A Group-Splitting Experience

A Group-Splitting Experience

Lyssa Andersson, Covenant Group Coordinator

Unitarian Universalist Church of Greater Lynn, MA

SGM Quarterly, Fall 2008

Ten Years of Unitarian Universalist Small Group Ministry 2009, © UU SGM Network, June 2009 #45

Carefully…deliberately…with aforethought; that’show we began our covenant group ministry. In aprocess that took several years, our timeline beganwith one person’s vision, then another’s, and as webecame more visible in our church community, thevision grew until we had a strongly committed groupof five who formed an implementation team and metevery two weeks for the better part of a year to planour entry into small group ministry. We knew, ofcourse, that we couldn’t anticipate the nature of eachprogression and obstacle on our path to our “grandopening” last fall, but we did try to touch all thebases; we wanted to be as prepared as possible. Afterhaving agenda-driven business meetings for four orfive months, we decided to limit business to our firsthalf-hour, and to begin to practice our small groupministry skills with a covenant group gathering eachtime we met. We loved the closeness and theopportunity to “just talk.” As you might imagine, ourcovenant group time quickly became anindispensable part of our lives. One of our groupsaid that whether our covenant group ministrykickoff began with a large number of groups ornone, that we had already begun our ministry; that ifours was the only group that was ever formed, itwould be sufficient for us.

In our planning meetings, we talked about how wewould utilize the facilitators (our ImplementationTeam members) depending on how many groupswere formed, but we weren’t really thinking abouthow forming new groups would impact the personalrelationships we had formed among ourselves byeffectively splitting our own group. As our twoinitial new groups formed, it worked out that threeof our team would be co-facilitators and members ofour evening group and one would co-facilitate theafternoon group. I, as covenant group coordinator,became co-facilitator of the afternoon group and amember of the evening group. Once the schedulehad been made, it was a sudden realization that oneof us would no longer be in a covenant group withthe other three members of our hardy little team.That recognition was accompanied by a sinkingfeeling that represented real loss; we were notprepared for the bond that was developed during theimplementation team’s time together at the start.Although we knew we were to break up and attendto the new groups that would be formed, we weresurprised at how we felt about being in different

groups.

I’m sure that this sense of loss is what makessplitting any small group so difficult. Weexperienced it even though I consider ours to be avery successful split. Part of what made our successpossible is that we expected the split, althoughperhaps not the level of emotion connected with it,and understood the reasoning behind its necessity.We had a definite date when we knew there wouldhave to be changes. The division of the groupmembers was due to schedule availability alone, notby clique. We still were able to see one another atchurch and implementation team meetings. Weknow that we will have opportunities to get togetherin the future, and the possibility of being broughttogether in another covenant group down the linesometime. Our saving grace is that we knew fromthe beginning that our groups were not planned aspermanent placements; there was always theawareness that we would meet in one group for aperiod of time, and then a new group would emerge.