Opening Words & Chalice Lighting:  When you listen generously to people they can hear the truth in themselves, often for the first time.    -Rachel Naomi Remen

Check-in

Reading:  The interim process is all about discovering how to be generous listeners.  As part of our interim process the Transition Team would like to invite the Covenant Groups to have an experience of an Appreciative Inquiry.  These inquiries are about generous listening and discovery.  Together, we are discovering and reclaiming the life-giving forces of South Church.

Deep Sharing and Listening:  (1^st Round)You have 40 minutes to discover, together, the "life-giving properties" of South Church.  Choose a partner, someone you do not know as well as others, or, someone of a different age or life experience.  Find a comfortable place to sit and share.  Go through all three questions (below) as the interviewer, and then switch your roles halfway through your time.  Session leaderyou may want to request that some one be timekeeper to alert folks when they are halfway through.  Choose one person to represent your dyad when you return to the larger group.

The interviewer’s role is to help their partner discover what is the true essence of this community: its Life-Giving Forces.  Ask the questions just as they are written.  Be curious.  Encourage your partner to elaborate.  When you are the interviewer you are appreciating and learning from your partner.  You may ask questions to clarify and encourage more details but do not offer your story or experience until it is your turn.

Questions:

1.  Remember the first time you arrived at South Church…what were you looking for? What did you discover?  What inspired you to return?

2. What is it about South Church that you most appreciate?  What is the single most important thing that SC has contributed to your life?

3. What do you think is the heart or essence of South Church?

Discussion: (2^ndRound) Share the results of AI interviews.  Request that someone volunteer to record as much as possible, while respecting confidentiality, so that the results may be shared with the Transition Team. 

Housekeeping

Likes and Wishes

Closing Words:

In your light

            I learn to love

In your beauty

            how to make poems

You dance inside my chest

            where no one sees you

But sometimes I do

            and that sight

                        becomes this art

                                                            -Rumi