A Format for a Men’s Gather-in
I recently conducted two gather-ins for men. They were each two hours long, with thirty to forty men attending. I used the following format.
This was my welcome: “Welcome here! I’m pleased to be with you. We can be very pleased with ourselves and each other. You don’t have to be anything special to be here. Just being who you are, exactly as you are right now, is enough. So, I invite you to be who you are, just as you are right now. This gather-in will consist of some randomly assigned mini-sessions and then telling our life stories in small groups. We’ll do the first mini-session now. It will be a three-way session, with each person having three minutes.”
Immediately after the first mini-session, I set up the next one: “We are going to have another mini-session. This time you can talk about your health. If you can’t find much to talk about with that, just talk about how your life is right now. Again, these will be randomly assigned three-ways, three minutes each.”
After that we met in small groups to tell our life stories. This is how I talked about it: “We’re going to get into groups to tell our life stories. Telling these stories will be a bit different than the usual session. Discharge is welcome, but it’s not the main purpose. The purpose is for you to tell people who you are, to give them a “picture” of your life. I suggest that you don’t choose a counsellor—just talk to everyone in the group.
“You have all had big, full lives. You have all lived many years of life. There is a lot to talk about! This is a chance to tell some of your life story. You could talk about your family, friends, school, relationships, work, and more.
“One way to start telling your story is to answer the question, ‘Who were you born to, and what happened next?’ You may have told your life story before, but each time you tell it, it will be different. You could choose to talk about your whole life or about one part of it in detail.
“If you finish your story (that is, you get up to the present), just go back and start again and tell it with more detail.
“You might want to have a minute of silence after each life story, so people have a chance to notice the story they just heard. You might want a five-minute break in the middle of the group session.”
Then we divided into randomly assigned groups of three or four people and met for seventy minutes (in the breakout rooms).
In closing, I asked a few men to say what had been good about participating in the gather-in.
Cambridge, England
Reprinted from the RC e-mail discussion list for leaders of men
(Present Time 206, January 2022)