“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.

The Young Adult Book Project has surpassed another mile marker in our project! Our author team gathered for a second Writers’ Retreat at Mt. Olivet Conference and Retreat Center last month. This gathering marks the completion of mile marker #5! We’re just over a year out from The Threshold Envisioning event, where about fifty young adults gathered to share our joys, heartaches, hopes and dreams for the church and the book chapter themes were distilled from those stories and experiences. Since then, we selected a young adult author and a thought leader author to co-write each chapter. We gathered those authors in March at the first Writers’ Retreat to create a shared vision for the book and start the co-writing process. Two authors have had to discern out of this project due to needing to prioritize their time and energy on health and recovery. As people come and go from this project – we give our deep gratitude for the contributions along the way. Their departures created space to invite two new authors in.  Each set of authors has navigated the highs and lows of the writing process, defined and redefined their expectations of each other, and wrestled with their busy schedules to write and revise first and second drafts of their chapters.

The purpose of this second Writers’ retreat was to move into the of the book.  Rick Rubin describes the creative process as four phases: Seed, Experimentation, Craft, and Editing & Completion. The “Craft Phase” moves from generating possibilities and ideas into refining material with a clearer sense of direction and structure. For this project that means both the individual chapters and the larger book are beginning to take clearer shape and more cohesive structure. We accomplished this at the retreat by developing a shared larger vision of the overall book, large group discussion and decision making for cohesiveness across chapters, and co-author work time. 

So far, each author has focused specifically on their own theme, and Kristina and I are the only people to have read each chapter. To help the whole writing team develop a wider vision of the book, we had each author pair share a brief overview of their chapter. They explained the main concepts, the hoped for impact, the writing style, and anything else they want everyone else to know about their chapter so far. This helped everyone have a wider view of the book, with a better, more updated, understanding of how each chapter is emerging. 

Then each writer was assigned a different chapter to read and share feedback on. We paired each pair of co-authors with authors from two different themes, ones we (Kristina and I) considered having some sort of connection or overlap. They each read the paired chapter and spent time sharing their reflections on the following questions: 

1. What needs clarifying? Was there anything confusing to you or that you think might potentially be confusing to other readers? 
2. What seems key to this chapter theme? What do you think is most important (and helpful) for the reader to take away?
3. What would help you as a reader take ideas from this chapter and integrate them to your own context? 
4. What questions do you have for the author? 
5. What connections do you hear with your own chapter?

After this work to expand the team’s understanding of the book as a whole, we reflected on what we’re hearing as themes throughout the book and distilled some common themes and moved our focus onto the cohesiveness of the book. The cohesiveness will emerge with attention to shared elements across each chapter, and how the chapters are framed with the introduction and conclusion. Some of the key elements that will be intentionally built into each chapter are: 

• Voice: all chapters will be written in a distinct two-author perspective
• Contextualize Authors: there will be a clear, concise paragraph so each reader knows who the authors are for this chapter and why they are writing on this theme
• Reader Accessibility: authors will tend to the language and structure of their chapter so the readers will be able to clearly understand and receive the message in each chapter
• Application Toolkit: the end of chapter will include a toolkit to help the reader respond to and integrate the ideas into their context. The toolkit will include discussion questions, practices, and recommended resources. 
• Nitty gritty details: The specifics of citations, font and formatting will also get more attention in this draft than they previously have. 

The framing of the book will open with an introduction that serves a lot of purposes. It will build trust with the reader by sharing how this book came to be, who is behind this book, our hopes for what the book invites the readers into, and some tools for the readers as they read. The conclusion will end the book by inviting readers to respond to the invitation of the book, and each specific chapter. Much like the process of writing this book, the invitation in the conclusion will be deeply relational, imaginative, collaborative and embodied. 

We closed our time together by tying up loose ends. Each author pair had time to finalize their plan to work towards a final draft due at the beginning of February, and sent us on our way with a shared song. It was a gift to be together again, sharing space and intentional work time together, remembering our hopes and vision for the project and the church, playing games, being nourished by food, laughter, nature and rest. 

As we look ahead to the next milestones of the project, we’ll be revising and editing, having ongoing conversations with the publisher, developing a marketing and promotion plan for the book, following the publisher’s lead, and celebrating and compensating for the great work of this amazing writing team! If you’d like to get an update when pre-orders become available, fill out this google form to join the mailing list

Additional Resources:

Read more about the Threshold Event here: /ccv/2022/11/17/emerging-themes-from-the-threshold-envisioning-event/

Recap from the first Writers’ Retreat /ccv/2023/04/13/the-writers-have-met-a-recap-of-the-writers-retreat-in-montreat/

Learn more in his book (Rubin, Rick. The creative act: a way of being. Penguin, 2023.) or the On Being Podcast Episode:

The post We Meet Again! A Recap of the Second Writers’ Retreat appeared first on Riverside Innovation Hub.

I, Amanda, said yes to stewarding the young adult book project because I believe that this book, a book that centers and amplifies the voices of young adults who care deeply about the church, will be inspiring, disorienting, and transformational for the readers, congregations, neighborhoods, and communities who experience it. My hope is that this book will inspire us into hope, disorient us away from the status quo, help us remember who God is calling us to be, and continue transforming us so that we can show up more wholeheartedly in the places and spaces we are all called to be. 

We launched the writing phase of the young adult book project in Mid-March by gathering all twenty-two writers at Montreat Conference Center for a Writers’ retreat. The purpose of the time together was to become familiar with each other and this project, preview how we plan to write a cohesive multi-voice book with twenty-two authors, and have each set of co-authors spend time together, in-person, to connect and plan. 

On Friday evening, we gathered for dinner and our first session together. We introduced ourselves to each other, shared what values were carrying into the room and into the project, and looked back at the project’s story so far ().����

On Saturday, we had a mix of large group time and co-author time. In the large group, we looked at the logistics of how this project will come to fruition, and heard from each young adult author on why the theme they’ve been chosen to write on is important to the church.

In co-author pairs, each thought leader and young adult spent time connecting, brainstorming a chapter theme summary statement, and creating a game plan for how they’ll communicate, collaborate, and schedule their work. Each pair did this work uniquely, some started with a hike, some began with solitude, some took a stroll across the retreat center, some began by sharing about how their lived experiences will inform the theme they’ll write on, some began with writing, and all of them did really, really great work. Nicholas Tangen, the thought leader for the Community theme, said, “[He was] glad to meet so many new folks, to conspire and dream with my co-author Amar Peterman (who may be among the smartest people I’ve ever met), and to laugh way more than I had any business to. When people say the church is dying, I’m going to point back to rooms like the ones this weekend and let them know the church is more alive than ever!” 

After dinner on Saturday, we had an optional social hour. We enjoyed refreshments, ate some snacks, and played some group games, like Fishbowl (aka Salad Bowl). Sarah Iverson, a young adult author said, “I had the opportunity to sneak away to a retreat center in the Appalachian mountains with 21 strangers who quickly became friends – all of us invited by Riverside Innovation Hub to contribute to a book about young adults and the church. Or more correctly, a book BY young adults FOR the church. I’ve been asked to co-author the chapter on mental health. I’m so excited to be part of this team as we spend the next year writing and dreaming together. This group of humans has already made me laugh harder and think more deeply than I have in a long time.” 

On Sunday, we distilled some of the immense wisdom in the room. Everyone shared some of their best writing practices, insights on the creative process, advice and encouragement for each other, and some tools and techniques to try out as we endeavor in this collaborative book. Lunch on Sunday marked the end of our programmed time. About half the group traveled home on Sunday, and the other half on Monday. Talitha Amadea Aho, the thought leader for the Creation and Destruction theme reflected, “It was SO good for my soul to be away thinking big thoughts and having such fascinating conversations with the other 21 people who are together going to be writing a book that will help the church listen to its youngest leaders.  Young adults haven’t left the faith, but the church has abandoned the public spaces where young people are actively living out their faith. This book will help the rest of the church follow their lead and find meaningful involvement in the issues that actually matter to our young leaders.” 

The writers were sent off to work on a chapter outline, theme summary statements, and a first draft of their chapters. In a follow-up letter to the writing team, Kristina Frugé shared, “I think this book is one way folks will be invited into curiosity about the new thing God is doing in our time. Curiosity not just for the sake of curiosity, but because curiosity unlocks room for transformation, for liberation into a better way to be and be together. And don’t we all need that? I am eager to listen for the Holy Spirit’s guidance in this endeavor we are on together – in through and with the many voices gathered at our table.”

Stay tuned to this blog and the Riverside Innovation Hub social media to learn more about the writing team!

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