Our 12 partner congregations gathered for a third learning event this February. This group began together in July 2021 with a launch event to build community and introduce key ideas about the call to be public church. In the fall, an Interdisciplinary Developmental Inventory (IDI) training was offered to congregational teams to develop a posture of cultural humility. This was followed by a hybrid event in October where teams focused on ways to practice accompaniment in their neighborhoods. Accompaniment is simply the big and small ways we set out to hear our neighbors’ stories – to hear how they are experiencing bad news and good news in their lives. Congregational teams have spent the last handful of months learning about their neighborhoods and listening to their neighbors in a variety of ways.
This most recent gathering on February 5, brought us back together to continue our vocational discovery work together by introducing the second artform of the public church framework – interpretation. Our current public safety realities prevented us from gathering together at Augsburg, but we still found meaningful connections during our online Saturday morning session. We learned some new technologies to enhance our online conversations and stayed cozy with hot chocolate, tea and the companion of our pets from home. We reflected on key themes congregations are hearing from their neighbors in their accompaniment work and we began to explore and name our key beliefs and theological convictions to aid our interpretive work. You can read more about what these interpretation questions sound like in this blog post by Congregational Facilitator, Amanda Vetsch.
Our questions and conversations together set the table to begin wondering…
What does God’s story have to say about the stories we are hearing from our neighbors and vice versa?
How does what we are hearing from our neighbors connect to God’s hopes and dreams for our world, our neighborhood, and our neighbors?
On Saturday, October 16, 2021, the new Riverside Innovation Hub learning community gathered on campus and virtually for a morning of exploration on the artform of accompaniment. Accompaniment is the movement into the neighborhood in order to hear the neighbor’s story. In this artform, we learn to engage and listen to the neighbor’s story for the neighbor’s sake. It is the first movement within the Public Church Framework. It sets our focus outward, towards our neighbors and God’s presence in the neighborhood.
During the month of November, you are invited to participate in a four part series exploring the work of becoming a public church. Jeremy Myers, Executive Director of the Christsensen Center for Vocation, and Kristina Fruge, Managing Director of the Christensen Center for Vocation, will be presenting on this topic for the fall session of the Centered Life Series. Workshops are hosted over zoom on Wednesdays, Nov. 3, 10, 17, and 24 from 12:00-1:15pm CST.
Read more about this series and register to join us below.
Fruit For Food and Leaves for Healing: A Faith for the Sake of the World
In the 47th chapter of the book of Ezekiel, we encounter a divine tour guide showing Ezekiel around the temple. There is water flowing from the temple towards the wilderness. It grows deeper and wider the further it flows from the temple. Eventually, this water – God’s abundant mercy – brings life to trees of all kinds who produce fruit for food and leaves for healing. Jeremy Myers and Kristina Frugé will guide you through the Christensen Center for Vocation’s Public Church Framework as a method for discerning personal and communal vocation in your particular locations as we all seek to produce the food and the healing our neighbors need.
Augsburg University’s Christensen Symposium will feature the esteemed Dr. Brian Bantum next week, Oct. 5 from 11:00am-12:00pm. Please join us either in the Hoversten Chapel at Augsburg or via livestream (register to attend online through this link.) His talk is titled, “All Things Are New: The Language of Our Life in the Face of Empire.”
Brian Bantum, PhD, writes, speaks, and teaches on identity, racial imagination, creating spaces of justice, and the intersection of theology and embodiment for audiences around the United States. He is a contributing editor of The Christian Century and is the author of “Redeeming Mulatto: A Theology of Race and Christian Hybridity,” “The Death of Race: Building a New Christianity in a Racial World,” and “Choosing Us: Marriage and Mutual Flourishing in a World of Difference,” which he co-authored with his spouse, Gail Song Bantum.
Today’s blog post has been commissioned by the Riverside Innovation Hub to bring in the stories and views from our partner congregations forward. We continue with a piece by Ryana Holt, a member of Holy Trinity Lutheran Church.
I have been reflecting on the word “yes.” This word or similar affirmative phrase mark the cusp to new beginnings. Like Samuel’s “here I am”. How do young people become leaders? Some create opportunities for themselves. Others find themselves saying “yes”, “here I am,” and the journey thereafter unveils and develops their leadership.
“Yes” was the beginning to my involvement at Holy Trinity Lutheran Church (HTLC) when I only knew only about five people’s names and it was likely that less than five people knew mine. After a service, one of my pastors must have recognized I wasn’t just a 20-something passing through and asked if I would join other young adults in the Riverside Innovation Hub grant team.
Yes, of course. I was there to root in community. Take my email, I am ready to participate.
On Friday, July 30th and Saturday, July 31st, the Riverside Innovation Hub gathered online with 75 participants from 12 local congregations to mark the launch of new learning community. We spent our time together learning more about who is in the learning community, how our learning will take shape, and what’s next.
Enjoy a few highlights from our event.
Introductions to Congregations
One person from each congregation was invited to introduce their congregation and why they’re participating now. Some shared that they hope this learning community can provide guidance as they reimagine what church might look like after the pandemic has disrupted the ways in which the church had often remained inside the four walls of a building, or for others in time of deep transition. Some congregations hope that this learning community helps hold them accountable to the neighbor-oriented work they have wanted to do, but have not always been able to make a priority. Others hope for a process to learn how to be good neighbors in their neighborhoods. See this blog post for a list of partner congregations.
This week, we hear from Baird Linke, an Innovation Coach at the Riverside Innovation Hub. Baird shares what came out of the panel on “Purpose & Community in Young Adulthood” at our 2019 February Learning Workshop event.
In February, we gathered people from various faith communities working with the Riverside Innovation Hub at our Learning Workshop. I was fortunate to work with my fellow Coach Amanda Vetsch to prepare a panel of young people with diverse perspectives to share about their relationships to faith and faith communities and how they make meaning in the world.
Panelists sharing their stories and thoughts at the panel. From left to right: Emily Kindelspire, Nick Jordan, Erik Olson, Grace Corbin, Luke Paquin, and Baird Linke (facilitator)
We had a wealth of experience in the room — an artist, an organizer, a seminarian, a healthcare professional, a legislative supervisor, and an Innovation Coach — all with varying relationships to faith and church. Some of them have chosen to step away from the Christian tradition they were raised in; some value the church but are not connected to a congregational community, and others have made working for and in the church their daily work.
In spite of the different paths and faith backgrounds, all panelists articulated the belief that what they chose to do is a part of making the world a better place. Some of the major concerns people brought up were climate change, access to health care, the rights of children and others, and the need to love and be loved. These young people care about the world around them, and they build communities in their lives with people who share similar passions.
This transformative motivation showed up again in our conversation about whether or not the panelists are involved with communities of faith and why. Panelists who have centered the church in their lives expressed they experience meaningful transformation in faith communities. They were also quick to point out some of the ways the church could stand some continued transformation. Some of the folks who are not involved with a church wondered whether or not the church was ultimately willing to be transformed by them. Others shared they did not find an understanding of the world that lined up with their own in the church or in Christianity. The commonality that came up in these conversations was the importance of the relationships that help our panelists live out their values in transformative ways — inside and outside the church.
An audience asked what needs to die in the church for there to be a resurrection along the lines of these transformative relationships. One response, in the limited time we had, was that the current business model needs to die. There was a sense from the panel that, if we are concerned primarily with the participation of a demographic category, we are looking for consumers for a product instead of genuinely loving fellow children of God in a way that changes the world.
Of course, the church needs resources to exist in our economy, and relationships do not happen without getting people through the door. In the time we had, we were not able to come up with the perfect spiritual practice to stay grounded in the face of those realities. I’d like to give you a straightforward answer to the question “how do we get young people back to church” because then, as a Coach, I would feel like I did my job well and now it’s up to you to do the work. But that’s not quite how it works. The truth is: there is no one perfect answer to this question.
There is NOT a golden program or rock-solid theology that will change people if it is not done from a foundation of genuine, mutually transformative relationship that some call love. And I do not think love is about answers that let you close the book. Love is about finding wonder in another person, and that is a practice that is never finished. Thanks be to God.
The church can be a place where this kind of love happens, but we cannot take it for granted that it just will. Instead of asking how to get young adults back to church, I would invite you to dwell into the question of what kind of church we want to invite them into.
Great thanks to our panelists (in both sessions): Emily Kindelspire, Nick Jordan, Erik Olson, Grace Corbin, Luke Paquin, and Korla Masters
Hub staff visits the headwaters of the Mississippi River
“The rivers flow not past, but through us, thrilling, tingling, vibrating every fiber and cell of the substance of our bodies, making them glide and sing.” — John Muir
On Friday December 14th, the Riverside Innovation Hub staff visited the headwaters of the Mississippi River at Itasca State Park in Park Rapids, Minnesota. The Mississippi River has been an important conversation partner for us throughout our project. It serves as a reminder of the depth and breadth of God’s mercy flowing into our world (see Ezekiel and the Public Church: Everything will live where the River Flows).
It takes a drop of water at the headwaters 90 days to reach the Gulf of Mexico. That means the water we saw while we were there will be flowing through the Mississippi River valley until March 14th, the second week of Lent. That is a long time for these lovely drops of water to wait before they meet the warm waters of the Gulf. But Advent is all about waiting. And it is strange to think about Lent during Advent. But Advent is strange. Anticipatory waiting is strange.
Christian theologians use the phrase “the already-not-yet” to describe the era in which we live. God’s deep and wide mercy has already begun flowing into our world, but the fullness of the life and healing this mercy brings has not yet been fully realized. We wait for it, with anticipation. It is this anticipatory, strange waiting that our project is experiencing right now. We are in the already-not-yet. We are already experiencing the challenges and blessings of the slow work of innovation – the journey through the river’s valley – but we have not yet fully seen its fruits. This feels strange to many of us. We are not good at waiting. We prefer to control and initiate.
This is where I think John Muir might have something to offer us. God’s mercy is not something we sit next to and observe. It is something that flows “through us, thrilling, tingling, vibrating every fiber and cell of the substance of our bodies, making them glide and sing.” We long for every drop of God’s mercy to reach its destination. But it does not make its journey through a river valley, it makes its journey through us, through our bodies.
Mary, the Theotokos (God-bearer), teaches us how to carry God’s mercy in our bodies. 46 And Mary said, “My soul magnifies the Lord, 47 and my spirit rejoices in God my Savior, 48 for he has looked with favor on the lowliness of his servant. Surely, from now on all generations will call me blessed; 49 for the Mighty One has done great things for me, and holy is his name. 50 His mercy is for those who fear him from generation to generation. 51 He has shown strength with his arm; he has scattered the proud in the thoughts of their hearts. 52 He has brought down the powerful from their thrones, and lifted up the lowly; 53 he has filled the hungry with good things, and sent the rich away empty. 54 He has helped his servant Israel, in remembrance of his mercy, 55 according to the promise he made to our ancestors, to Abraham and to his descendants forever.” (Luke 1:46 –55).
Innovation is the same. The work of accompaniment, interpretation, discernment, and proclamation are not things that flow past us. They flow through us. We carry this work in our bodies. It becomes incarnate when we show up and engage a person, a place, an idea. We carry it in awe, and gratitude, and humility. And we wait. We wait for God’s good work that has already begun but is not yet complete.
On Monday August 6, 2018, we began training our eight Innovation Coaches who will spend the next ten months coaching sixteen local faith communities into a method of discerning and generating innovative ministry with young adults. Our coaches are young adults between the ages of 22 – 30 years old. They come to us from lives lived around the globe — the Twin Cities, Iowa, Rwanda, Cambodia, Ethiopia, Argentina, South Dakota, California, Texas, Europe, Philippines, China, Missouri, and Montana. Read about Our Innovation Coaches!
Photo of Innovation Coaches
Top row (left to right): Lindsay Boehmer, Emily Kindelspire, Mason Mennenga, Baird Linke, Tim Thao, Asefa Melka Wakjira
Bottom row (left to right): Amanda Vetsch, Michelé Crowder
This training included three intense weeks (August 6 – August 24, 2018). Here were some of the components of that training:
Morning and Evening Prayer each day
A day in Voyageur canoes on the Mississippi River as we explore our theme text, Ezekiel 47:1-12
Time with Augsburg University president Paul Pribbenow exploring the University’s call to be an institution for the sake of the neighbor
Learning about Martin Luther’s theology of vocation from Dr. Mark Tranvik
Learning to practice one-on-ones with Harry Boyte from Augsburg University’s Sabo Center for Democracy and Citizenship
Finding our type in the Enneagram with Tyler Sit from New City Church
A Salon Dinner and day-long training on creativity, change, and welcoming resistance with Rev. Marlon Hall — pastor, filmmaker, storyteller, and anthropologist
Intercultural competency assessment and training
Immersion into the Public Church Framework
The goal of this training was to equip our coaches to be able to walk into two faith communities and help them engage young adults in their contexts in new ways, creating opportunities for the faith communities to listen and learn. We understand innovation to be that thing that happens when we are responsive to both the movement of the Holy Spirit and the demands being placed upon us by our neighbor in a particular place at a particular time. Our coaches learned to help faith communities locate themselves in these places and respond with hope.
Our work with these faith communities launched on September 18, 2018.
On April 23, several of the upcoming (2015-2016) Interfaith Scholars met with the current (2014-2015) Scholars. The current scholars shared highlights and advice for next year’s cohort. The Interfaith Scholars Program is co-led by Professor Matt Maruggi and Pastor Sonja Hagander.
All are welcome for the final project of this year’s scholars:
Interfaith Community Sending for Graduates.
Thursday, April 30 6:30pm, Hoversten Chapel, Foss Center
Graduating students of all religious and non-religious identities are invited to an interfaith service celebrating your educational journey. This 45-minute service will be a special time of reflection and blessing.
