Alice Williams, a member of the Leadership Gathering Design Team, explains the two roles in each covenant group. The facilitator makes sure everyone is heard and keeps the group on task. The recorder captures the essence of the conversation and completes the daily Jotforms. She also covers what each role asks of your time and who should serve.
This video is part of a series on how participants will listen and discern together at the Leadership Gathering. Read the Covenant for Conversation & Sharing and watch the other videos in the series.
Video transcript
Hello, my name is Alice Williams, and I’m a lay member of the Florida Annual Conference and also part of the Leadership Gathering design team. I have some information that I want to share with you about two key roles that we are asking you to prayerfully consider volunteering your time and your talents for. The first is facilitator. The other is recorder for your small group.
Now, neither role is meant to lead the group or be a position of leadership over the group, but they are incredibly important roles that are critical to the success of our time together. Both facilitators and recorders will remain as full participants in the small group that they’re in, with the added responsibility of navigating the conversation and helping to capture the items discussed. Both roles are responsible for creating a space where people can listen deeply to one another, practice holy conferencing, discern faithfully, and bring, hopefully, ideas that maybe we have never considered or thought of before back to the table to the larger group. Again, we don’t need people who will lead the group to an answer. We need people who will enable the Holy Spirit to work through the group among us, so that we can discern the future workings of our beloved United Methodist Church.
Let’s talk a moment about each one of the roles. The facilitator’s role is mainly to ensure that everyone is heard and that the group stays on task. As a facilitator, you will guide the group through the daily agenda. You’ll help to keep the discussions moving and make sure that everyone, everyone in the group, is heard. This will require you to create an atmosphere where people feel safe in expressing their ideas and thoughts honestly. You’re not there to control the outcome or force consensus. Your job is simply to help the group hear one another and discern the group’s collective response to the various topics that are discussed.
The recorder’s main responsibility is to capture the essence of the group’s conversation. As a recorder, you’ll listen carefully for themes, decisions, emerging ideas, and places where the group is in agreement and where there may be disagreement. You’re not creating a complete transcript. This does not have to be a word-for-word capture of all that is said. You’re simply getting the high-level discussion points and making sure that what gets captured is reported to the larger gathering group to be reflective of your group’s thoughts. You’ll also be responsible for completing the daily Jotforms that carry your group’s information back to the discernment of the larger group. Now, one thing to note: this role does require you to capture information electronically, so you will need either a computer or a tablet to be able to work from.
Both roles require you to attend these small group covenant sessions, of course, and then you’ll need to attend the additional cohort debrief each afternoon from 5:30 to 6:30 p.m. You should be comfortable in communicating in English, but English does not have to be your first language. You also need to have the ability to make people feel comfortable in expressing various opinions in a respectful way. It helps to have the ability to summarize thoughts concisely, and it’s a good idea that you’d be comfortable in speaking in front of a large group, as you may be asked to report out on your group’s work in a plenary session if needed.
We do ask that the general secretaries and our beloved bishops not serve as facilitators or recorders. This is so they can participate fully in the discussion.
So if you’re someone who can listen deeply, make space for others to express their ideas and thoughts, hold complexity without rushing to resolve it, and help a group faithfully to accomplish their work, we hope you will consider serving in one of these two roles. We will be asking the small groups to identify who will be serving in those roles when we meet on Tuesday evening, October 20. Until then, please give prayerful consideration as to whether you feel called to one of these roles.
If you have any questions about the roles or their responsibilities, please send those in the form of an email to Dr. Ashley Boggan at [email protected]. Again, that’s Dr. Ashley Boggan at [email protected].
I pray God’s travel blessings on you, and I look forward to seeing each of you when you arrive in Calgary. Bye for now.
Return to A Covenant for Conversation & Sharing.
Return to the Council of Bishops Leadership Gathering.