© Progressive Christians Uniting
The Local Church as a Free Social Space for Critical Conversation...
A Safe Space in Tough Times
PCU is seeking area congregations that might wish to work with us in testing an urgently-needed new church-based community service model that addresses the hard economic times we now entering.
A Safe Space in Tough Times is the name PCU has given to a series of facilitated gatherings for groups of up to 20 twenty persons that will take place in church spaces.
These gatherings will be free to all—to members of the hosting congregation but also to others in the area who will hear about it through word of mouth and quiet promotion.
Each gathering will have a skilled volunteer facilitator—someone who PCU will help to train and prepare in advance of the first session.
The goal of Safe Space gatherings will be to create an environment in which people can share their stories, experience the gift of community, and begin to think critically about the meaning of the changes they and others are going through. The idea is to ease the sense of failure and isolation that many experience when facing job loss, income loss, foreclosure, bankruptcy, and family stress related to debt and anxiety.
PCU has prepared a discussion guide with suggestions for conducting ten weekly Safe Space sessions around a sequence of interrelated topics ranging from the meaning of “security” in today’s world to the challenges facing the young and the elderly to the implications for democracy in the way our economic life is now organized.
