Transforming Relationships

On October 6, 2010 I Invited my colleagues to join me in an exploration of what the future of the Church might be like if we more fully sought to build just and stable relationships in our local congregations.  Then, on November 10, 2010, I made much the same presentation to the St. Louis Association Ministerium.  This is a summary of those presentations. While the target audience is UCC clergy, all are welcome.

Societies are constructed out of a matrix of relationships.  The strength of the relationships is a measure of the resiliency of the social fabric.  When there is a crisis, as with a hurricane or flood or earthquake, and people come together to act on each other's behalf, we view the strength of the community.

Despite our ability to come together in a time of crisis, there are some strong indications that our social fabric is weak.  Partisanship rules in electoral politics, marriages are fragile, and virtual relationships have begun to attract more of our time and attention than do in-person ones, even among children.

We know how to build stronger and more satisfying relationships.  There are literally hundreds of schools, approaches, and methods which tout the ability to teach participants to have more personal power and more vital lives.  They all have success and each is criticized by some of their former students.  None is perfect but all are effective in the right context.

These approaches include AA and other twelve-step programs, Landmark Education, the Sedona Method, Arbinger, Psychosynthesis, Internal Family Systems, the Diamond Approach, programs of the National Training Labs, and the list goes on and on.  We have a huge body of information about how to train for building stronger relationships.  The most robust of these technologies for transformation have been developed in the last fifty years.

There are some things all of these approaches have in common. 

• They teach in the context of a defined community.  This may be the community of the training event, it may be a virtual community, it may be a workplace or family, but the training happens in the context of relationships of care and concern.

• The content of the training includes theory and language to support making distinctions in one's experience.  Key to the training is coming to recognize that "this" is not the same as "that."  Generally this means using language that is idiosyncratic to the method.

• There are specific behaviors one is expected to manifest in order to learn and realize benefit from the method.  It is not enough to get the concepts.  These must be played out in one's behavior for the results to be experienced.  With practice these disciplines become more second nature and the results become more apparent.

While many intentional and visible schools and methods have appeared in the last fifty years, there are some technologies for transformation which go back thousands of years.  These are the great wisdom traditions of Hinduism, Judaism, Taoism, Buddhism, Confucianism, Christianity, and Islam, among others.  All of the world religions have methods for building more just and stable relationships through teaching specific distinctions and practices.

Each of the more modern methods for personal growth and transformation acknowledges that, in the more advanced and subtle stages of transformation, one is inevitably drawn into the spiritual realm.  We discover more nearly who we are and that allows us to create greater and deeper intimacy with those around us.  This intimacy invites us back into a deeper self-awareness and, as we move further and further into our deepest apprehension of our Self, we find the divine presence resting at the core of each of us.

Throughout our society there is a great longing for more safe and satisfying relationships, a deeper connection to others in ways that promote the welfare of all, and a profound spiritual awareness.  Nevertheless, there are many who not only don't regard the local congregation as a source for support in building just and stable relationships, they see it as a model for judgment, rejection, and abuse.  The intolerance shown by those who picket the funerals of fallen soldiers, who propose to burn the Quran, and who demonize others and themselves because of sexual orientation, causes many to flee the Church.

Those of us who know that such actions are antithetical to our beliefs and to the teachings of Jesus, who love the traditions, the history, the texts, and the people of the Church, find ourselves perplexed by the way Christianity is seen by so many, even those who claim to follow Christ.  We long to manifest the Church as a source for social healing rather than for rancor and division.

• What if we were able to apply the tools for building healthy relationships which have been discovered in the last fifty years to the language for personal, relational, and social transformation which have been part of our faith for the last two thousand years?
• What if we were able to transform our local congregations into schools in which we learn and teach about the qualities which are present in just and stable relationships?  
• What if the local congregation became a beacon for justice, hope, and healing in a society which threatens to lapse into oppression, despair and estrangement?

Transforming Relationships: Discovering a Vision for the Church is committed to creating that future.  We will do it by mapping our existing language for transformation (being born again, distinguishing life in the flesh from life in the Spirit, having faith in the resurrection, etc.) onto the most robust tools for deepening our awareness of ourselves and each other.  We will apply these tools to those events in our common life where we most fear alienation and estrangement.

You are invited to join us.  A group is currently meeting each Wednesday morning (except when Ministerium meets).  We will continue until the crush of Christmas stops us.  Then in the third week of January we will reconstruct ourselves into two groups .  If you are interested in joining this program in January, please contact me.

Rev. Dr. Mark Lee Robinson

Executive Director of the Center for Creative Conflict Resolution

314-853-9385 (mobile)