THE CONFLUENCE empowers high school youth to discover how they are uniquely gifted to create a more just and sustainable world by exploring the intersections of their story, God’s story, and the world’s story. Join us for a weeklong residential experience during which we will:

• Build intentional community
• Develop meaningful relationships
• Practice vocational discernment
• Engage in theological inquiry
• Explore spiritual practices
• Learn through experiences and relationships in the Twin Cities

Open to all youth who have completed 9th–12th grades.

COST: The cost is $400/participant. Participants are responsible for transportation to and from Augsburg University.

�鶹ԭ�� SCHOLARSHIP: Students who decide to attend Augsburg University as a full-time student will receive a minimum $22,000 Augsburg scholarship for up to four years.

Here’s what 2024 participants had to say about The Confluence: 

God has called me to hear and amplify the voices of people around me so they can be heard. God has allowed me to have an open mind and respect those around me, which will help me help God mend the universe. The Confluence has taught me about my faith and about who I am. It has shown me the lives of other people and has impacted me in massive ways. In listening to and lifting up the stories of others, I will ensure that every voice contributes to God’s mending of the universe.

– Vera Bezemer

While I was at The Confluence the things I learned about my story were that God’s wonderful plan is through self-learning and understanding beauty. First of all, I had a strong feeling of direction and purpose, I’ve also discovered tenacity and inner strength. My faith has helped me go through life’s obstacles and come out stronger by providing consolation and support. Finally, I’ve grown more capable of interacting and communicating with others. This new journey with God gave me the possibility to be empathetic and compassionate toward both myself and others.

– Gabriel Niola

The Confluence me inspiró y me abrió los ojos a un mundo de posibilidades en la cual tuve la oportunidad de conocer a nuevas personas y nuevas culturas se que tal vez Dios me está llamando a reparar este universo por que hay personas que lo necesitan. Necesitan mi ayuda porque hay personas malas que discriminan o hacen el mal lo cual yo debería de intervenir y hacerles entender que podemos vivir en un mundo donde las personas no sean maltratadas por su color su religión … Y pienso que puedo ayudar a este universo a ayudar a incluir a todas las personas y hacer entender que las personas ”con más poder” no pueden abusar de los demás.

The Confluence inspired me and opened my eyes to a world of possibilities in which I had the opportunity to meet new people and new cultures. I know that maybe God is calling me to repair this universe because there are people who need it. They need my help because there are bad people who discriminate or do evil, which I should intervene and make them understand that we can live in a world where people are not mistreated because of their color, their religion … I think I can help this universe to help include all people and make it understood that people ”with more power” cannot abuse others.

– Daykell Navarro 

QUESTIONS?

Gretchen Roeck, Program Director

roeck@augsburg.edu

612-330-1412

FIND OUT MORE: 

The post Announcing our 2025 Confluence Dates: June 22nd-June 27th, 2025! appeared first on Bernhard Christensen Center for Vocation.

Wrapping up a season of orientation 

As we wrap up the calendar year of 2023, our RIH learning community is concluding its first season of work – the season of orientation. These first few months of gathering, learning and connecting have been saturated with lots of new ideas, invitations and challenges. I may have heard one or two folks describe this season feeling as though we’ve been drinking from a fire hydrant – a fair way to describe it. However, our intention has been to zoom out in this season and look at the journey ahead from the 30,000 foot perspective. We have been aiming to offer an overview of a new map of sorts.  We believe this map will help our learning community of folks explore God’s call to them in this present moment of our changing world. 

For many of us in congregations, we’ve been working off of older tried and true maps to help us get our bearings and shape our ministries. Those maps may have been more reliable in previous times. However, the landscape of the world we live in and its challenges has shifted significantly in recent decades. These shifts have only intensified in recent years…the global health crisis of Covid 19, a racial uprising in the wake of George Floyd’s murder, increased economic insecurities, a growing mental health crisis, increasing impacts of our global climate crisis, war and violence, just to name a few.  The list of hurts, heartaches and fears in the world and in our own lives is overwhelming. The church has been deeply impacted by this increasingly unpredictable landscape. But also,  we are a people rooted in a story that is rooted in love and whose fruits are intended to bring healing, nourishment and wholeness to God’s creation. This means that while the church attends to its own struggles, it is simultaneously holding a particular call to help respond to the bad news being generated daily in our communities and around the globe. 

We need new maps. And we need to cultivate different orienteering skills that help us show up in the world looking for and aligned with God’s vision for flourishing and mending in our places. Our season of orientation has attempted to offer some insights on these new maps to inform the journey we intend to pursue together, each in our unique corners of this map…on the ground, from within our congregations’ local neighborhoods. 

How we’ve spent this season

In September we gathered for our launch event and cohorts met for the first time in the weeks following. These gatherings were focused on introductions – many introductions! Introductions to some of the big ideas and imaginations resourcing the work of being vital neighbors. This included learning about the call to be public churches through both theological and practical lenses; an interrogation of the dominating stories that prevent us from living into the call to be about mending and loving in our neighborhoods; and initial reflections on why folks in this new learning community feel compelled to be a part of becoming public churches. We also had introductions to the team of staff who will be stewarding the learning community. And introductions to one another, a growing learning community of church leaders – lay and ordained – stewarding this neighborhood work on behalf of their congregations. In December, we spent time with the team leads from all of our congregations in the hopes that connecting across this group of key leaders will help folks find support and encouragement as we journey together, with the guidance of this new map.  

In November, our RIH learning community gathered online and in person at Augsburg for another night of learning (and un-learning) together for our Cultural Humility event. Joe Davis and Dave Scherer were our hosts and educators, sharing important concepts around culture, power and race. Exploring these important themes from the 30,000 perspective was intended to stir up conversations to help learning community members deepen our capacities for cultural humility in our efforts towards becoming public churches. Because the Riverside Innovation Hub is a learning community oriented towards the call to be neighbor and the call to invest in relationships in our neighborhoods, it is important that we cultivate a humble, curious and compassionate posture as we encounter our neighbors. This is especially true for congregations and individuals who hold more power and privileged identities in the cultural landscape of today. 

Joe and Dave used the analogy of right-handed and left-handed identities, to illustrate how certain identities that are dominant tend to shape who has access to the most power in a given context. In our context, typically some of the right handed identities include: white, able-bodied, cisgender male, property owning, English speaking, etc. This means left-handed identities in our context, such as BIPOC, queer, female, differently abled, non-English speaking, etc. often experience systems that are not made with their identities in mind. Individuals with these identities typically will have less power in the systems that shape our daily lives. It is critical to bring our curiosity, humility and compassion to our efforts to connect and listen to our neighbors, especially when we hold a majority of right-handed identities. Our own identities can create blinders towards understanding across differences. For those with many “right-handed identities,” these blinders can prevent us from seeing how we at times contribute to harm. Ultimately, we want to lean more into seeing the human spirit in each person we meet. In order to do so, it’s important to be aware of what gets in the way of that. Deepening our capacity for cultural humility is an important orienteering skill as we explore and seek to connect with our neighbors. 

Preparing for a season of accompaniment

Now that we are concluding our season of orientation, the next several seasons of this work will move us back onto the ground, into the particular neighborhoods that our congregations are a part of.  We will zoom in to our geographic neighborhoods surrounding our congregations. If you’re in the city, this might be a particular neighborhood that your church is a part of. If you’re in the suburbs, this might be a several mile radius around your church with attention to other neighbors in your city you may already be in relationship with. If you’re in a more rural community, your geographic focus may be much larger to include the neighbors who are a part of your town but live, work and play over a more dispersed geographic area. 

In January, these new maps will guide us into the work of accompaniment – the commitment to listening to and learning from our neighbors’ stories. We will practice the artform of accompaniment in a variety of ways, including creating actual maps as teams prayerfully walk their neighborhoods, noticing signs of desolation and consolation. God is calling the church to pour its attention and curiosity outside the walls of the church and into God’s world. Accompaniment is our pathway to the places and people God is inviting us towards. This foundational artform is at the heartbeat of our RIH learning experience.

Joe and Dave have a ritual that they weave into all the spaces they convene. After anyone in the room shares a response with the large group, everyone says together to that person, “Child of God, you matter.” This practice is informed by the Zulu notion of Sawubona which literally means, “I see you.” It is a word that affirms the value and gift of each person. As our congregations move from our 30,000 view of the call to be public churches, and as folks step into their actual neighborhoods, we hope their encounters with their neighbors will cultivate this same imagination with the people they meet. We are eager to hear the stories that emerge as folks take on-the-ground steps into their neighborhoods, do the work of accompaniment and encounter the stories and individuals there. We trust that the Holy Spirit will be active in inviting us all to truly see our neighbors. We hope that these encounters, over time, generate a deep embodiment of this truth in our neighborhoods: “Neighbor, beloved child of God, you matter.” 

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On September 16th church leaders from across the country gathered in person and via zoom to embark on a two year journey towards becoming vital neighbors in their communities. Riverside Innovation Hub launched three cohorts of churches, two of them composed of local congregations from the Minneapolis/St Paul metro area, and one distance cohort that will meet online with congregations from Oregon, Massachusetts, and rural Minnesota. We’re inspiring the flourishing of our neighbors from coast to coast!

Cohort participants got the opportunity to learn from our own Jeremy Myers about the Art of Becoming Public Church; diving deep into the cultural impacts of postmodernism, church outreach models, and what our neighbors want and need from us in our post-pandemic world. Jeremy helped our congregations think through what the public church framework is and why it is important to engage our neighbors in a different way than the Church has before.

Next our congregations explored their “why” with the help of our program director, Kristina Fruge. She walked through what it means to engage in “place based vocational discernment in the public square for the common good”, and then invited congregations to talk about their own places and the common good they long to work for in their particular public squares. Congregations also heard from each of our staff members about our own personal “why” that drives us to do this work of investing in our neighbors and building relationships for the flourishing of others. Over lunch, cohorts talked with each other about their personal “why” and began to build relationships with the co-laborers that will walk beside them on this journey.

After filling up on pasta, breadsticks, and brownies, it was time to do some hands-on learning. Our Communications Guru, Ellen Weber, led the congregations in a fun game with the simple objective of completing a puzzle, with the caveat that your team was missing several pieces and had to go get them from the other teams. Fetching those stray pieces came with rules – some participants couldn’t move, others couldn’t talk, others had to sing every word or communicate as a 1950’s robot, still others could only give encouraging high-fives to aid their team in the task at hand. Our congregations played this game with gusto and had lots of fun.

Afterwards our participants shared about how it felt to do a task where they didn’t have all the pieces necessary to complete it and where they had to rely on their team and their neighbors to be successful. The insights from the crowd were brilliant. One team realized early in the game that they had the right pieces, but the wrong framework to put them in, so instead of trading pieces, they switched out their frame for one that their neighbors gave them and then everything fell into place.

Another team had a puzzle that one of the team members just happened to have at home and completes with their kids regularly. Because of that previous knowledge, they weren’t confused by the upside down tiger that didn’t seem to belong and finished their puzzle faster than the other teams. They talked about the power of privilege and knowledge of systems and how those little benefits can impact who wins and loses.

Others talked about their individual roles and how they got stuck on not being allowed to talk and felt like they weren’t very useful until they read the description of their role again and realized that they could walk from table to table which was a very helpful thing. They realized that focusing on what they CAN do instead of what they CAN’T do is how they will best contribute to the flourishing of the team. Our participants are some deep thinkers and our RIH team is excited for what will come of this journey as these cohorts engage new ideas and new perspectives on being vital neighbors.

To bring everyone back together after our game, Cohort Leader – Brenna Zeimet, walked our teams through the “how” of the next two years, emphasizing how we will show up in our cohorts and how our learning will take place across large events, smaller cohort meetings, team lead meetings, and online through our Riverside Collaborative space. Brenna emphasized the power of vulnerability and openness to change in this process, reiterating that “the energy you put into this journey is the energy you will get out” – how we show up matters to our success.

We finished the day off with a panel of RIH Alumni. Pastor John Pedersen of Diamond Lake Lutheran Church and Pastor Eric Howell of Shiloh Temple in Brooklyn Park talked to our teams about their experience and allowed the group to ask questions. Their insights were candid about the struggles the teams will face but also incredibly hopeful about the power of these concepts when they are understood and implemented. 

The launch was a wonderful experience for our congregations to get a glimpse of the work they will be doing and begin to build relationships with the cohorts they will journey with. The energy in the room was awesome and the RIH team left very excited about the next two years and the growth we see on the horizon.

The post The Journey Begins… appeared first on Bernhard Christensen Center for Vocation.

The CONFLUENCE

What a gift to host the 2023 Augsburg Youth Theology Institute: the Confluence! Our souls are refreshed, hearts are full, and bodies exhausted. On Sunday, June 25th, 20 high school students from Northfield, to North Minneapolis, to North Dakota and beyond, arrived on campus to spend a week focused on vocation, think theologically, and ask big questions about God’s purpose for their lives. This was the first in-person Institute we have been able to host in four years, and it was an incredible experience. Young people arrived eager to meet new people and share their stories, excited to learn more about themselves and the world around them, and dig deeper into God’s story.

WHAT DID WE DO? 

Participants stayed on campus in Anderson Hall and spent the week eating in the dining hall. We woke up every morning and started the day with a devotion prepared by college mentors. Participants spent 1.5 hours each morning in a college classroom with a college professor, digging into theology and exploring the same biblical texts offered for daily devotions. We built relationships with others in our small groups, we played games, we told stories. We got out into the community and we ate delicious food. Every evening we worshiped, in unique and different ways each day. A favorite of all participants was Dinner Church where we shared communion, a meal, and a little karaoke! The song “Wade in the Water” was a constant throughout the week (Refrain: wade in the water, wade in the water children, wade in the water. Don’t you know that God’s gonna trouble the water.) 

VOCATIONAL DISCERNMENT

Participants engaged in multiple activities designed to help them reflect on the God given gifts they have and get curious about how they might use them in the world. They started by mapping their life as if it were a river, what bends and turns has it taken, are there any rocks in the way, who are the people that waved from the river bank. Then they took the CliftonStrengths assessment and spent time learning about strengths and how to use them. Each participant took a spiritual gifts assessment and talked with other participants about what they have in common and how they use their gifts. 

On Thursday, staff from the Riverside Innovation Hub joined participants to teach about the Ignatian Prayer practice of consolation and desolation. They gave directions for engaging in a Prayer Walk around the neighborhood, similar to what they use with congregations. Participants spent time walking through the Cedar-Riverside neighborhood focusing on where they experienced consolation and desolation. They returned to draw their own maps, share their stories, and make plans for a prayer walk in their own neighborhoods when they return home. 

COMMUNITY ENGAGED LEARNING

What is the world’s story? Each afternoon, we ventured out into the city to learn from local leaders about the issues that break our hearts. We learned from a local Indigenous elder about the genesis and genocide of the Dakota people in Minnesota. We heard from local climate change activists about the devastating effects of the pipelines moving through northern Minnesota and how choosing solar power can make a lasting change. We were guided through the George Floyd Memorial site by local leaders on a pilgrimage journey of grief and pain that still impacts lives today. Each day was filled with powerful reflection and learning. Each participant was challenged and grew during this week. 

STAY TUNED!

Our hope for participants is that this experience helped them to gain deeper insight into who they are and the life they want to live as children of God. Coming in August, we will be publishing a website with participant projects. Each participant has an opportunity to use the creative gifts God has given them to write a poem, sing a song, create art, use photography, make a video or something else to explore their own vocation following their experience at the Confluence. We look forward to celebrating the final projects these incredible young people develop! 

P.S. We hope you go back and look at our daily pictures and videos from the week on our social media accounts – on or ! And if your congregation is supporting a young person in sharing their experience from this week, please tag us so we can help you celebrate! 

The post The CONFLUENCE: a place where your story, the world’s story, and God’s story flow together. appeared first on Bernhard Christensen Center for Vocation.

Saturday, June 3rd, 2023 9:00am – 3:00pm at Augsburg University 

Co-hosted by Riverside Innovation Hub and MAS Faith Practices & Neighboring Practices

Over the past two years Minneapolis Area Synod’s and Augsburg University’s Riverside Innovation Hub have shared a commitment to accompanying congregations as they discern their call to BE neighbor, rooted in their faith and open to the neighborhood. As the first learning cycle comes to an end and a new one begins, we are coming together to celebrate and learn from this groundswell of people engaged in what it means to be neighbor in the world. We’ll be joined by both congregations and individuals who are doing the work in neighborhoods all over Minnesota. 

On June 3rd, we will gather for a day to hear stories from near and far in a variety of mediums, participate in skill-centered interactive workshops for all types of leaders, and practice deep community building. We will be gathering folks that have a growing heart for their neighbor, are curious about who God is and what God is doing in the world and find themselves around people who are shedding some of their fears about taking risks and not afraid to fail. 

We invite you to join us as we continue to support and learn from each other on how we are called to be the public church in our neighborhoods! 

will open on March 24th and will close on May 5th.

Childcare and Interpretation will be available upon request if indicated on registration form. 

Community Stories

In preparation for our learning summit, we have been gathering stories about this experience from our learning congregations. Below you will hear from two of our learning partners. 

RIH Reflections from Yvette Hewitt at Church of the Epiphany: 

What is something you want to be sure to carry forward when the learning community wraps up?  I want to continue being in dialogue with our neighbors and excited for engaging in future relationships utilizing the four public church art forms. The phase “Trust the process” will be very valuable as we begin to implement our learning experience with the greater congregation. 

Discernment was a new concept for me. I plan to implement it more in my decision-making. I cherish the new friendships developed within our team, cohort group, RIH leadership, and other congregations during this learning opportunity.

Why does it matter that you are a part of this learning and experimentation?

Personally, professionally, and as a follower of Christ, this learning experience has changed the way I view and understand who is my neighbor. I want to be more awake and present in my daily interactions.

Where have you seen God at work over the learning community’s time together?

Our team has faced tremendous obstacles but God had another plan for us. The text from Ezekiel 47:1-12 imagines a river full of vitality and fruitfulness. God is replenishing our team with resilience, energy and vision to complete this work.  I have seen areas of desolation beginning to emerge into places of new birth and opportunities to develop authentic relationships within our community.

RIH Reflections by Felecia Schmidt at Diamond Lake Lutheran Church 

In our fast-paced, goal-oriented culture it’s difficult, sometimes nearing impossible, to slow down. To see past our own bubble. To not get caught up in our daily grid and bogged down by the big picture.  The experience with Riverside Innovation Hub (RIH) and this learning community has offered an opportunity to step off that path, pick our heads up and look around at the neighbors around us in a way we hadn’t fully realized. To feel the warmth of empathy and the refreshment of listening without an agenda. 

In the beginning, the artforms felt abstract. At times it was a challenge to understand them and how they fit into our lives, our church and the connection with our neighbors. Throughout the learning experience with RIH the artforms were not only understood, but they also became essential tools for deeper understanding of ourselves, our church and its role in our neighborhood. One of the greatest and most surprising outcomes for me was the weaving of the artforms into my personal life. Imagine the ripple effects when it is nurtured and blossoms within our own hearts. 

From this experience I want to carry forth the artforms.  It’s the place I’ve felt God at work the most. Concepts that have always been present but this learning experience has brought clarity and intentionality to them.  Understanding them has meant operating with grace and patience. It has meant taking the time to discern, even when there is a sense of urgency. It’s meant honoring every person’s story. It has meant being humbled and facing hard truths and faithful responses. 

With stirred spirits, renewed curiosity and a deeply-realized need to be connected to our neighbors, we step out into our neighborhood with fresh eyes and God’s grace. 

We can’t wait to share more stories with you all at the Groundswell! We hope to see you there! If you have any questions, please reach out to Ellen Weber at weber3@augsburg.edu or Kristina Frugé at frugek@augsburg.edu.

FPNP Reflections by Rachel Carmichael of Salem Evangelical: 

What is something you want to be sure to carry forward when the learning community wraps up?

I want to continue to check in with what we’re doing as a congregation and faith community. I want to be intentional about the work that we’re doing and at the same time I also want to remember the flexibility and openness that the learning community embodied, especially through the leaders of the learning community. I want to continue to check in with other faith communities because I think that support, connection and environment is key.

Why does it matter that you are a part of this learning and experimentation?

This is really important work. Part of my time with this learning community has been spent remembering this. Our work is changing, always, but it is still relevant and vital. Sometimes its hard to name that, amidst the busy-ness, but it’s important to remember the value in work that we’re all doing at whatever level you’re involved. It matters to me to be apart of a big movements of growth. What an incredible program! I’m truly sad it’s coming to an end but hope that this can provide a momentum towards other incredible learning communities. Thank you for allowing me to be apart of this wholesome goodness!

Where have you seen God at work over the learning community’s time together?

This is going to sound really general- but God has been apart of this process the entire time which is how I feel life works. Even in the hardest, most challenging spaces – God is there! God is pushing me to my limits and continually encouraging me to leap towards growth- mostly uncomfortable but absolutely necessary. And that has been happening during my time with this learning community, almost continually. The learning community gave me a space to be intentional about my involvement with my faith community. Selfishly, I really enjoyed finally developing a faith practice routine and I think that was an important way to begin our time together because it provided a strong foundation for the other elements we covered. It helped to remind me that God is present in my personal life- and I started there, so it opened my eyes to see other places God is working. 

FPNP Reflections by Pastor Ali Tranvik of Cross of Glory: 

When we began the Faith Practices & Neighboring Practices journey nearly two years ago, I remember the leaders sharing a lesser-known translation of John 1:14–the verse often cited as “the Word became flesh and dwelled among us.” This translation put it in slightly different terms: “the Word became flesh and blood and moved into the neighborhood” (MSG). It was shared as a reminder of a truth we’ve had the gift of witnessing more and more deeply over the course of these two years together: Jesus is already alive and at work in our neighborhoods (in Brooklyn Center, in south Minneapolis, in East Bethel, in Crystal, etc.), and is present in the physical, flesh-and-blood bodies of those who live within them. And with that confession came a question: what would it look like for the churches located in these neighborhoods to take part in the work that Jesus is already up to there? 

That question has compelled the FPNP faith communities into a variety of practices (both faith and neighboring–which turns out, are one in the same) these past two years. For us at Cross of Glory, our practices included a new rhythm of shared meals with neighbors old and new, where God has shown up in bread broken and in conversation shared. We look forward to continuing to gather with neighbors at tables–and to encounter the Jesus who lives in our neighborhood at them. 

The post You are invited to Groundswell: A Learning Summit appeared first on Bernhard Christensen Center for Vocation.

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

• 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.

The Public Church Framework consists of four movements that guide us into more intentional relationships with our neighbor, scripture, our core beliefs, and God’s spirit as we seek to discern how our faith community is called to be and proclaim good news with and for our neighbors. It combines threads the church has historically kept separate – discipleship, outreach, relationships, justice, worship, biblical study, theological reflection, and prayer. The common denominator is the neighbor. We do these things for the sake of our neighbors.

Check out our to read more.

You can also go to our website at:  to read more stories about how congregations are exploring their call to be public church in their neighborhoods across the Twin Cities.

CONTACT US:

The post Letter of Intent for Third Learning Community is Open! appeared first on Bernhard Christensen Center for Vocation.

In early November, a community of fifty young adults gathered at Augsburg University in Minneapolis, MN to identify our deepest held concerns, hopes, and dreams for God’s church at The Threshold Envisioning event. From those conversations, we distilled key themes that Young Adults want the church to know as it moves from the present moment, into the future. Each of those themes will be a chapter of the book.

Our time together on Friday began with gratitude practices, dinner, and conversation. We finished the evening with a reception. Our morning and afternoon on Saturday were shaped by the framework of an The examen invites you to reflect on moments of Consolation or hope, joy, freedom, and life and moments of Desolation or fear, brokenness, heartache and anxiety.

We then spent time reflecting on our life experiences with the church, noticing times, places, or experiences of desolation. Each person shared snippets of those experiences by writing them on a post-it note and sticking it to the wall. We followed the same process for reflecting on consolation and our experiences of church. As we listened to each other, and read what was on the walls, themes began emerging. Those were shared in small groups conversation and through a Mentimeter Poll, you can read those reflections here: 

In small groups, we worked on creating a Table of Contents where each chapter is a theme of what has emerged. Each group shared theirs and then everyone got to vote on their favorite chapters and book styles. At the end of the evening, the facilitators added up the votes and synthesized the chapters into key reoccurring themes. The keynote listeners started off our final day together by sharing what they had heard over the weekend. Then we had time to reflect in conversation and writing on our theme of choice. There were eleven themes that emerged from the weekend. Check them out below!

Themes:

Grief and Healing

Communities of faith don’t engage grief, lament, and suffering nearly enough. There is much to grieve, and yet the desire for comfort often enables us into denial and distraction. Often, when we practice grief in church, it’s on an individual level, when we also need to grieve and lament on the communal level.What do we need to grieve? What could it look like if faith communities leaned into their rituals and practices we have and lead ourselves and our neighbors through grief into healing? What else could be impacted by deepening our capacity to grieve collectively? 

Marginalization, Inclusivity and Liberation

The inclusion and liberation of marginalized identities (BIPOC, LGBTQIA+, people living with disabilities, etc) is an absolute priority for young adults. 

If  everyone was able to show up in the wholeness of who they are, we’d have a bigger, brighter, more diverse representation of who God is and what God desires for our communities. 

Inclusion is just the beginning. Doing the work of reckoning with our role in marginalization will reveal that all of our liberation is wrapped up together and lead to overall liberation. 

Abundance and Scarcity

The stories of God’s people and God’s promises have an overwhelming theme of abundance. There is enough. We are enough. God is enough. Yet we often find ourselves and our faith communities, wrestling with or defaulting back to a narrative of scarcity. We see a mindset of scarcity show up in our economics and budgeting, in our understanding of membership and church vitality, and when we find ourselves thinking that there’s a limit to who God loves and what God’s love looks like. 

Community

One of the most resounding themes of what young adults have loved most about our experiences with church is community. Church done well includes authentic belonging, vulnerability, showing up, sharing each other’s burdens, and bearing witness to God’s faithfulness. Churches can sometimes make people feel like an outsider, or prioritize the comfort of the existing community over the invitation to be part of God’s ever expanding vision.

Sex/Intimacy and Shame

The church has often cause harmed through sexual shame, purity culture, sexual abuse, and a lack of understanding of the expansiveness of sexuality and sexual intimacy (Asexuality to Polyamory and everything in between). What would it look like to be a faith community that dismantles purity culture, and engages in open and honest conversations about sex, and sexuality? 

Power and Abuse of Power

Abuse of power includes: spiritual abuse, sexual, abuse, emotional abuse, scriptural abuse, financial abuse. It’s an injustice that goes from generation to generation because there is often no accountability. The church must reckon with its complicity in and manifestation of abuse.  What could a healthy and constructive understanding of power mean for the church? 

Beyond the Walls

The implications of loving our neighbor are vast and expansive. It requires us to center our neighbor, and in turn decenter ourselves, our buildings, and our agendas. Loving neighbors creates mutual flourishing and relationships. 

What are the ways in which the church has tried to do justice work beyond the walls and harmed people? How have mission work and charity work centered the people inside the walls of the church and caused more harm than good? 

Courageous Curiosity

Curiosity can open us up to experiencing and receiving more of what’s going on around us. While fear often closes us off, separates, or divides. Young adults both model and invite us into courageous curiosity. What would our faith communities look like if we turned toward wonder and mystery? What would we gain if we bravely moved through fear? 

Creation and Destruction

Death of creation is the death of created beings—all exploitation is tied up with each other. We get to know our human and other than human neighbors as places where God shows up and is continually creating. 

Mental Health

Young Adults are keenly aware of the importance of mental health and desire even more education, destigmatization, and authenticity. We wish the church would be better equipped to engage in conversations, resourcing, and resiliency around mental health. 

Tokenism of Young Adults

Churches can be anxious about dying, and sometimes that anxiety comes out sideways and becomes directed at young adults. We are often sought after as the “solution,” rarely without sharing any power or authority to create change or be part of any solution. Churches often tokenize us by wanting to know about young adults, wanting to know about what will get us “back to church” so then the church can be perceived as safe from death and decline. This tokenism ends up alienating young adults from the church and from real relationships that could be life giving.

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The post Emerging Themes from the Threshold Envisioning Event appeared first on Bernhard Christensen Center for Vocation.

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.

In the Gospel of John, these two ways of thinking about God’s creative force – water and word – become embodied in the person of Jesus. “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. . . And the Word became flesh and lived among us . . .” (John 1:1, 14a, NRSV). “Jesus said to her, ‘Everyone who drinks of this water will be thirsty again, but those who drink of the water that I will give them will never be thirsty. The water that I will give will become in them a spring of water gushing up to eternal life” (John 4:13-14, NRSV). Jesus is now the embodied performative utterance of God and the embodied living water of God. And in John 14 Jesus promises that this living water of God – this fluid performative utterance – that gave life to the cosmos and is embodied in Jesus – is now also gushing forth within us. This spring of water now gushing within us is God’s creative spirit. “To each has been given a manifestation of the Spirit for the common good” (1 Corinthians 12:7, NRSV). God’s creative life force that called our cosmos into life, the same one embodied in Jesus, is now made manifest within each of us. For the common good. 

We have become God’s performative utterances. We have become God’s creative force in the world. We have become God’s proclamation. For the common good. We keep finding ourselves going back to two particular theologians at the Riverside Innovation Hub whenever we need clarity on what this common good is and how it is connected to the gospel of Jesus.

We are very fond of how theologian Douglas John Hall describes good news that is for the common good. He says, 

“The good news is good because it challenges and displaces bad news. The Gospel addresses us at the place where we are overwhelmed by an awareness (as the liberationist, Juan Luis Segundo, has put it) of what is wrong with the world and with ourselves in it. It is good news because it engages, takes on and does battle with the bad news, offering another alternative, another vision of what could be, another way into the future. And the bad news is always changing.” (From, “What is Theology?”)

Elsa Tamez speaks of jubilee as this good news for the common good. She says, 

“When one speaks of the jubilee, it is essential to have before one the concrete situation that one is experiencing: debts, poverty, unemployment, violence, discrimination, exclusion, conflicts, sorrow, dehumanizing consumerism, the lethargy of the churches. For the jubilee is the good news that supposedly puts an end to that reality of suffering and dehumanization. . . If we speak of jubilee in a generic sense, the injustice is hidden, and the jubilee loses its power and ceases to be jubilee.” (From, “Dreaming from Exile: A Re-reading of Ezekiel 47:1-12”)

God’s performative utterances do things. They bring order out of chaos, life out of nothing. The good news of Jesus challenges and displaces bad news that is always changing. It puts an end to our “reality of suffering and dehumanization”, a reality that is unfortunately always changing. 

Our work of proclamation therefore, is not the work of describing or evaluating. Proclamation is performative. It does things. It is the work of uttering the good news in word and/ or deed that displaces bad news, and ends suffering and dehumanization. Before we can even do this work of proclamation, we must do the long, slow, hard, relational work of encountering and accompanying our neighbors. Then we might begin to understand their bad news. Then we might begin to understand the concrete situation they experience – the ways in which they are suffering and dehumanized. Once we’ve done that slow work, then we might have an idea of what the good news might look or sound like. This good news is always Jesus. It is always the performative utterance of God. The word of God made flesh. But because it is performative and because it becomes incarnate, it will always show up in the news ways that bring about life. The manifestation of that spirit has been given to us. Let us become God’s performative utterance – God’s good news – for our neighbor, for the common good.

The post PROCLAMATION AS PERFORMING JUBILEE by Jeremy Myers appeared first on Bernhard Christensen Center for Vocation.

Here are some of our favorite quotes from the talk:

• “It’s not a journey from point A to point B, where you have to leave this place to go to that place. Instead I want to invite you into a journey that’s really more about becoming rooted deeply in the place where we already find ourselves.”
• “Vocation is ultimately not about you it’s about the space that exists between you and your neighbor.”
• It is “the quest of inquiry to figure out who our neighbor is and what it is our neighbor needs from us to thrive. It’s not a journey where you need to go on a quest to find some vocation that’s hidden out there in the future from you. It’s an invitation into the right here and the right now. That vocation is something that saves us from the nowhere plants us firmly right here with one another in this moment of time to do this good work that we’ve been given to do today. and we get to do that together and I think that’s pretty great.”

The post The Christensen Symposium Was a Success! appeared first on Bernhard Christensen Center for Vocation.

It’s sometimes strange to be a young adult that cares deeply about the church. I have so much hope for the possibility of a church that embodies God’s promises, and I lament the way in which the church has created, sustained, and participates in harm. 

So many of my peers who might consider themselves “Christian” have discerned that the institutional church isn’t something that they are willing to invest their energy or resources into any longer. We have often experienced church as a community that doesn’t live out the things it claims to believe in. When we’ve sought out a community of belonging that nourishes us and compels us to live our lives for the sake of the neighbor, we oftentimes found instead a place that intentionally or unintentionally perpetuates harm and exclusion, a place that continues to sustain white supremacy as the status quo, a community that prioritizes the privileged, and tokenizes people perceived as “other.”

There are definitely churches and communities that are practicing their beliefs, and are committed to dismantling the systems of oppression, and living into God’s promises. And yet there are so many more that so badly want people to join them, and haven’t quite figured out how to let go of a way of life that’s no longer serving them, and not in alignment with God’s vision. 

There’s often a really loud narrative about decline, death, and dying. This narrative is one that comes out of a scarcity mindset, rather than abundance. And in the conversation about young adults and church, it often feels like the anxiety around scarcity gets aimed at young adults, seeing them as people who could become new members, and help lessen their anxiety about impending death, they could help lower the average age, and increase the monthly giving. And that is objectifying. It turns wonderful, gifted, wise humans into a “butt and bucks” . I, and my young adult peers, are so much more than that, and we’re seeking so much more than that out of a faith community. 

Realistically, we’re not going to save the church, quite frankly many of us don’t want to. There are parts of the church that I think should die, especially the parts that are interwoven with white supremacy, and perpetuating an oppressive, harmful status quo. 

For the last couple of years, I’ve had the opportunity work alongside faith communities that are chasing after what it could look like to be part of God’s redemptive work in our world, here and now, and wondering about and practicing a way of life together that brings flourishing and life to everyone.

The with congregations chased at questions at the intersection of young adults, church, and neighborhood. There’s so much curiosity, and maybe a little anxiety, around the future of the church that millions of dollars are granted to institutions, organizations, and faith communities chasing after these questions. (Thanks Lilly! Please don’t stop funding our work, I love being able to pay my bills!) 

There are a lot of questions that get asked at the intersections of young adults and church, and I’m not interested in the “why aren’t young adults coming to church?” Question. Often it’s asked in a way that places the blame on young adults for not going to a particular place every week, and committing a certain percent of their finances to an institution. Rather, we’ve shifted that question, and wondered, why is the church not doing life together in the spaces and places where young adults are practicing their faith? And how might we get there? 

Young Adults have wisdom, curiosity, passion, experience wrestling through what it means to be called to be part of God’s redemptive work in our world, here and now, and what it looks like to practice a way of life that brings flourishing and life to everyone.

I am so excited and grateful that some of the funding gets to go towards a book project that’s aimed at applying the voices of young adults, and I’m grateful to help steward it. Learn more about the book project on the website.

I’m looking forward to gathering a group of young adults in November and getting to wrestle with these questions, and more! 

The post Stewarding Work with Hope and Lament by Amanda Vetsch appeared first on Bernhard Christensen Center for Vocation.