Crewing @ the Commons

Documentation for leadership of a congregation

Jul 26, 2024

I spent a few months at the Commons in SF introducing the crewing program. One way of putting it is I was operationalizing crewing in an existing congregation.

I wrote a bunch of Notion pages explaining various aspects of crewing for various audiences, and I wanted to capture and post them here.

The Commons is a live organization, and I’m curious how it will continue to evolve and shift, but I wanted to capture this snapshot of time in terms of the initial direction of how it relates to crewing. This doesn’t necessarily represent the views of the Commons as an organization. At most, this captures a view of the Commons community from the perspective of a volunteer leader (myself).

This document was written primarily for leadership, taking a congregation view and outlining the intended benefits of introducing the crewing program.

Link to official Commons documentation, latest that I peeped as of 8/15/2024

Crewing is

A small group of people (3-6) that meets
Regularly for N weeks/time period and
Reflects on their experience together (after N weeks)

This page is a manifesto answering the question “why do crewing at the Commons?”

Why Crewing Benefits the Commons

On congregations (the Commons is a “congregation” (12 min video):

https://www.microsolidarity.cc/practice-programs/vibes-program/course-content/congregations

“Because of my experience with communities over the last 10 years or so, noticing that community members who don't have a crew are often the ones who tend to be isolated and disconnected and miss out on a lot of the opportunities and the benefits of community life. It's just been a recurring pattern that the people who have the most joy, the best experiences in communities are the ones who have a great connection in a crew… when you're new… one of your first objectives should be to find your crew.”
“We support crews to form because it has this benefit for the whole network of increasing trust and increasing coherence. It becomes a really strong foundation of trust and social fabric, a baseline foundation for any upcoming challenges that the community might face. If there's lots of crews, then there are lots of trusting relationships and good communication flows. So it's a way of increasing the resilience as well as the coherence of the community.”

Goals for the Crewing Program

Object Level Goals (”What”)

Per Johnson’s opinion, experience & interpretation of Microsolidarity:

Connections - more and deeper ones at the Commons
Belonging - deeper sense of it at the Commons
Personal growth/development - creating space for it and encouraging it at the Commons
All of this and more, leads to a stronger community at the Commons, and ladders up to something something golden age of society

Connections

Crewing is a practice that, at its best, effectively takes (to borrow terms from Dunbar):

Strangers -> Acquaintances
Acquaintances -> Meaningful contacts
Meaningful contacts -> Friends
Friends -> Good friends
Good friends -> Loved ones

These words mean different things to everyone, but what I associate with each is:

Strangers - randos with no relationship, history of interaction, I could talk to them with some effort
Acquaintances - people I’d feel easy saying hi to, I could have a conversation with at a gathering, friendly surface level interactions, I could share certain invitations/asks (a party, something related to shared hobbies or interests, etc.)
Meaningful contacts - people I see with some regularity, we share some common interests/hobbies. I enjoy spending time with them, though probably in a group setting, I might go out on a limb and invite them to something. Overall, the connection is still more tied to the shared activity than a strong personal bond.
Friends - people I actively enjoy, want, and make time to spend time with, I can be proactive about communication, invitations, asks (“how you been?”, grab dinner, borrow something, walk a dog, etc.). We do stuff together regularly, I might open up to them about some sensitive subjects
Good friends - people I have history with, shared experiences and inside jokes and memes, there’s a lot of ease and fluidity to communicating and spending time together, I see them regularly, I can share vulnerabilities, fears, insecurities with them
Loved ones - people with whom there’s enough love and trust and connection upon which to build shared commitment to each other. This can range from emotional intimacy to professional intimacy to tied finances to living together to coparenting and more. Culturally, these are often reserved for romantic partners and family, but also possible with friends

Crewing pretty reliably helps strangers move through acquaintance-ship into meaningful contacts, or from meaningful contacts to friends. It can also help friends move to good friends, and even good friends to loved ones, though my experience is that deeper levels of closeness require exponentially more time and energy.

(As an aside, I was surprised that I couldn’t find a commonly agreed upon stage theory of friendship from some googling, I did find many amateur categorizations)

Belonging

Belonging is a property of not me or you, but a 3rd thing, that is “us”. A crew is the smallest “thing” I can belong to.

I’m sure what to write about it at this time, but here are some things that I associate with it, and some quotes:

A deeper sense of safety & support - in prehistory, a person that didn’t belong was probably going to literally die
Learning how to be in a group
- “It seems to me that the primary skill is the ability to establish a relationship with the group as a group. This involves the capacity to feel at ease, in fact, to enjoy the social interplay among members and to be able to perceive both the individual behavior and its collective manifestations as well as to become part of the relationships and to affect them.” - Grace Coyle (1930)
- “The biggest challenge for those of us who grew up in a modern European cultural context is that we’re taught to think that we don’t have a cultural worldview. Instead, we are just individuals, and individualism is universal; we are part of a global humanity. The problem with this worldview is that it pretends not to exist, which makes it hard to see, harder to talk about, and harder still to be held accountable or responsible” - Billy Matheson (“Gather Together”)
Better understanding ourselves
- “Human beings are inseparable, always and inevitably, from their interpersonal field. The individual’s personality takes shape in an environment composed of other people… The personality or self is not something that resides ‘inside’ the individual, but rather something that appears in interactions with others.” Stephen A. Mitchell (1995)

Personal Growth/Development

Personal development isn’t really relevant to crews until people. are friends, or roughly that level of connection. But once a crew is there, in my experience, there’s vast territories of growth that are available. Some include:

Personal power
- Social agency (”oh I can just pull together people and start a crew”)
- Greater self awareness
- Learning to speak more authentically/honestly/vulnerably
- Learning to speak up for our needs (e.g. asking for support)
Love/care
- Learning to listen, deeply
- Learning how to offer support in a way that lands
- Building each other up
“How to human with other humans”
- Learning to accept/embrace more of each other more fully
- Feeling more safety and trust with each other
- Navigating disagreement/tension/conflict in ways that are healing/connective
- Moving towards relationships based on partnership rather than domination
- With greater wholeness and self management
- Slowing down with each other and enjoying each others presence

“Meta” Goals (”How” it’s done)

Sustainability - “How to make this an enduring institution at The Commons?”
Iteration - “How do we get better, learn, produce expertise?”

Structure

Microsolidarity talks about rhythms - whatever we’re doing, we’re doing it regularly at some cadence. This helps both with sustainability and iteration.

For both training and crew formation - ideally, they’re happening as often and as much as there’s interest/demand for it, while maintaining cohesion and sustainability for those running the crewing program and the trainings.

At least while we get crewing started at the Commons, it probably makes sense to do at a regular cadence, perhaps once every 2 or 3 months?

Important aspects: