the groups.  These groups were quick to share resources and problem solve.
• Case Study Groups took turns each telling their story, a specific incident, or issue they were working on. These groups went deep with each other, risked vulnerability, and helped keep each other accountable in a way that humbled me.  Before someone shared I would ask what kind of feedback they would like to receive, further deepening the trust and allowing us to practice showing up effectively and lovingly.

I sent out questions or articles ahead of time, but the format for all the groups was very similar:

Chalice Lighting

Check-in

Question or Case Study

Reflection and/or feedback

Take-Away (What nugget of wisdom or observation are you taking away)

 

A couple things we learned:

• The more time zones involved, the more complicated it is to find a common day and time.
• Closed FaceBook groups keep each circle in contact throughout the month and was used to varying degree.
• Don’t under-estimate basic introductions and sharing descriptions of ministry settings. The cultural differences between geography, size, and setting were fascinating and enlightening – and often assumed until we stumbled over them.
• Asking each individual what his or her “Take Away” is was key to over-all learning and often unveiled another layer to group dynamics. I kept a notebook of “Take Aways” for each group and highly recommend that practice.  Going back over the year not only recorded growth, but we sometimes would go back to a concept or quote that was gold.
• There seems to be a corollary between structure and depth of sharing. A set time and a set agenda provide the safety and predictability for a group to focus on the intimate relationship between themselves.

I believe this initiative is replicable, and I encourage you to borrow as you are so inspired! Please consider starting a version of Innovative Learning Circles in your congregation, geographic area or virtually by affinity/ leadership role.

I will share some of the Take Aways in coming blogs…

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Tandi Rogers is a Credentialed Religious Educator and former classroom teacher. She cherishes how the teaching and the learning never stop, the classroom just keeps expanding.

Peter Bowden and Rev. Naomi King are each giving one of the Minns Lectures tomorrow (March 9) on the topic of social media. You can follow along via Twitter: #minnslecture.  Naomi asked me for examples of how social media can be used for faithful ministry.  Here is the list I gave her:

Community, Accountability, Interconnection

When I was on District Staff and youth ministry was in my purview I was on FaceBook one night and an adult from the Youth Con(ference) group sent me a private message.  He was concerned that a youth in his friend network was showing signs of suicide. I jumped over to the youth’s page and made an immediate call to the youth’s minister who jumped in his car and drove over to the youth’s house. I looked up the youth’s parent’s contact information and called to explain the situation and let them know their minister was on the way to their home. The suicide averted. Family got the help they needed. That is perhaps the most overt example of our interconnected web saving lives.

I have other examples of depressed youth acting out on FB, the signs picked up by either trained peers (UU youth chaplains) or adults, and interventions taking place almost immediately.

I’ve witnessed religious leaders acting out on FB, sometimes clearly out of covenant, and people on FB reaching out, holding individuals accountable. I’ve picked up the phone on numerous occasions to call youth advisors, DREs, and ministers, “I’m reading some of your FB statuses and wondering if how you’re representing yourself is how you intend to…” And I’ve thankfully had others make that same phone call to me, allowing me the opportunity to get back on track. Now that’s some faithful ministry!

Virtual Learning Space

Social Media allows for virtual learning space in either real-time or your-time. I enjoy private learning space (closed FB groups) for my Congregational Life department at the UUA. It’s fantastic for witnessing each other’s work and sharing resources and asking for help. Being able to be on-line dynamically keeps our large group more tightly knit.

I coordinate four Innovative Learning Circles that meet via videoconference every month for an hour and a half. In-between we keep connected via closed FB groups. The FB group is a place where we can safely give feedback on projects we’re working on. Every-so-often I will put out notes asking what people would like us to pray for/on. They don’t hesitate to respond in very touching ways. I have definitely noticed that the group members show up for each other publicly on each other’s FB pages. With how isolating ministry can be, I definitely consider this kind of support to be faithful ministry!

The Church of the Larger Fellowship has a couple affinity FB groups that act as both learning circle and support group.  I belong to one of their parent groups and it has been a sanity-saver.

Prayers

Every morning I read through the morning FB statuses and receive them as 
“candles of joys and concerns.” I pray down the status. And at night I do the same thing. I also pray down the newspaper. But my prayer life really took off with FB. I feel spiritually full and awake. I don’t use Twitter as much, but when I’m on Twitter, I’ve got my prayer on. There are a couple explicit FB Prayer groups I’m on.

Power of Graphics and Cross-fertilizing

Have you seen the UU Media Collaborative Works?  Their effectiveness in developing UU identity and pride has been mind-blowing! Their reach has been breath-taking. I have seen their graphics on FB, Twitter, Instagram, Pinterest, and websites.

There were a couple UU graphics that I saw popping up on the pages of other faith traditions. And UU events shared on pages connected to other traditions. I find this deeply satisfying. I don’t have any data on this, but I just know that cousins-in-faith who pick up and repost our graphics will be more likely to reach out/ reach back and partner with us. And that can only make us all stronger.

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Tandi Rogers is the UUA Growth Strategist. She will be on a no-electronics-sabbath this weekend, but will catch up on the Minn’s Twitter feed on Monday while on the subway  to work.