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:

The post Hungry for Hope Available Today! appeared first on Riverside Innovation Hub.

“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.

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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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 Riverside Innovation Hub.

In early February, some of the Riverside Innovation Hub staff attended and presented at the ELCA Youth Ministry Network’s annual convening, the Extravaganza, in Anaheim, CA. Amanda Vetsch and Kristina Fruge presented what we heard at the Threshold Event.����

The purpose of the workshop was to share the wisdom we, at Augsburg’s Riverside Innovation Hub, are learning from young adults about their hopes, dreams and concerns for the church. In particular the about key learnings from a recent event we hosted on campus this fall, when we gathered a diverse group of young adults from around the country, representing a wide variety of ecumenical backgrounds and other lived experiences.��

Before we dove into the presentation portion of our conversation, we used Mentimeter to poll the in-person and virtual attendees. This helped us get a sense of who was attending and practice using a new tech tool. Both groups were from across the country, with a strong portion in the Midwest. We were fairly caffeinated, and the majority of both workshop groups believe that the person in the middle seat on the plane does NOT get both armrests. After the icebreaker and Menti practice, we dove into presenting about who we are, what we did, and what we heard.

Who are we?��

In 2017, the Christensen Center for Vocation got a Young Adult Initiative grant from the Lilly Endowment to create an Innovation Hub that equips congregations to explore questions around the intersections of young adults and church. One of our guiding convictions was that young adults don’t want to be attracted or drawn back to church, but would rather see the church move out into the public where young adults are actively living out our faith. The Riverside Innovation Hub spent five years working alongside congregations to be and become public churches and learn how to be led by young adults in that endeavor.��

In 2022, We got a second grant to help expand that work, and one of the ways we’re doing that is through a book project. We’re committed to practicing what we preach and teach, so the book is super collaborative and envisioned and written by young adults. To distill the themes of the book, we hosted an Envisioning Event in November, selected two authors per theme, a young adult and a thought leader, and have built a writing process that includes two retreats, lots of drafts and revision.��

What did we do?��

For the Threshold Book Envisioning event, ��we gathered 50 young adults from across the US to share what they wish the church would know and help identify the themes of the book. This group of young adults had varying experiences with church and came from a wide variety of traditions and denominations

The gathering was designed for them to share their hopes, heartaches and dreams for the church.�� Jeremy Myers and Rozella Haydée White facilitated the space. Five keynote listeners joined us to listen with deep intention to what was emerging in the space. You can read more about how the event was shaped in this blog: Threshold Recap Blog

What did we hear?����

We heard stories full of grief, love, celebration, loss and more. It was an absolute gift and honor to have those shared with us. After two days full of reflection, conversation, and sticky notes, we generated a list of the themes:

• Grief and Healing
• Marginalization, Inclusivity and Liberation
• Abundance and Scarcity
• Community
• Sex/Intimacy and Shame
• Power and Abuse of Power
• Beyond the Walls
• Courageous Curiosity
• Creation and Destruction
• Mental Health
• Tokenism of Young Adults

Audience Participation:��

Just as the young adults used the lens of desolation and consolation to think about their experiences within the church, we did as similar thing at our workshop.����

First ,everyone was invited to pick one theme from our YA’s list that resonates with themselves or a reality in their ministry context.��

Between both workshops, the theme Tokenism of Young Adult was chosen the most. Followed by Community, then Abundance and Scarcity, and Marginalization, Inclusivity and Liberation tied for third.��

Desolation:��

We then spent time individually reflecting on that theme and how we’ve experienced it as desolation.

��Some of the answered shared included:��

• One of the challenges I have encountered as a young person is having a lot of my community around me who is atheist/non-religious. Having spaces in my church community that my non-religious loved ones can participate and not feel alienated
• Existential dread re: the warming planet and the effects on vulnerable people
• Scarcity: Constant focus on too little time, too few people, too little money, always just trying not to die
• Post COVID “skill desert” of how to connect
• Not being fed but asking to feed others
• Courageous Curiosity – doubt/wonder/questions being interpreted to mean that you just don’t believe or aren’t faithful enough
• The rejection of queer voices. I can name more than a handful of individuals in my last congregation that were harmed for their identity
• “Why aren’t the YAs coming?” It feels like it sends the message that our young adults are not enough as they are unless they meet the church’s expectations.

Consolation:��

After reflection and sharing about desolation, we reflected on the chosen theme and how we’ve experienced it as consolation.��

Some of the answers shared included:��

• Creating a Pride Cafe,�� art camp to explore identity issues, creating a community center in unused space. �� Invited folks to dinner and asked what they need spiritually
• Participation in new and ongoing hunger ministries (but desolation in the fact we still need them)
• Spaces where my non-religious loved ones can participate without feeling alienated
• Hiring a mental health specialist on staff
• Curiosity – when you open up space for vulnerable and genuine conversation about life, faith, church, you feel more connected to what church can be.
• scripture and church history/tradition provide a rich source for dialogue and makes space for mystery/hard questions
• exploring creation of an LGBTQ+ Christian group in a neighboring county where there are no affirming congregations

See the full mentimeter responses here: , .

Now What?��

We concluded our time together by thinking through our next steps for our own contexts. What is something attainable we can do next, a low hanging fruit? What is something that is big and audacious we want to do, a moon shot? And who do we need to connect with, or coffee?��

Find the workshop handout here:

To learn more about the book project and receive updates, join our

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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.

Interested in applying to be an author?

Check out the application process here. The deadline to apply is December 12th, 2022.

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