Does your congregation or team need to engage in an important, critical, or difficult conversation? Have you been putting off a difficult conversation? Does your team need help to get focused?
The synod knows of a number of people trained to facilitate focused conversations in congregations or teams. You may contact any of the people below to discuss coming to your congregation or team meeting to facilitate a conversation.
Deacon Travis Beck – travis@molive.org
Kathy Chatelaine – chatelaine@semnsynod.org
Karolee Hogden – karolee77@gmail.com
Rev. David Knox – prdaveknox@gmail.com
Rev. Audrey Lukasak – alukasak@gmail.com
Regina Seabrook – rseabroo@gmail.com
List updated Aug. 17, 2021
About
The Focused Conversation method comes from The Institute of Cultural Affairs International (ICAI) and is explained in the book The Art of Focused Conversation: 100 Ways to Access Group Wisdom in the Workplace by R. Brian Stanfield. (Publisher info here and purchase link here.)
"The intent was to expose a radical life address in a particular cultural frame. The conversation moved participants through phenomenological levels of response – objective, reflective, interpretive, decisional – pushing participants to say where the dynamics of these artforms were going on in their own lives. We wanted to put people in a box and let them wrestle with their own self-consciousness. Hence, the conversational tool was labelled the artform method. Today it is called the focused conversation method. When the Institute launched an urban community demonstration project (named Fifth City) in the black ghetto on the West Side of Chicago in the early 60s, the artform method became a primary education tool for the work with the black youth of the community, and in the community preschool set up by the ICA." (Source: ICAI)
Learn more at www.ica-international.org.
Training
Local training opportunities are available through Huelife. Learn more at hue.life.
