Small Group Ministry
Connect, Share, & Explore
From Saging to Aging, a small group ministry, is beginning in October 2025. See the community calendar for more information!
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From Saging to Aging, a small group ministry, is beginning in October 2025. See the community calendar for more information! 〰️
Sometimes known as Chalice Circles, Small Group Ministry (SGM) is offered as a way to get to know each other better, to connect with honesty and intimacy and to explore the big questions in our lives. We also engage in spiritual practices such as: being fully present (aware, awake, paying attention to what’s going on around us and within us); deep listening; meditation; shared breath.
We are free to share our thoughts and feelings, joys and struggles, as we choose, and are here to listen to and care about each other. (We are NOT here to be a therapy group or to tackle “church politics”!) We look forward to forming closer connections with each other and building our sense of community.
Connection is, in part, the energy created between people when they feel seen, heard, valued and understood. One of the goals of SGM is to move out of our heads and into our hearts in order to deepen our connections with one another.
Authentic sharing from a place of honesty and vulnerability allows us to build a community of trust, caring, and belonging. The connections we build with one another become contagious. They grow and spread and infuse our larger church community with life and vitality.
How it Works
Model 1: 3-6 Month Commitment
Small groups of 6-8 members meet twice a month at the church or someone's home. Each group creates a safe space—trusting each other with confidentiality, attendance, and active listening. Meetings typically include lighting a chalice, check-in, a chosen topic or activity, discussion, and then extinguishing the chalice.
Participants are assigned by the minister or SGM steering committee to groups based on their needs, personalities, and availability. They commit for 3-6 months, then can change groups afterward. Groups are led by trained lay facilitators who also meet monthly to support group health.
Model 2: Drop-In Sessions
These are flexible discussions based on a shared covenant, available as members choose. The focus is on personal reflection, with varying group sizes and participants, rather than ongoing group development.
SMALL GROUP MINISTRY COVENANT
As members of this Small Group Ministry at UUCSB, we covenant with each other to make this experience spiritually rewarding, to nourish our sense of community, and to learn and practice right relationship.
We use these guidelines as a pathway to a caring community:
We will deeply listen and ask honest and open questions.
We will respect confidentiality.
We will allow others to speak without interruption.
We will not try to fix, save, advise or correct.
We will honor time for reflection and quietness and respect a member’s right to remain silent, as they choose.
We will treat others with respect and without judgment.
We will honor the diversity of thought and feeling and values among us.
If you are interested or even just intrigued by the idea of joining From Aging to Saging in October 2025 or another Small Ministry Group, please fill out this form and you will be contacted as these groups come into focus.
“How many of you want more love, intimacy, joy, in your lives? You can’t have that, if you don’t let yourself be seen. How can you let yourself be loved if you can’t be seen?”