[126] Church Rethought: Embracing Unconventional Spaces for Community and Spirituality

We’re talking with Rev. Heather Jallad about the creative, fun and innovative ways that church is coming together and meeting the world. It’s an invitation to Rethink Church.

This episode of Compass dives into new expressions of church like Dinner Church and Messy Church. It’s all inspiring… and it gets us thinking about how we, individually might both connect with spiritual community and how we might become involved in leading the church into new areas of witness.

Rev. Heather Jallad serves as the Associate Director of Training for Fresh Expressions NA, Community Engagement Pastor at Cannon UMC in Snellville, Georgia, and as a Specialist for the North Georgia Annual Conference. She pioneered the Common Ground Network, a network of fresh church expressions and The Douglasville Dinner Church in Douglasville, GA and a collaborative Dinner Church in Grayson, GA.

In this episode:

(00:00) Reverend Heather Jallad’s inspiring work on church.

(04:24) Introduced to dinner church, partnered with school.

(08:19) Fresh expression emphasizes mutuality and shared meals.

(11:21) Adapting church to fit modern schedules and lifestyles.

(14:56) Church planters stumbled onto non-traditional methods.

(24:34) Pandemic of loneliness, longing for community meals.

(30:29) Traditional roles expanded to engage new members.

(32:39) Promoting house churches for effective discipleship.

(35:37) Recognition of Pioneers in the church community.

(45:18) Geeky church models dive complete.

Compass is a production of United Methodist Communications.

Find show notes and more episodes of Compass: www.umc.org/compass