In her thesis on embracing spiritual pluralism in congregational life, Rev. Dr. Nina Grey, our Senior Minister wrote:

Robert Hill, a pioneer in Small Group Ministry within Unitarian Universalism notes that church members seeking ways to deepen their particular spiritualities desire “friends with whom they may recharge their souls…[they are seeking] connection to larger meaning and deeper feeling.”¹Philosopher and theologian Jonathan Sacks, Chief Rabbi of the United Hebrew Congregation of the British Commonwealth,  claims that through dialogue “we come to recognize that we are enlarged, not diminished by difference,”² and sociologist Robert Bellah, that we “find ourselves not independently of other people and institutions but through them”³.   My own experience with leading small church groups leads me to conclude they can create the kind of intimacy and trust that leads to deeper reflection, exploration and risk-taking.⁴ The training of leaders for the small groups is an important part of the project. The training of effective leaders of the small groups can help insure the kind of “I and thou” experience that leads to spiritual deepening and respectful interchange within and among the groups.

¹ Robert L. Hill, The Complete Guide to Small Group Ministry: Saving the World Ten at a Time (Boston: Skinner House Books, 2003), xviif.

² Sacks, Dignity of Difference, 201.

³ Robert Bellah, in Thomas R. Hawkins, “Biblical Hospital as a Boundary Control Premise”, Unpublished Thesis, McCormick Theological School, Chicago, IL, 1988, p. 5.

⁴ The testimony of members about their experience in First Church’s Small Group Ministry Chalice Circles echoes this same kind of possibility.