I have heard from several congregations asking how strict the rule is that congregations may only nominate teams of two or more. We have strictly followed the rule but the Leadership Experience planning group has decided to experiment with a new way in which teams of participants can be formed.
Being sensitive to the call to strengthen the community between congregations we would like to experiment with letting groups of congregations form a team to send to SUULE.
We welcome your congregation’s participation in the experiment to work with one or several other congregations to send teams of two or three participants to SUULE. Participation in the experiment will be predicated on your congregation’s commitment to:
Help your participant prepare for SUULE. Your participant will have some assignments to complete prior to attending and we ask that you commit to helping when requested.
Support, learn from, and share the lessons from your participants when they return from SUULE. Specifically that your board makes a plan to share the information your participant bring back from SUULE with your congregation’s leadership. We expect that the participants will work together to prepare the sharing of information. The optimum condition would be if the cooperating congregations could share in this training.
That your SUULE participant and that at least one senior person from your leadership team participate in a teleconference about this time next year to discuss your experience with this arrangement.
We ask that team members agree to
1.Become acquainted with each other before coming to SUULE.
a.Team members share their personal Unitarian Universalism histories
b.The team members share the histories of their congregations
c.They share their greatest experience within their congregation
d.They share what they feel are the biggest challenge for their congregation and what their dream is for their congregation.
2.Agree to take part in the three quarterly post SUULE teleconferences.