Right Relations

The Live Oak UU Church Covenant of Right Relations was adopted by the Steering Committee on March 12, 2006

About the Right Relations Task Force

The Right Relations Task Force has been so busy since May that this is the first opportunity I’ve had to communicate with you all about our work. Many UU congregations have adopted Right Relations Covenants and conflict management procedures. Ours began with two proposals brought by John Phelps to the May Steering Committee meeting to address the way we handle conflict in our congregation. Neither document passed it its entirety because of a general concern for the proscriptive quality of the documents. The Steering Committee nevertheless agreed that these were important documents to have, and sent off an ad hoc committee of volunteers to draft at least a working model for conflict resolution. That document became the Conflict Resolution model we now have in place since the June Steering Committee meeting, and you can review it on our website. We also have a Conflict Resolution Team, consisting of Esther Ford, Sarah Swords, Mary McIntosh, Dale Todd-Thompson, Roe Mackey, and me. The members of this team will help facilitate conflict resolution and also serves as an advisory group to the Leadership Team. We have already submitted ten recommendations, mostly relating to our governance structure. Live Oak has seen tremendous growth in our numbers and programs, and our governance is catching up.

Since that time the now-named Right Relations Task Force has been looking at ways to develop, at a more leisurely pace, a Right Relations Covenant – basically a document which outlines the way in which we covenant to be with one another in our religious community. A conflict resolution procedure depends on the Right Relations Covenant based on the idea that if we have a better understanding of what we expect from one another, we can better support one another in living out our Principles. It is a necessary component of a healthy congregation.

But conflict is a funny thing. I believe that in our society we are conditioned to believe that if we are “good” people, we will not have conflicts. Well, we all know that our drives and desires bump into other people’s drives and desires all the time, causing what we call “interpersonal conflict”. No human relationship is without it. We all have to negotiate our drives and desires around those of the people we love, care about, and work with. And of course it shows up in churches, some say particularly when they reach the size of ours. Yet because we’re not supposed to have conflict, we don’t learn how to effectively deal with it. So when conflict inevitably arises, we’re ill equipped to make our way through it satisfactorily to all involved. Yes, conflict resolution is very much a learned skill.

So the overarching goal of the Right Relations Task Force is to develop a set of agreements about the ways in which we will walk together down our own individual spiritual and life paths, collectively. We came up with the idea of a Covenant Café – a form of conversation that allows answering questions about what we want in a way that surfaces our true selves – that would help us develop a shared covenant in a way to enhance the sense of participation and ownership, qualities that are the hallmark of Live Oak.

Unfortunately, other events have diluted the energy necessary to hold the Covenant Café this year. But this isn’t at all a bad problem to have! With all the activity at Live Oak, it is evident we are a vibrant and committed community. We hope to reschedule the Covenant Café for early in the new year. That way, we’ll have more time to do outreach and education to get you all familiar with our efforts. We also hope to do some fundraising to fund our efforts.

In faith,

Carrie Stewart, Trustee and RRTF Leader