The Circle of Life

How strange it is that sometimes we get the strangest coincidences. I'm just looking at sorting some things for a trip to Taize (see new funky banner and feed in the sidebar) and it turns out that one of the people in the new diocese who's running a Taize service is a person who was in my small group the first time I went to Taize. I remember the small group very well. It was a really amazing group of people and we had some fabulous discussions. What I remember most was the great loving encouragement in the faith and in our individual vocations. Just thinking about that group makes me smile.

Groups can often have their problems - trials and tribulations, character clashes, disasters, fallings-out etc etc but when they work WELL, especially, I think, when they're a group of Christians meeting for spiritual/vocational/reflective purposes, they can be INCREDIBLE.

How are the groups you're working with at the moment? Is there tension or is the a beautiful flow to them? What might be causing tension or flatness? Is your group missing something?

I've recently left a group of youth workers that worked so amazingly well together despite being VERY different. It contrasted greatly with a previous incarnation of the same group which just didn't work. It wasn't that the people didn't like each other or get on. It was just that working together never worked. I remember using the Belbin model of group roles in trying to work out how we could make it work better and it turned out we were lacking in quite a few really vital areas like completer finisher and monitor evaluator! Of course the question we faced was how to resolve that.

In a group that isn't functioning do we re-form the group with additional (or fewer!) members or do we seek to change the way we work as a team, asking individuals to work not just from their natural strengths but developing their weaknesses?