Partner Congregations Archives - Bernhard Christensen Center for Vocation

Embracing Discomfort: A Skiing Adventure with Friends

Posted on March 23, 2023

Written by Geoffrey Gill

Recently, my friend Sheila and I had an exhilarating experience at Buckhill, a skiing resort where our friend Kaylie works. Kaylie invited us to join her for a day on the slopes and even got us free passes! Despite having never gone downhill skiing before, I decided to give it a try.

I have to admit, I was very nervous as I strapped on my skis and looked down the hill. But Kaylie was there to give us some tips and encouragement. And before I knew it, she pushed us down the hill. Sheila and I fell a few times, but Kaylie was always there to pick us back up. It was a great experience of trust, friendship, and fun.

But more than that, it was an opportunity to lean into the discomfort of trying something new. As Sheila put it, “I feel like a child!” And in that moment, I realized that’s exactly why it’s so important to push ourselves out of our comfort zones. Because that’s where our inner child is waiting for us, eager to show us the beauty and joy of being alive.

It’s easy to get stuck in our routines and comfort zones, but when we take a chance and try something new, we give ourselves the opportunity to grow and experience life in new and exciting ways. So next time you’re feeling nervous about trying something new, remember that your inner child is waiting for you on the other side of that discomfort. Embrace the unknown, and you just might be surprised at what you find.

Launch of RIH Thriving Congregations Partnership Application!

Posted on February 15, 2023March 30, 2023

Augsburg University’s Riverside Innovation Hub (RIH) was awarded a Thriving Congregations grant through the Lilly Endowment to support work with area congregations. RIH has been convening learning communities of congregations since 2018. This next opportunity to partner will be our third RIH learning community exploring the call to BE neighbor, rooted in our faith and curious about God’s invitation to be in relationship with the neighborhood.

Churches who become a learning partner will journey together with 10-12 congregations over two years shaped by these characteristics. This time will include gathering for large group learning events 3-4 times a year, gathering with cohorts of several congregations and an RIH facilitator to support and share wisdom with one another, work done individually by congregational teams supported by an RIH facilitator, and opportunities for team leaders from congregations to connect around leading this work in our congregations.

Project Description & Eligibility

Riverside Innovation Hub

Augsburg University’s Riverside Innovation Hub is an incubator for people and communities exploring the public church in the neighborhood. These congregations learn a process for discerning how God is inviting them to become more engaged in their neighborhoods.

Learn More about Riverside Innovation Hub

Application Process

Step 1: Submit Letter of Intent

Accepted on a rolling basis

Congregations interested in pursuing the application process are asked to have their senior pastor submit a letter of intent to apply, via a google form. Letters of intent will be accepted on a rolling basis, until the end of the application period.

Submission of your letter of intent will:

Allow congregations to indicate why they are applying for the project.
Help RIH staff streamline communications as the application process moves forward by adding you to direct mailings about the process and being available to you for further conversation.
Help your congregational leaders move through the application process in a timely and thoughtful way.

Form to Submit a Letter of Intent

Step 2: Learn more: Informational Sessions

Informational sessions will be offered in March via zoom.

Thursday, March 9th from 1:30pm – 2:30pm

Monday, March 13th from 7:00pm – 8:00pm

If you missed our information sessions, here is the recording from March 13th.

Step 3: Submit Application

Submit on or before April 20, 2023

The application is a google form, but please see the questions in a pdf below.

Recruit your senior pastor and one lay leader to complete the application and involve others from your congregation in the process as relevant for your context (ie council leadership, staff, lay leaders). You are welcome to complete the application sections as a group or have one person submit it all after your group has worked on it.

You may submit the application the following ways:

Option 1: Written application (written by one or multiple people) submitted via google form below
Option 2: Video submission with cover letter with the information of first section of the application. If you are sending us a video, you can break it up into videos for each section (10 minutes or less) or one video (around 30 minutes or less). You can submit the videos in each section below if they are broken up or one video in the last section.
Option 3: Hybrid submission. You are welcome to submit a mixture of videos and written answers. In each section, but the first, is a place to upload a video if you would like.
Option 4: If there is a barrier to submit written or video submissions for your congregations, please reach out to Ellen Weber (weber3@augsburg.edu) about additional possibilities.

PDF Copy of the Application

Official Google Form to Submit Applications

Step 4: Invitation Process

RIH will review applications and extend invitations to selected congregations the week of May 16th. Congregations will have until June 8th to accept the invitation.

Augsburg’s learning community begins September 2023 and runs through September 2025.

Contact us:

Additional questions? You can reach out to Kristina Fruge (frugek@augsburg.edu) or Ellen Weber (weber3@augsburg.edu).

Letter of Intent for Third Learning Community is Open!

Posted on January 24, 2023January 31, 2023

The Riverside Innovation Hub (RIH) will be launching its third congregational learning community in September of 2023. This opportunity is part of the Thriving Congregations project, through the Lilly Endowment. This work is also made possible through the support of individual donors and congregational sponsors.

Congregations interested in pursuing the application process with the RIH project are asked to have their senior pastor submit a letter of intent to apply, via this google form. Letters of intent will be accepted on a rolling basis starting January 24th, 2023.

Submission of your letter of intent will:

1) Allow congregations to indicate why the are considering to join the project.

2) Help RIH staff streamline communications as the application process moves forward by adding you to direct mailings about the process and being available to you for further conversation.

3) Help your congregational leaders move through the application process in a timely and thoughtful way.

The application and more detailed information will be made available FEBRUARY 15, 2023 and the application deadline is APRIL 20th, 2023.

Facilitator Geoffrey Gill having a conversation standing with 4 others. — *Participants gathered at our RIH Learning Event in Summer 2022.*

Project Overview

RIH will continue helping congregations live into “placed-based vocational discernment in the public square for the common good” through two-year learning communities of twelve congregations. The first learning community runs July 2021 – July 2023 and the second learning community runs September 2023 – September 2025.

APPLICATION PROCESS

Letter of Intent Opens: January 24th, 2023.
Application Opens: February 15th, 2023.
Application Closes: April 20th, 2023.
Invitations sent out to accepted congregations: Week of May 16th, 2023
Congregations accept invitations: June 8th, 2023.
Community starts: September 2023

Congregations who are a part of this learning community will develop and deepen the knowledge, skills, habits, and values to engage in this work of place-based vocational discernment in the public square for the common good through a method we call the Public Church Framework. Continue reading “Letter of Intent for Third Learning Community is Open!” →

PROCLAMATION AS PERFORMING JUBILEE by Jeremy Myers

Posted on November 3, 2022

As a way of teaching congregations how to engage their neighbors and neighborhoods, we introduce them to a method we call the Public Church Framework. This framework consists of four movements including accompaniment, interpretation, discernment, and proclamation. These movements bleed into one another and collectively are cyclical, or a spiral, in that they are never completed but rather lead to further and deeper practice of these movements. We like to think of this framework as descriptive of what we do when we are attentive to God and to our neighbor rather than prescriptive of some “one true way” to be in ministry.

In the beginning of October, we gathered together as a learning community to explore the artform of proclamation. But what is proclamation and why does it matter?

There is a concept within the philosophy of language called performative utterances. This idea was developed by philosopher John L. Austin in the 1940’s and 1950’s . He was arguing against the notion that all words and statements are only descriptive or evaluative. He uncovered certain phrases and uses of words that are not intended to be descriptive at all, but are rather intended to be performative. A classic example he would use is the utterance, “’I name this ship the Queen Elizabeth’ – as uttered when smashing the bottle against the stem.” Other examples would include, “I now pronounce you equal partners in marriage”, or “I forgive you.” These words and phrases are not describing or evaluating anything, rather they are doing things.

This idea of performative utterances helps us understand what we mean when we talk about the word of God. God’s words are performative utterances. They do things. In the first chapter of Genesis, God is not describing or evaluating what the cosmos has or will look like. Instead, God is calling the cosmos into being. “Then God said, ‘Let there be light’; and there was light” (Genesis 1:3, NRSV). But the performative utterances of God do not only show up as spoken words throughout scripture. In the second creation narrative, God is not speaking a word – only acting. “In the day that the Lord God made the earth and the heavens, when no plant of the field was yet in the earth and no herb of the field had yet sprung up – for the Lord God had not caused it to rain upon the earth, and there was no one to till the ground; but a stream would rise from the earth, and water the whole face of the ground . . . A river flows out of Eden to water the garden . . .” (Genesis 2:4b-6, 10, NRSV). There are times in scripture where God’s creative force is shared with the world through performative utterances, and there are times in scripture where God’s creative force is water.

Continue reading “PROCLAMATION AS PERFORMING JUBILEE by Jeremy Myers” →

What If? By Shae. Cunningham (Team Messiah)

Posted on September 26, 2022

I have known Shae for some years now and she has always had such a big and kind heart. She exemplifies what it means to love without conditions. Her relationship with God is her foundation and something that I have always admired. Shae has the ability to tap into the deepness within, drawing out inspiration for all those around her. This Poem reveals how much pain and hurt she has felt in and for her community, and she poses this mind expanding question; which is more of a possibility…what if things were different? ~RIH Facilitator Geoffrey Gill

What If?

What happens in the neighborhoods where children are overshadowed by the decay and they no longer laugh or play the way they used to,

A place where young boys choose to follow figures who had no father figures who become casualties for a war for their drug king before their adolescence.

Becoming murals to be forgotten and only to be remembered by their laugh lines, pictures, and eventually chalk lines and yellow tape,

A young tragedy like Romeo and Juliet except the streets is the Juliet where young Romeos become the prey and become entangled in this dangerous love affair and drink the poison that results them to become misguided lights and lead them to extinction. Continue reading “What If? By Shae. Cunningham (Team Messiah)” →

Our MAS Partner Nick Tangen “Let’s Get Real”

Posted on August 18, 2022

Last year, Augsburg University’s Riverside Innovation Hub and The Minneapolis Area Synod (MAS) both launched opportunities for congregations to be a part of a two-year learning community. We both are in the middle of the work with our first cycle of a two-year learning community. Over the last year and half, it has truly been a joy spending time learning with each other and from each other’s work. A highlight has been reading each other’s reflections and writings on how we engage in this work of being neighbor in our places and world.

This week, we want to highlight the most recent reflection Nick Tangen wrote “Let’s Get Real” from his experience at the ELCA Churchwide Assembly in Columbus, Ohio. He extends to us the invitation to join in the messiness, the vulnerability and realness that comes with wrestling with “What will need to die and rise again in order for each of us as the ELCA to embrace the reconciliation Jesus has set us free to participate in?”. We are grateful for this partnership and for Nick and his team to be in the work alongside us.

“Retamoza’s words have been with me all week. In some ways this challenge captures so clearly my own discomfort with the work of the Assembly; did we want to be good or real? This is, I think, a real tension for us as a church – at all three expressions. It’s a tension ongoing for myself. I know my own desire to appear good, to fall into the trap of perfectionism and performance, and I know how limiting that is when trying to root out injustice and inequity in our life together.

This invitation into the vulnerability, the messiness, and the real-ness of confession and reconciliation stood in such stark contrast to the Assembly. The carefully curated plenaries with the steady march towards resolution felt oddly incongruous with the challenge to deeply listen to the cries of prophetic grief. While I am grateful for the provisions and memorials that the Assembly approved, it was the lament and experience of prophetic grief in worship and from the leaders of Iglesia Luterana Santa Maria Perigrina that my heart continues to return to. I feel both profoundly determined and deeply anxious about the church that I love.”

Read the entire blog post here on the Minneapolis Area Synod blog!

“Shiloh goes into the unknown and…” A Vlog by Geo

Posted on July 29, 2022August 9, 2022

Our very own Geoffrey Gill is a very talented videographer, so instead of a written blog post, he created a vlog sharing the story of one of our current learning partners, Shiloh Temple Brooklyn Park. We learn about their experience of accompaniment in Central Park. We hope you enjoy learning about their story and can watch a paradigm shift during their debrief discussion.

The Kin-dom of Heaven is like a Front Porch By Kristina Frugé

Posted on July 1, 2022

Jesus can regularly be heard saying “the kin-dom of heaven is like…” and then offering an image, a story, a metaphor to root this vision to a place or experience. It is like a mustard seed, a lost coin, wheat among the weeds, a treasure in clay jars, the leaven that makes bread rise. Kin-dom or reign of God are of course, in themselves a kind of metaphor that reflect the ancient context of their teacher. These metaphors speak to the audience – an agricultural community of peoples around the turn of the century – as Jesus seeks to stir the people’s imagination for the kind of world God desires them to experience and participate in.

The Riverside Innovation Hub and the congregational partners we’ve been blessed to learn alongside these past several years, have been about this kin-dom of God work too. I cannot remember ever using this language explicitly with our congregational learning communities. But what we have been talking about and working towards is cultivating more places and relationships that reflect the ways God intends for us to be and be together. We’ve been chasing after that call, one relationship at a time, one walk through our neighborhoods at a time, one story or surprise at a time.

Kin-dom metaphors may not quite fit our current context, but the idea of a front porch has caught our imagination as a helpful metaphor to encourage the relationship building work we are trying to be about. Relationships that shape stories that shape neighborhoods that look and feel a little bit more like God’s good intentions for a whole, flourishing and connected creation – one neighborhood block at a time.

On one of these neighborhood blocks – at the corner of Colfax and W 46th St. in south Minneapolis – sits Sts Luke & James Episcopal Church. Also on this corner block exists a front porch of sorts. It wasn’t always there, but a few years ago the folks from this congregation began seeking out places to listen to their neighbors and some hints of an invitation began to stir among them. Continue reading “The Kin-dom of Heaven is like a Front Porch By Kristina Frugé “ →

Faith Practices & Neighboring Practices

Posted on March 10, 2022March 17, 2022

The Riverside Innovation Hub at Augsburg University is just one of 115 organizations who received a grant through the Lilly Endowment’s Thriving Congregations Iniativitive in 2019 and 2020. The aim of the initiative is to help congregations strengthen their ministries and thrive so they can better help people deepen their relationships with God, enhance their connections with each other and contribute to the flourishing of their communities and the world.

One such organization is Augsburg’s neighbor – the Minneapolis Area Synod! While our efforts are distinct, both initiatives seek to create learning communities of congregations exploring their call to be neighbor, rooted in the particularities of their faith traditions. These tandem projects also allow additional opportunities to learn from each other about this work.

Please enjoy this contribution from our partners at the Minneapolis Area Synod – Nick Tangen and Maya Bryant – who are leading the synod’s Thriving Congregations work called, “Faith Practices & Neighboring Practices.”

Continue reading “Faith Practices & Neighboring Practices” →

Riverside Innovation Hub Congregations Gather & Learn Together

Posted on February 12, 2022February 23, 2022

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?

Continue reading “Riverside Innovation Hub Congregations Gather & Learn Together” →