Justice and Peace Consulting provides assessment, coaching, group development, and specific program development services.
You want to grow and develop your congregation
- to be responsive to changing demographics, cultural landscape, and socio-political times.
- to balance tradition and innovation as you move forward
- to respond to loss and grief (of person or idea) and move with strength into the next decade and beyond
- to invest in infrastructure that will shore up the foundation as you build more and more levels of service
- to practice patterns of communication that move toward inclusion and growth both
- to develop lithe, responsive ways of decision-making that will support experimentation within the framework of your mission
- to welcome newcomers and have them feel welcome, and to integrate them into the life of the congregation, and
- to create space for newcomers to conversely impact and change the congregation
- to learn about generational and cultural differences and grow the flexibility and wings necessary to adapt your programs and activities to meet new needs as they arise
- to do justice and seek peace, and understand that the one precedes the other as we live more fully into the Beloved Community*
We offer solutions to these desires and challenges by helping with
Assessment — JPC will help you assess your programs against mission and outcome. Our assessment processes involve members of your congregation and staff teams. This “living assessment” will explore not only static documents, programs and outcomes, but also the processes and relational experiences involved.
Group development — CB has had years of experience working with all sorts of organizations and the groups and committees that make them up. From middle and high school youth groups and their adult leaders to committees that are stuck or stagnant or struggling with growth challenges to congregations living with loss. We are available for intervention or development or both.
Program development — Whether it is your Religious Education/Faith Formation program, your Welcoming/Newcomer Team, or a committee that is struggling to get the work done, JPC can come in and help you quickly assess the challenges, help you attend to covenants and relationship, get to work of serving in the best way possible.
Interim change management — All of the above endeavors are more challenging during an interim time – a loss or change of ministerial or program leadership, a loss or change in the physical building, a loss or change in the larger culture. CB is a UUA trained interim religious educator, with experience in a variety of situations both within and without congregational life.
If your congregational program or committee is looking for someone with an understanding of congregational polity and ministerial authority and board responsibility, alongside the ability to see the interplay of programs and committees with the history and experience of leaders, reach out to us.
*There are many ways to talk about the Beloved Community. Here are two that show how I use it.
“Beloved community is formed not by the eradication of difference but by its affirmation, by each of us claiming the identities and cultural legacies that shape who we are and how we live in the world.” bell hooks.
“…the opportunity, not the necessity, mark my word, but the opportunity, for growth in relatedness, for primary face-to-face discovery of the secret of life far removed from one’s own background and culture…It was as if the Creator of existence wanted to discover whether or not a certain ideal could be realized in time and space.” Howard Thurman