Art of Hosting at 1st UU Church in Columbus

[Amy Kay Watson]

I've been talking with folks at my church about AoH and the compatibilities I see between it and the church's goals and values.  As a result, a couple of things have happened so far.

The first and so-far biggest thing is that the leadership development committee asked me to do some leadership training drawing on the Art of Hosting body of knowledge.  We formed a small core host team with myself and two others who are close friends of the church (not quite members) and who have been involved in the AoH Community of Practice (Jorie Schwartz and Chrissy Gilbert, who both work with Tom Gregoire in the College of Social Work at Ohio State).  We've been joined by two members of the church and one other close friend of the church who has his UU membership in another city.

The six of us agreed to four 2-hour meetings (at least) to learn about Art of Hosting and plan for a single event at the church that would take place in the spring.  Chrissy, Jorie, and I have met a few times to design each of these meetings with the core host team.  We're set to have our second meeting tomorrow.

In our first meeting, we shared about the four-fold practice and the practice and principles of circle.   We did a picture walk and identified what uniquely brought each of us to our work.

In our second meeting, we'll talk about paradoxes and the chaordic path.  We have a cool little activity planned with stones, and I'm ready to do a little presentation on Dee Hock and the Chaordic Organization if we have time for it.  Although we only have six members, we'll use a little bit of World-Cafe design for a conversation a round the principles of the work we're doing together. 

In our third meeting, we'll talk about the art of powerful questions and start introducing some of the larger-group processes that would be possible if we get a larger number to turn out for the spring event.

More is happening, but the above is where the ripples are easiest to see.  Stay tuned!

[Amy Kay Watson]

Ria, thank you so much for directing me to Chris's blog post, which is so beautifully and powerfully written.  While my church isn't exactly in the vein of the ones he's writing about, that's my history, and I am deeply moved. Thank you!

[Ria Baeck]

Hello! It seems like conversations in churches are going on everywhere. Did you see the latest blogpost of Chris Corrigan, especially on this? Also in the last AoH training that I co-hosted there were 4 people from different churches present!