Three years ago at this time, our RIH team was making preparations to host 50 young adults on campus at Augsburg University from across the country. The purpose of this gathering was to listen to the stories of younger generations as they shared their experiences of gratitude, hopefulness and frustration in the church. Collectively these stories spoke to the hunger of this generation for a more hopeful and thriving world. The young adults gathered also shared a belief that God is calling the church to engage seriously in that vision, no matter the challenges.

This gathering unleashed a much longer journey to amplify the voices of younger generations through the creation of a multi-authored book. I am beyond proud and humbled to share that , is now officially released! It will be followed by a book launch party on September 25th, 2025 here in Minneapolis (AND you’re invited – scroll to the bottom for details!) 

In a time when there is a popular narrative about younger generations being less and less engaged in the church, we hope this book will contribute to a different story that is unfolding. A story that can imagine a church and a world that makes room for all of our thriving. A story that starts one relationship at a time, setting a table, and joining others from different backgrounds, generations and walks of life to wrestle honestly with the challenges before us. This book is rooted in a belief that we need to better understand each other’s hopes and fears if we are going to meet the challenges of our day, faithfully. Folks don’t need to agree on all the topics our authors have lifted up, but rather we hope folks will accept the invitation to the tables these chapters create. Tables for connection, understanding, and hopefully, new insights and wisdom to navigate the challenges of our world.

If you’ve read this far, consider yourself invited to celebrate with us! And if you’re busy on September 25th or won’t be in the Twin Cities, we hope you’ll check out the book and read through it with some people in your life. Our local bookstore, , is carrying it as are most major bookstores. The book also comes with an online toolkit to help groups and individuals engage each chapter. The toolkit can be found at our website:

The journey of creating this book has reached a major milestone, but now a new chapter begins as you are invited to join in. On behalf of the writing community of Hungry for Hope, I am eager to welcome you to pull up a chair at the table, invite a friend or two and join the conversation. 

Hungry for Hope Book Launch Celebration

When: Thursday, September 25th, 2025

Time: 5:00pm – 8:00pm

Location: 2708 E Lake St. Suite 207, Minneapolis, MN, 55406

More details here:

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“Rivers carved stones, not by force, but by showing up day after day until Earth remembers.”

We went to Dunrovin Retreat Center in St. Croix with four intentions: slow down together, encourage through reflection, dream about the future, and claim our next right work.

What happened was we actually did those things. Not the polite version. The real version.

The Ground We Broke

Picture this: teams scattered around tables, sharing their stories – not the clean sanitized versions they tell at board meetings, but the messy truth. The breakthroughs mixed with grief. The celebrations tangled up with the spaces where they’re stuck.

Someone said the word “ecosystem” and suddenly we weren’t talking about neighborhoods as problems to solve anymore. We were talking about soil – what feeds growth, what determines what can actually take root. Climate – the forces that decide who belongs. Water – the relationships that connect everything, and what happens when they dry up.

Then we walked outside.

When the Trail Became Teacher

There’s something that happens when you stop theorizing about interconnection and start looking at it. Actual roots. Actual water flow. Actual evidence of what thrives and what doesn’t, and why.

Standing there in the heat that made us grateful for shade, pointing at trees that couldn’t survive without the fungi they’re connected to, talking about how nutrients in soil literally determine what grows – the metaphor stopped being a metaphor.

We came back inside with dirt on our shoes and feet – some people had taken their shoes off to ground themselves in the earth – and something shifted in our bodies.

The Moment Everything Got Uncomfortable

Arts and crafts materials everywhere. Big sheets of paper. Cut-out trees and clouds and rocks. People mapping their actual communities – the power holders, the connectors, the resistance, the beautiful mess of how things really work.

Then someone asked about invasive species.

The room went quiet. Because suddenly we had to name things. Put labels on community groups. Say out loud what we usually only think privately. The discomfort was thick enough to touch.

And instead of managing that tension away, we stayed with it. Let it teach us something about the difference between comfortable conversations and honest ones. About how growth happens when we finally look at what we usually can’t bear to see.

Bodies as Maps

Someone literally laid down on paper and let themselves be traced. Their body became the template for understanding how their church actually works.

Brain – the visionaries and tactical thinkers. Heart – the compassionate ones. Hands – the church basement ladies who get things done. Muscles – the power holders. Digestive system – yes, we actually assigned the opposition folks to the digestive system, and somehow that made sense. Feet – the neighborhood connectors, the door kickers, the ones who make things happen on the ground.

Watching people write and draw in different areas of that traced body, figuring out where the blockages are, where the energy flows, where things are disconnected – it was like watching surgery on community itself.

The Truth About Change

We worked with the change formula – looking at dissatisfaction with how things are, vision for what’s possible, and actual first steps we could take, weighing all of that against the resistance, reluctance, and fear.

The question wasn’t whether resistance exists – of course it does. The question was whether our pain plus hope plus action could outweigh it.

Some people’s next right action was grief. Some needed rest. Some needed to step back for conversations they’d been avoiding. The work honored that instead of pushing everyone toward the same action steps.

What We Took Home

In the closing circle, people shared what they were taking with them. Not platitudes or good intentions, but specific clarity about what God was preparing them to become. What their next right work actually was. Where they located themselves in all of this.

We sang “Build a Longer Table” before we left. Voices mixing in the air, carrying something we’d built together back out into the world.

The Transmission

Here’s what I want you to know: this level of authentic community work is possible.

Not the version where everyone’s polite and nothing really changes. The version where people cry and laugh and name uncomfortable truths and trace each other’s bodies on paper and intense conversations about invasive species and come out the other side more connected, more clear, more ready for whatever comes next.

The version where you stop managing tension and let it carve new channels, like rivers working on stone.

It requires showing up day after day, creating containers strong enough to hold what wants to emerge. It requires facilitators who know how to ground a room when things get shaky. It requires trusting that communities can handle their own truth when they’re held well enough.

But it’s possible. We know because we did it.

The people in that room walked away different than they came. Not because someone fixed them or gave them the right strategy, but because they did the work of seeing clearly – themselves, their communities, their ecosystems – and discovered they could bear more truth and see more possibility than they thought.

That’s the kind of sustainability that actually sustains: not the kind you implement, but the kind you become.

The post When Community Gets Real: Flowing Into Sustainability Together appeared first on Riverside Innovation Hub.

At the end of October, the Riverside Innovation Hub gathered our congregations (in person and online) for our Discernment Gathering. Since we first began to gather with this community in July 2023, each congregation and individual participant has covered a lot of ground. The journey has not always been smooth and has presented folks with several surprises along the way – some welcomed and some very challenging. Leadership transition, the loss of a building, the coming and going of neighborhood relationships, coping with the ongoing changes of congregational life and the exciting (albeit sometimes uncomfortable) questions that come from learning new things.  

Each congregation has been navigating its own path in the places and neighborhoods unique to each church. These contexts span the US – literally! From our folks at Wesley United Methodist in Eugene, Oregon to our friends at Amherst Lutheran Church in Amherst, Massachusetts and a good number folks in our Twin Cities plus region. Our Midwest crew ranges from city contexts – like those at Christ on Capitol Hill, Diamond Lake Lutheran and Awaken Church – to rural contexts like Moscow Lutheran in Austin, MN. And several folks in suburban communities of Plymouth (St. Barnabas Lutheran), Eagan (Easter Lutheran), Bloomington (Christ the King Lutheran), and Roseville (Roseville Lutheran).

From all these distinct places, we have joined our paths periodically to gather, share wisdom and challenges from the road, find some renewed energy or clarity on next steps together, and to learn together along the way, practicing the artforms of the public church framework. 

This most recent gathering brought all of our paths together to focus on the artform of discernment. The beginning of 2024 started with a focus on accompanying the neighbor and listening to stories from our places. Then this spring we shifted our focus to interpretation where we examined the values and beliefs that shape the lens we use to understand the world around us. This next season of discernment is one of wondering what all these things mean? What is God’s call to our congregation, given what we’ve seen, heard and experienced this past year?

Looking ahead to the future can be overwhelming. The unanswered questions typically outnumber the things we know we can count on. Not only is it a path we have not yet traveled down, but part of the discernment in our present moment includes choosing which path to pursue. There is usually more than one option so how do we choose wisely, and faithfully?

In a world that often prioritizes urgency and productivity, we are tempted to rush ahead down the most obvious (and easiest) path to action.  But discernment is an invitation to slow down, pause and get our bearings. It is permission to breathe deeply, put both feet on the ground, and take stock of God’s activity within and around us on the journey so far. Rather than forecasting the unknown future, discernment gifts us with the question: “Lord, what have you been preparing us for?”

As we gathered together this fall, the RIH community showed up as both the guest and host of this precious question. Folks shared stories from their own lives and from their congregation of how God has been active and faithful in times of discernment. The community held space for one another, listening with curiosity and compassion. The reality of grief and change was present as those in the room reflected on the transitions underway in several of our congregations. People named the many distinct ways that they experience the holy and God’s leading in their lives. And even in the midst of people’s grief, challenges, and uncertainties about the future, hope rose to the surface in our gathered space in recognition of the fact that none of us are facing whatever is next, alone. God will be faithful. And this community of fellow travelers is in our corner. 

Some of the ways we will continue to engage in spiritual discernment together in the coming months includes: meeting with each congregation for deeper discernment together on God’s invitation to be vital neighbors, a webinar on Nov. 14 hearing from alumni RIH pastors sharing their insights on discernment in uncertain times, and cohort gatherings in the new year to share what is emerging in each congregation’s ongoing discernment. 

On behalf of this lovely RIH community, we invite you too to hold on to the question, “Lord, what have you been preparing me/us for?” From the national to local to personal level, it is clear that we live in a time with many challenges and concerns about our individual and shared futures. The highly anticipated 2024 election and its impact looms large in our lives, as do likely many personal realities that don’t make the headlines. As we move into whatever emerges in this season, we hope this question can be a trustworthy companion. We have clues, qualities, insights, skills and stories to lean into that God can use to guide our next steps. And, we have each other. 

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Growing up in my Highland Park neighborhood in Saint Paul, we knew our neighbors. We knew which grass to not ride our bike on, which house had the best candy, which yard had the best hide & seek spots. We knew who to go to if we wanted to learn how to knit, which driveway we could build our chalk city in, and who gave out the best Halloween candy (It was the nuns. They loved to give out full-sized candy bars.) It was a neighborhood where I felt alive, nourished, cared for and connected. Us kids, resourced each other. We welcomed each other with open arms and ran up and down the block until the street lights came on and we had to head home. 

Each of us had gifts and talents and we knew that together we could accomplish anything. We ran a neighborhood carnival, a lemonade stand where we earned over $100, put on a dance show for our families, had a group that learned how to knit together, and played a lot of capture the flag with the whole block. It was a neighborhood that felt alive. 

I cherish those memories and am filled with joy when I run into one of my former neighbors back in the neighborhood or out around town. It was that feeling of being connected with people who knew me and my heart. Even in the midst of conflict or hard times, we kids supported each other and worked things out together. 

That feeling of connectedness and being in community with others around me  continues to be important in the work that I am a part of personally and professionally. The importance of learning in community with others where everyone is a teacher and a learner. This continues to be true when it comes to the work of being the public church in the neighborhood.

Over the past few years of gathering folks together to be in learning communities together, we have learned the importance of relationships when it comes to this work of being a vital neighbor. That just like in my own neighborhood, we can resource and support each other. 

Thanks to a Lilly Foundation grant and thanks to modern technology, we have been able to create an online community that allows us to stay in relationship with those that are passionate about being the public church in the neighborhood whether you have worked with us before or not! The online community, called the lives on the Circle platform. It is a place to connect with folks from around the country who care about neighborhoods. It is a place where we can encourage each other, challenge each other, ask questions and share celebrations and laments. It is a place where no matter where you live you can be supported, cared for and where we can cheer you on as you become the public church in the neighborhood. 

This past fall we opened up the community to anyone that would like to join and we would like to invite YOU to join us as well. If you are someone who is passionate about being the church in the neighborhood. We can’t wait to meet you! Sign up for free by going to:

The post We invite you to join us on the Riverside Collaborative! appeared first on Riverside Innovation Hub.

At a recent vocation chapel, our speaker shared this blessing as an opening reading. It was lovely and a much needed reminder. 

May we continue to show up true to who we are. 

May we remember that the small ordinary moments are worth blessing. 

That the small things that you do every day matter. 

That we each are worthy of love and no resolution will make us more worthy. 

May it inspire us to continue to work together towards justice, not to earn worthiness, but because we understand that we are in this life together. That we are called by our faith to show up as neighbor with an open heart and open arms reminding those that they matter and demanding that the world see it too. 

A New Year’s Blessing for realists by Nadia Bolz-Weber. 

As you enter this new year, as you pack away the Christmas decorations and get out your stretchy pants,

as you face the onslaught of false promises offered you through new disciplines and elimination diets,

as you grasp for control of yourself and your life and this chaotic world –

May you remember that there is no resolution that, if kept, will make you more worthy of love.

There is no resolution that, if kept, will make life less uncertain and allow you to control your aging parents and your teenage children and the way other people act.  

So this year (as every year),

May you just skip the part where you resolve to be better do better and look better this time.

Instead, may you give yourself the gift of really, really low expectations. Not out of resignation, but out of generosity.

May you expect so little of yourself that you can be super proud of the smallest of accomplishments.

May you expect so little of the people in your life that you actually notice and cherish every small, lovely thing about them.

May you expect so little of the service industry that you notice more of what you do get and less of what you don’t and then just tip really well anyhow.

May you expect to get so little out of 2024 that you can celebrate every single thing it offers you, however small.

Because you deserve joy and not disappointment.

So, I wish you a Happy as possible New Year.

Love, Nadia.

The post A Much Needed Reminder appeared first on Riverside Innovation Hub.

Geoffrey’s Reflection

Peace friends,

So far, in our shared journey of faith and community, an essential truth emerged: real change begins within. As Lauryn Hill insightfully puts it, “How you gonna win when you ain’t right within?” This feels like it resonates as a deep undercurrent with our congregations’. .

We’re on a mission, not just to extend our sacred influence into the neighborhood but to first cultivate it within our own teams. It’s a process of aligning our hearts and minds, ensuring our internal compass is set towards genuine humanity.

This isn’t just about strategy; it’s about soul-searching. We’re engaging deeply with each other, understanding that to truly touch our neighborhood, we must first be united and aligned in our purpose and vision.

As we undertake this internal journey, we’re igniting a transformation that extends beyond our walls. We’re becoming the change we want to see, equipped to be sacred spaces in our neighborhood’s story, whether it’s filled with joy or echoes with grief.

This path we’re embarking on is and will be progressively challenging, yet incredibly rewarding. As we align within, our capacity to impact our neighborhoods grows exponentially. We’re not just changing – we’re evolving, ready to make a real ripple in the world around us.

Brenna’s Reflection

October brought the first of many cohort meetings for this round of the Riverside Innovation Hub journey. We met at Christ the King Lutheran Church in Bloomington, sharing in the rich history and context of their space. We heard their team members tell stories of teen lock-ins and Sunday school classes held in the room where we met from multiple generations in the past to today. Over the next year, each of our congregations will get a chance to host a cohort meeting in their space so that we can all get a taste of their place and story as we build relationships together.

This first cohort was centered around learning how to build relationships both with each other and with our neighbors. We discussed moving past surface conversation with deep listening and intentional questions to discover the essence of the person we are talking to – their passions, their strengths, their story – what makes them a unique and irreplaceable force in this world. 

Team members interviewed each other and then brought their findings back to the group through an introduction of their partner to the rest of us. The cohort members engaged really well and built relationships quickly with one another, many of them complaining when they had to stop building relationship and come back to the group. Hearing them share the strengths and passions of someone they had just met was really amazing, they dug deep and got to the essence of the other person so well. The room felt like family by the end of the night with playful banter and genuine appreciation for each other. 

I am incredibly excited for this journey with this group of people. They are ready to grow together and invest deeply in knowing and being known, both with each other and with their neighbors. The gifts and talents that each of these individuals bring to the space makes their teams stronger and, when invested in their communities, will make their corner of the world better.

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