Letting Go of Outcomes

I’ve been incredibly excited to see the conversation developing around the UUA’s “Congregations and Beyond” initiative.  If nothing else, it has started a really important conversation.  Checkout the Facebook conversation. There have been dozens of blog posts and twitter conversations about it.  Follow the Twitter hashtag #congbeyond.

Joanna Crawford summarizes the responses well in her latest blog:

• “My Social Media peeps: after years of shouting from the rooftops about the very real community and relationship that happens via blogs, FB, Twitter, etc., they’re excited to see others are realizing it.
•  My Boots on the Ground Parish Ministers: wonder if any of this is relevant to their churches and have concern that this will take away from the help they desperately need.
• Theology Wonks: want more emphasis on the “there, there.” What is the root of what connects us? What are those “core values”?
• Polity Wonks: want to know if this is a step toward being an association of members rather than an association of congregations, and if so, will this dilute/change our congregational polity?
• One question I’ve heard from almost all groups is a desire for clarification, to know what the end goal is.”

I’ve heard this same desire for clear goals expressed everywhere.  And I would like to caution us that this is actually the worst place to start.

I spoke in my last post about the consultation we’ll be conducting beginning tomorrow evening lasting until Friday noon designed to begin framing the conversation. (You can follow along for the whole consultation at the above FB page and twitter feed).

During the last few weeks as we’ve been planning for this consultation I feel like I have been learning a new thing every 5 minutes.  I am actually a fairly technologically astute person for my age, and yet I have had to take on at least 5 new tech/social media skills.  I have to say I love this!  Because it tells me that we as an institution are also learning a new thing – actually a new cosmos of things. And starting with a named goal will necessarily limit our explorations, because we don’t really know the scope of the challenge yet!

I also love that we are doing this so transparently.  I really look forward to hearing everyone’s thoughts as we go along.  I can’t wait to see what new light is waiting to break forth in this iteration of God’s holy word!