Communicating Passionately

I chatted with representatives of several Unitarian Universalist congregations recently because I'm looking for a new job. All three groups spoke in guarded terms of the "disagreements" they had going in their congregations. I was bemused that somehow I had made connections with three seemingly very different groups, scratched the surface, and found the same kind of trouble: ongoing disagreements that were sapping the strength of their church communities. Then I spoke with a colleague who had led a number of congregations. She said it was really, really common.

Because look, she said, we are the people who assert our freedom and our individuality while at the same time proclaiming our welcome of all different kinds of people with all different kinds of views. Right, I thought, as I remembered a conversation with a psychologist who told me she thought UU's, in contrast to "normal" Protestant denominations, were mostly intuitive types on the Meyers-Briggs scale. An intuitive type myself, I am painfully aware of our tendency to come up with a brilliant idea about the general outline of whatever-it-is, letting the details sort of take care of themselves (or not). I'm always looking around for someone more on the "sensible" side of that scale to help me complete any plan. So there we are, big on proclamations and short on specifics. And in congregational life, it seems we are paying a price.

That made me think of another time when I started following the advice of a book on how to get along with my children. It was awhile ago, and I believe the book was "How to talk so your kids will listen; how to listen so your kids will talk." There were definite formulas about what to say.

"I have confidence you can figure out what to do" ... or, more to the point,

"What you are suggesting is contrary to my deeply held values."

It seemed very artificial, but I was determined. Gradually it became more natural. I did learn how to talk so they would listen and listen so they would talk. We did better with some things than others.

Now I'm thinking of those days again as I think of congregations and their needs for internal communication about important things. Our deeply held values get dragged into what's happening at church with not-surprising frequency.

It turns out there is a whole mini-industry built around the need for people to get along at work, another place where people's deeply held values can rub up against each other in a big way. And sort of entwined with the industry of helping people in workplaces get along is another set of institutes and programs aimed at making peace among people who are actually at war or close to it. Of course, we can make use of some of this.

I'm most taken with the work of Marshall Rosenberg and his followers, called Nonviolent Communication or Compassionate Communication, and alongside that with some work of the Harvard Negotiation Project summed up in the book Difficult Conversations.

What I'm wondering is what it would take to get a whole congregation to go around for a substantial period of time speaking in ways that feel artificial about things they haven't dared speak about for fear of what might happen. The use of "I-statements" is just the beginning. Does anyone have a clue about how to make this work? (The intuitive with the big idea is reaching out to the sensibles to complete the plan...)