Igniting Imagination

“America’s crisis of despair crashed into my life while I was getting paid to think about joy,” is how Dr. Angela Gorrell begins her book on joy and that is where we begin our conversation. What is authentic joy and how do you experience joy when there is so much to NOT be joyful about? One key, says Dr. Gorrell, is to recognize joy as a gift, like grace, and not something you can pursue like the “choose joy” coffee mugs and wall hangings imply. This episode includes a dynamic discussion between Lisa and Gil about the “we” and “I” culture that carries into their conversation with Angela: what are the communal and individual aspects of joy and ultimately: what is the church’s role in cultivating space for people to experience and receive joy?

What to listen for

• Lisa and Gil discuss the “I” based culture and the “we” based culture (00:54) and what the church has to offer

QUOTES

• “Joy is about open hands. It’s about a posture that we have in the world. It’s about a readiness.” -Dr. Angela Gorrell [22:12]

Angela Gorrell’s Bio

Dr. Angela Williams Gorrell joined Baylor's George W. Truett Theological Seminary in Fall 2019 as Assistant Professor of Practical Theology. Prior to joining the faculty at Baylor University, she was an Associate Research Scholar at the Yale Center for Faith & Culture, working on the Theology of Joy and the Good Life Project, and a lecturer in Divinity and Humanities at Yale University in New Haven, Connecticut. She is an ordained pastor with 14 years of ministry experience. 

Dr. Gorrell is passionate about finding issues that matter to people and shining the light of the Gospel on them. She is the author of always on: practicing faith in a new media landscapeand a new book, The Gravity of Joy: A Story of Being Lost and Found, which shares findings of the joy project while addressing America’s opioid and suicide crises. Dr. Gorrell’s expertise is in the areas of theology and contemporary culture, education and formation, meaning-making, joy, new media, and youth and emerging adults. Dr. Gorrell regularly consults, speaks, and leads workshops and retreats on her research and areas of expertise.

RESOURCES & RELEVANT LINKS

Read Gil Rendle’s paper “Jacob’s Bones” for free off our TMF website here.

Visit Angela’s Gorrell’s website for more information about her work including a free book discussion guide, and information about her speaking and consulting. 

Angela’s Gorrell book is The Gravity of Joy: A Story of Being Lost and Found.

This podcast is brought to you by the Leadership Ministry team at TMF and Wesleyan Investive. Leadership Ministry connects diverse, high-capacity leaders in conversations and environments that create a network of courage, learning, and innovation in order to help the church lean into its God-appointed mission.

Subscribe to our Leadership Ministry emails here. We send emails about each episode and include additional related resources related to the episode’s topic. We know your inbox is inundated these days, we aim to send you content that is inspiring, innovative, and impactful for your life and ministry.

If you enjoy the podcast, would you please consider leaving a short review on Apple Podcasts / iTunes?

What better way to start our season about the values the church must carry forward into the future than with the ‘gadfly of the church,’ Bishop Will Willimon! Co-host Gil Rendle points out that as the gadfly of the church, Will both loves and cares about the institution AND asks critically important questions that challenge the church to be better. You won’t want to miss this compelling story-packed episode that includes topics like how Jesus disrupts contented churches, why purpose is so important right now and Will’s advice to pastors in today’s context. 

In this conversation, you’ll hear:

• Gil Rendle shares the meaning behind his paper “Jacob’s Bones.” What should we carry forward? (02:52)

QUOTES

• “It is easy to get distracted in the present moment. And sometimes I think the church argues about some of the stuff we’re fighting over because it's’ easier to fight over those subjects than to have a good argument about how can we have a future? How can we welcome in the two or three generations of Christians that we have excluded? That’s hard, and maybe that’s why we’ve been arguing.” -Will Willimon [25:59]

Will Willimon’s Bio

The Reverend Dr. William H. Willimon is Professor of the Practice of Christian Ministry at the Divinity School, Duke University. He served eight years as Bishop of the North Alabama Conference of The United Methodist Church, where he led the 157,000 Methodists and 792 pastors in North Alabama. For twenty years prior to the episcopacy, he was Dean of the Chapel and Professor of Christian Ministry at Duke University, Durham, North Carolina. Willimon is the author of over 80 books. His articles have appeared in many publications including Theology Today, Interpretation, Liturgy, and Christianity Today.

RESOURCES & RELEVANT LINKS

More information about Bishop Will Willimon can be found on his website.

Will Willimon is the author of 80 books. His latest is “Don’t Look Back: Methodist Hope for What Comes Next.”

This podcast is brought to you by the Leadership Ministry team at TMF and Wesleyan Investive. Leadership Ministry connects diverse, high-capacity leaders in conversations and environments that create a network of courage, learning, and innovation in order to help the church lean into its God-appointed mission.

Subscribe to our Leadership Ministry emails here. We send emails about each episode and include additional related resources related to the episode’s topic. We know your inbox is inundated these days, we aim to send you content that is inspiring, innovative, and impactful for your life and ministry.

If you enjoy the podcast, would you please consider leaving a short review on Apple Podcasts / iTunes?

Season 6 of Igniting Imagination is coming soon! Host Lisa Greenwood, co-host Gil Rendle, and special guests from diverse theological perspectives discuss what core values and truths to carry forward and include in the future church. What values and truths will you carry forward? Our guests this season are:

• Bishop Will Willimon

We’re so grateful to share these conversations with you and pray they spark the spirit within you and ignite your imagination for what’s possible in your life and ministry.

Our most-downloaded episode is back (!) for one big reason: this conversation remains incredibly relevant today. We are inviting you to listen again or for the first time to Tod Bolsinger because the way he talks about how to manage change, stress and resistance without burning out is as practical as it is inspiring. In this conversation, you’ll hear:

• What’s the most important thing to hold on to in the face of change (05:54)

QUOTES

• “The hardest thing about leading change is having to grapple with our own vulnerability.” -Dr. Tod Bolsinger [11:18]

RESOURCES & RELEVANT LINKS

Follow Tod Bolsinger: @todbol

For more resources from Tod and his team, text change to 66866.

Tod Bolsinger is the author of Canoeing the Mountains, It Takes a Church to Raise a Christian, and most recently, Tempered Resilience: How Leaders are Formed in the Crucible of Change.

This podcast is brought to you by the Leadership Ministry team at TMF and Wesleyan Investive. Leadership Ministry connects diverse, high-capacity leaders in conversations and environments that create a network of courage, learning, and innovation in order to help the church lean into its God-appointed mission.

Subscribe to our Leadership Ministry emails here. We send emails about each episode and include additional related resources related to the episode’s topic. We know your inbox is inundated these days, we aim to send you content that is inspiring, innovative, and impactful for your life and ministry.

If you enjoy the podcast, would you please consider leaving a short review on Apple Podcasts / iTunes?

Joe Stabile started centering prayer at age 14. If you’ve ever wondered how a lifetime of centering prayer shapes a person, listen to this conversation with Joe. Throughout his life, Joe has had a constant posture of discernment and a deep trust in where God is leading. Joe is so rooted in the Spirit; listening to him, being around him, is like jumping into a cold pool of water on a hot summer day. In this soul-refreshing conversation, you’ll hear:

• Joe’s story of his life with God and his deep trust in God that has led him on an interesting, unexpected, and awesome life journey (to say the least!) (04:53)

QUOTES

• “90% of centering prayer is about your intention. What is your intention when you sit for this 20 minutes? What’s your intention? And your intention is to be totally open to God. Those six words: to be totally open to God. ” -Joe Stabile [25:27]

About Joe Stabile

Rev. Joe Stabile is a United Methodist Church pastor as well as Co-Founder and Animator of Life in the Trinity Ministry, in Dallas, Texas. He has served in vocational ministry for more than forty years, with combined experience in local church pastoral ministry, spiritual direction, retreat leadership, pastoral care and mentoring. In addition to serving as Associate Pastor at First UMC Dallas, Joe leads the Contemplative Cohort at Life in the Trinity Ministry.

RESOURCES & RELEVANT LINKS

For more information about the Contemplative Cohort Joe leads at Life in the Trinity Ministry, visit their website here.

This podcast is brought to you by the Leadership Ministry team at TMF and Wesleyan Investive. Leadership Ministry connects diverse, high-capacity leaders in conversations and environments that create a network of courage, learning, and innovation in order to help the church lean into its God-appointed mission.

Subscribe to our Leadership Ministry emails here. We send emails about each episode and include additional related resources related to the episode’s topic. We know your inbox is inundated these days, we aim to send you content that is inspiring, innovative, and impactful for your life and ministry.

If you enjoy the podcast, would you please consider leaving a short review on Apple Podcasts / iTunes?

Danielle Shroyer’s curiosity about the spiritual path took an unexpected turn in 2018. This founder of the emerging church movement and deeply faithful Christian leader took the path East, towards the wisdom and practices of the Eastern traditions. Her blog, Be a Soul Ninja, chronicles her experiences engaging in different Eastern religious thoughts and practices. So what does it mean to Be a Soul Ninja? In this conversation, we discuss:

• Why Danielle is a ‘hot mess’ at meditating and still names meditation as the practice that has helped her to grow the most in her faith (6:30)

QUOTES

• “All of that practice, I think what it does, is help me just be with myself in the reality of who I am. And I think that is incredibly important for leaders to do, because I just have to see myself exactly as I am. All the good stuff. All the bad stuff. All the stuff that’s extra boring and not worth conversation on either side of good or bad. And I think that helps me sorta operate from a more centered place, because there’s just no hiding from yourself if you sit and meditate in your own thoughts everyday.” -Danielle Shroyer [09:43]

About Danielle Shroyer

Danielle spent over a decade in pastoral leadership and was a founding member of the emerging church movement. She speaks often across the country on issues of theology, faith, culture, and story, and blogs at beasoulninja.com.  Danielle is the author of Original Blessing: Putting Sin in its Rightful Place; Where Jesus Prayed: Illuminations on the Lord’s Prayer in the Holy Land; and The Boundary Breaking God: An Unfolding Story of Hope and Promise.

RESOURCES & RELEVANT LINKS

Find out more about today’s guest, Danielle Shroyer, including information about Spiritual Direction, on her website http://www.beasoulninja.com. You can also sign up for her weekly blogs to be delivered to your inbox.

This podcast is brought to you by the Leadership Ministry team at TMF and Wesleyan Investive. Leadership Ministry connects diverse, high-capacity leaders in conversations and environments that create a network of courage, learning, and innovation in order to help the church lean into its God-appointed mission.

Subscribe to our Leadership Ministry emails here. We send emails about each episode and include additional related resources related to the episode’s topic. We know your inbox is inundated these days, we aim to send you content that is inspiring, innovative, and impactful for your life and ministry.

If you enjoy the podcast, would you please consider leaving a short review on Apple Podcasts / iTunes?

Shannon Hopkins has been asking, “God, what is the church you are building today?” for decades–and she’s been living that question. Shannon’s pursuit of new forms of Christian community inspired her to move from Texas to London where she has continued to build an incredible network of friends and colleagues who are living the questions, too. Through her organization RootedGood, Shannon is bringing spiritual entrepreneurs and innovators together to support one another and discern what it means to do the Gospel-inspired work that transforms the world today. In this conversation, we get to ask the one who has been living the questions to answer some questions such as: what have you learned since you’ve been playing in the sandbox, experimenting with new forms of Christian community? Shannon’s insights about the church today and her inspiring personal story of faith will leave you filled with hope and perhaps saying (as we said at the conclusion of the conversation): Glory be!

QUOTES

• “If we don’t look at training and sustainability like new economic models, we’re not going to see a movement of God that transforms the church or the world.” -Shannon Hopkins [11:24]

TIMESTAMPS

• [00:00] Intro

RESOURCES & RELEVANT LINKS

For more information about RootedGood’s resources and to access the Mycelium Network to connect with other leaders, visit their website here.

Listen to Shannon Hopkins’ previous episode on Igniting Imagination here.

RSVP for the Locke Leader Virtual Event

This podcast is brought to you by the Leadership Ministry team at TMF and Wesleyan Investive. Leadership Ministry connects diverse, high-capacity leaders in conversations and environments that create a network of courage, learning, and innovation in order to help the church lean into its God-appointed mission.

Subscribe to our Leadership Ministry emails here.

If you enjoy the podcast, would you please consider leaving a short review on Apple Podcasts / iTunes?

Shannon Hopkins Bio

Shannon Hopkins is an extreme networker and social entrepreneur living in East London. Her passion for community and individual transformation has launched or influenced the formation of fifteen campaigns, projects, and organizations — and trained over 200 social entrepreneurs. In 2008, Shannon was awarded the Women of the UN and UK’s Annual Woman of Peace Award for a campaign called The Truth isn’t Sexy that addressed the demand side of human trafficking.

A Texas native, in 2004 Shannon moved to London and founded Matryoshka Haus, which was part incubator, part community, part training organization. In 2019 Matryoshka Haus launched 3 new initiatives, including Rooted Good, where Shannon is co-founder and Lead Cultivator. RootedGood empowers social impact organizations and leaders to make good in the world through tools and games that help implement design thinking, produce creative ideas, launch new ventures and so much more.

Coté Soerens has made her neighborhood in South Park, Seattle her world. She and her husband Tim moved their family into the under-resourced neighborhood with a deep desire to discover God’s dreams for the community and participate in helping those dreams come to fruition alongside their neighbors. Coté started a coffee shop, Resistencia Coffee, that has become a third space for neighbors to gather, to build relationships with one another and to discern next steps towards making their neighborhood thrive. When you listen to Coté tell her story and the story of South Park, you’ll hear how the Spirit has worked again and again, inspiring people to dream dreams and see visions and make connections that has ultimately made the seemingly impossible possible. Faith can move mountains – and, it turns out, highways! We can’t wait for you to hear what God has done through Coté’s love for–and deep commitment to–her neighbors and her neighborhood.

QUOTES

• “My journey, I think, has been one of trying to weave together what does the gospel look like in the public sphere.” -Coté Soerens [12:30]

TIMESTAMPS

• [00:00] Intro

RESOURCES & RELEVANT LINKS

Cultivate South Park is “Connecting Neighbors and their Gifts to Co Create a thriving and equitable South Park.” Find out more on their website.

Learn more about Resistencia Coffee in Seattle, Washington at their website.

RSVP for the Locke Leader Virtual Event

This podcast is brought to you by the Leadership Ministry team at TMF and Wesleyan Investive. Leadership Ministry connects diverse, high-capacity leaders in conversations and environments that create a network of courage, learning, and innovation in order to help the church lean into its God-appointed mission.

Subscribe to our Leadership Ministry emails here.

If you enjoy the podcast, would you please consider leaving a short review on Apple Podcasts / iTunes?

Coté Soerens Bio

Originally from Chile, Coté has made Seattle her home, where she lives with her husband Tim and their sons.

She has served as the founding executive director of Puentes, an immigrant-led organization mobilizing mental health resources to support families affected by immigration policies. Coté is a founding partner of Resistencia Coffee, a neighborhood coffee shop in the heart of South Park. 

She is also the co-founder of Cultivate South Park, a non-profit that lends infrastructure to neighborhood community development projects such as the Urban Fresh Food Collective, Reconnect South Park, and the South Park Arts and Culture Collective.

Arrabon means “a foretaste of the kingdom.” This conversation with David Bailey is full of Arrabon! David describes the significance of the numbers 8 and 2008 in his life. From an early age, David saw the benefits and challenges of cultivating a diverse community where everyone can thrive. His passion for God and scripture, together with his love of music and vision for reconciled communities led him to start Arrabon. Arrabon, like David, takes the long view of reconciliation, walking alongside congregations and organizations to facilitate conversation and curriculum that leads to both healing and justice. Although this topic perhaps feels heavy and even overwhelming at times, David’s joyful approach and hopeful vision is pure grace and just what is needed for such a time as this. 

QUOTES

• “You can’t have justice without reconciliation. You can’t have reconciliation without justice.” -David Bailey [10:14]

TIMESTAMPS

• [00:00] Intro

RESOURCES & RELEVANT LINKS

Learn more about David Bailey’s ministry at Arrabon by visiting their website here. View David’s TEDx Talk from 2015 here.

RSVP for the Locke Leader Virtual Event

This podcast is brought to you by the Leadership Ministry team at TMF and Wesleyan Investive. Leadership Ministry connects diverse, high-capacity leaders in conversations and environments that create a network of courage, learning, and innovation in order to help the church lean into its God-appointed mission.

Subscribe to our Leadership Ministry emails here.

If you enjoy the podcast, would you please consider leaving a short review on Apple Podcasts / iTunes?

David Bailey Bio

David Bailey believes that the Church should lead by example in cross-cultural engagement and reconciliation. He’s the founder and executive director of Arrabon, a ministry that cultivates Christian communities to pursue healing and reconciliation in a racially divided world. David is an active speaker, consultant, and strategist for many national organizations about cultural intelligence and culture-making. He is the co-author of the Race, Class, and the Kingdom of God Study Series. David was named by Christianity Today as one of “The Twenty Most Creative Christians We Know”. He serves as a teaching elder at East End Fellowship. David and his wife, Joy, live in Richmond, Virginia.

Dr. Kit Evans-Ford’s passion for providing safe spaces for survivors of domestic violence and sexual violence is deeply personal. Kit’s grandmother, Argrow, is the namesake for her social enterprise Argrow’s House of Healing and Hope, a bath and body social enterprise that employs female survivors of domestic violence and sexual violence. Kit shares how her family story and her own life experiences led her to discern her life’s purpose and learn how to start a social enterprise. This compelling conversation has a thread of grace that inspires with transparency and vulnerability and a great reminder that whatever we’re facing in life, we don’t do it alone.

Note: There are themes of violence and sexual abuse in this interview. If those are triggering topics for you, please take care of yourself and skip this episode.

QUOTES

• “But ultimately, what I do and why I do what I do is deeply rooted and connected to the women in my family… but also from a place of deep personal pain for me that I know that God has used to do good in the world.” -Kit Evans-Ford [19:02]

TIMESTAMPS

• [00:00] Intro

RESOURCES & RELEVANT LINKS

This episode references domestic violence, physical violence, and attempted sexual violence. Please skip this episode if these topics are triggering for you. For resources related to trauma, visit the work of Bessel van der Kolk, MD. Here is another site full of resources related to trauma.

RSVP for the Locke Leader Virtual Event

Visit Argrow’s House website and support this amazing social enterprise! Argrow’s House is a safe space where free services are offered daily for women healing from violence and abuse in the greater Quad Cities area. 

This podcast is brought to you by the Leadership Ministry team at TMF and Wesleyan Investive. Leadership Ministry connects diverse, high-capacity leaders in conversations and environments that create a network of courage, learning, and innovation in order to help the church lean into its God-appointed mission.

Subscribe to our Leadership Ministry emails here.

If you enjoy the podcast, would you please consider leaving a short review on Apple Podcasts / iTunes?

Kit Evans-Ford Bio

Dr. Kit Evans Ford is a national trainer, spiritual director, and professor. She is passionate about nonviolence, God, and serving others. She has been a trainer and activist for 14 years working relentlessly in the areas of nonviolence education and assisting people in healing from violence and abuse. Kit is an Adjunct Professor in the Department of Theology at St. Ambrose University.  She is the author of 101 Testimonies of Hope: Life Stories to Encourage Your Faith in God and A Children’s Book On Bishop Richard Allen:  A Nonviolent Journey.  She is also certified in spiritual direction and is the founder of Argrow’s House of Healing and Hope in Davenport, Iowa. Argrow’s House is a safe space where free services are offered daily for women healing from violence and abuse in the greater Quad Cities area. Argrow’s House is also a successful social enterprise where women healing from violence and abuse create beautiful bath products that provide a living wage for themselves in a safe space that celebrates who they are.