Church Leaders: Please Assess the Ways Your Community Gathers

Last updated on: August 15, 2023 at 4:40 pm by Andrew Lang

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Church Leaders: Please Assess the Ways Your Community Gathers 2023-08-15T16:40:52-07:00 Andrew Lang

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The way we gather says a lot about us, whether it’s for Sunday worship or a Thursday night small group.

Richard Rohr has a saying: “true prayer or contemplation is a leap into commonality and community.” Or to turn it around: the ways we engage commonality and community expose the quality and depth of our prayer and contemplation.

Is the way we gather in community filled with a deep appreciation for humanity and good-enough-ness or is it a hierarchical force that sustains current power dynamics and the status quo?

Take a moment and do an audit of the communal spaces you gather with others in:

Coffee shops
Work meetings
Family mealtimes
Faith communities
Grocery and retail stores
Sporting and gaming events
Professional development classes

Here are some questions you might ask as part of this audit:

What is the physical form of this space?
What does the physicality of the space imply about the values of those who create/maintain it?
Who is allowed to speak in this space and when?
When you’re in this space, is there an agenda? Who sets it? (Who doesn’t set it?)
Who holds power and rank in this space? Who doesn’t?
How is this space facilitated? Is it co-created by participants or designed by one person or a committee?
Does this space feel generative or does it largely exist for the maintenance of the status quo or “how things have always been?”
What is the level of depth at which people interact with each other most often while in this space? (Ex. surface level, deeply intimate, no interaction, etc.)
What energies do you most often feel while being in this space or thinking about being in this space?

There are obviously plenty more questions you could ask.

The point is: how we meet is who we are.

adrienne maree brown, the brilliant community organizer, author, and healer, says this:

“There are moments in facilitation [and of holding space with others] when you can feel the way to the future unblock, when you can feel the room burst forward on behalf of the species. In those moments, I can feel the tingling prickling aliveness of interconnection, of history, of futures becoming possible.”

This article is a version of the April 12th edition of The Wednesday 1-2-3. This is my weekly email where I share short, embodied teachings, along with inner work questions and resources to take the teaching deeper.

Inner Work Questions

How are your gatherings inviting new futures to become possible?
And if they aren’t currently, how might you be part of such an emergence? (Whether in this space or by leaving this space and entering another.)

Additional Resources

A Framework for Gathering (free PDF for small groups)
Holding Change: The Way of Emergent Strategy Facilitation and Mediation, by adrienne maree brown (book)
Community: The Structure of Belonging, by Peter Block (book)

Contemplative

Religious Events

Faithful Questioners

Spheres of Influence

About Andrew Lang

Andrew Lang is an educator in the Pacific Northwest, an alumnus of Richard Rohr’s Living School for Action and Contemplation, and author of the award-winning Unmasking the Inner Critic: Lessons for Living an Unconstricted Life. Along with writing regularly, he facilitates workshops helping people to navigate their inner lives and explore their sense of identity and spirituality. You can find more of his writings and offerings at www.AndrewGLang.com You can read more about the author here.

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