Being With
'Being With is for anyone ... wondering if the Christian faith has something meaningful to offer... who perhaps feel(s) on the edge of church...'
(Quote above from the Being With website)
Tonight I will be helping with the second of 10 Being With sessions at Christ’s Church Cathedral (Hamilton) in our first go at having a Being With group, and I am really looking forward to it.
Like most people at the Cathedral who have been through the Being With training to lead a group, or who are part of the current group, I was first intrigued by it through hearing from our associate priest, Rev. Monica Romig Green. Monica has been sharing her excitement about Being With with just about everyone she knows, not only at the Cathedral but, well, everywhere she knows people.
(Image Source: Niagara Anglican article on forming faith across the diocese)
Being With originated at St Martin-in-the-Fields and was created by Rev. Dr Sam Wells. According to Monica, who clearly knows a lot about Sam and is a big fan of his theology, he is an incredible thinker, and very inspiring. I found this recent article where he struggles to understand what has happened since Oct 7. Also, you can get a good sense of Wells’ general approach to church by reading this lecture summary about Reimagining Church.
(Image source: https://www.vitalthriving.org/2024/02/new-podcast-sam-wells/)
Incidentally, Bishop Shane Parker was the one who welcomed Sam three years ago when he was bishop of Ottawa. As some of you may know, Shane recently became the head of the Anglican Church of Canada, the Primate. Shane said this of Sam: he has “the liveliest, most agile, best-informed, critically disciplined mind in the entire Christian community and he has a baptised heart of honesty, compassion and passion to match.”
Why am I so excited about Being With?
You would have to know a bit more about me to get that. I have been a Christian for over 50 years and have participated in small group leadership for over 40 years. My first husband and I were trained facilitators and trainers for the Navigators of Canada.ca in the late 80s and early 90s at St Stephen’s Westmount in downtown Montreal (a church that became very big and was vital but has since died and closed down).
At that time, I really enjoyed leading Navigators discipleship groups, but over the years the focus on memorizing Bible verses gradually palled. Later my church like many others got into Alpha. Again, kind of fun at first, but even more quickly, I found it not really what I was looking for.
Five years after separating from my first husband in the late 90s, while attending a more contemplative church, St George’s Ste-Anne-de-Bellevue, I became an Open Space facilitator. Back then, Open Space was quite new, and few people had heard of it. I have co-led a number of meetings more or less ‘in Open Space’ over the past 20 years, and this approach has become a significant part of how I approach meetings in general.
(Image source: What-is-an-Open-Space?)
A further crucial piece to meetings for me has been developing a strong ability to consensus build within various boards I have co-led.
I became thoroughly discouraged with church about 7 years ago (long story, for another post at a later time) and began meeting a small group of mostly Buddhists at the Sky Dragon Coop meeting place in downtown Hamilton every Sunday morning for meditation, tea, and a dharma discussion. I loved that I was with other contemplatives like me, that we could do sitting and walking meditation 45 minutes (so luxurious!), and that the dharma discussion was us sharing ‘into the circle’, like the 12 steps approach, speaking without being interrupted or other people commenting on or arguing with you.
It was a wonderful thing that of course had its ups and downs, but I was still very keen in March 2020 when it, like so many other groups, closed its doors never to exist again.
There is something extraordinarily healing and joyful about meeting heart to heart with other humans openly sharing their thoughts without dogma or arguing or excessive verbiage. It’s a sacred space so people don’t share outside of it what has been said.
Each Being With session is in 4 parts. The first 2 parts very much have this character, as people take turns sharing the heart of their week, then respond (if they wish) to four open-ended ‘wonderings’ like ‘I wonder if you know what it feels like to be set free?’
The third part is the story, when a co-leader shares the message for that session, interwoven with parts of the responses to the wonderings from the group that evening, so everyone in the group becomes part of the story. It’s tremendously inclusive and affirming of what people are bringing to the group. Everyone else listens while the story is shared and there is a silence while it sinks in.
Finally the discussion is an opportunity for anyone who wishes to talk about their experience of this session to respond one more time.
Not surprising, when you open a safe space for people, they can share quite deeply from the very first meeting about things that matter intensely to them.
So it’s a meaningful and powerful experience each week.
I wonder, have you ever been part of a group with this kind of open-hearted, safe space approach? Are you part of one now? What do you see as its strengths and limitations? Feel free to comment or shoot me a PM.