Fw: Carol's Question

[Chris Kloth]

Carol,

I have been unable to respond until today and hope it's not too late to
be useful.  I have worked with a number of communities of faith,
including churches, synagogues and faith based service delivery
agencies.  The short version is that open space works in these settings
in the same way it does in other settings if the prework of determining
that there is a real "business" issue which people feel passion about
and are willing to accept responsibility for doing something about.  In
my own synagogue we had a number of good ideas and a number of new and
long inactive people emerge to take responsibility for restoring the
spirit to a congregation which was in crisis and losing members fast.

I will say that there is one factor I find important to be alert to and
useful to address during what some of us occasionally refer to as the
invocation of open space with communities of faith.  There is one key
"stakeholder" (omni)present but not physically present in the room.  A
number of people seem to want to assert that they have the true
understanding of her/his/it's perspective on the matter and play this as
a trump card to influence the conversation.  It need not be a show
stopper.

Chris