Chris: I have had some experience in this regard. First, I am an ordained clergy person in the United Church of Christ, and I know that OST is a powerful tool for churches. Second, most recently I opened space for !st United Methodist Church in Peoria, Illinois, and again, these folks did it naturally. In fact, they had such energy, I couldn't have done anything except pick up coffee cups if I had wanted to.
The theme for their event was "What are the future issues and opportunities for !st UMC to be involved in ministery with the Near Northside neighborhood." This came out of a need to coordinate all the different committees that the church had working in this particular neighborhood. Their was conflict (yes, hard to believe, even in the church) over turf of the different committees. The end result was that everyone (about 40 people representing the various committees) had the conversations they needed to with one another. They then used the reports from all the discussion groups to further map out a strategy at a later meeting, for a new approach in working with the neighborhood. (Now the only problem that I saw in all of this is that neighborhood people were not part of this conversation. But then, at this point this was an inner church struggle, so they didn't want to really share the conflict. I hope that as things work out and plans go forward that neighborhood people will be invited into the discussion, which I'm sure they will.) One last surprise for me this day was that we had planned on doing sessions for three different time periods. After the second time period people came to me and asked if it was real that "when it's over, it's over." I said "yes it is." They said okay, it's over then. We did what we needed to do. And so everybody went home. What was nice is that it was a very sincere and positive statement about the level of conversation that everyone had. I don't know if this helps you with your question. But I find that people involved in a church will do this as well, if not better than anyone else. Thanks, Dave Koehler
