We are so excited about this season of the Igniting Imagination Podcast as Rev. Dr. Kenda Creasy Dean and Rev. Lisa Greenwood have conversations with four exceptional, innovative faith leaders who are profoundly influencing the way we think about the church’s mission and witness. It’s stunning and inspiring! Our guest this week is Rev. Dr. Heber Brown, III. Heber’s story, the story of how the Black church he served in Baltimore birthed a network of hundreds of churches and black farmers to feed thousands of people with healthy, fresh food, is remarkable. Truly. Nothing short of the powerful work of God! We pray Heber’s story will ignite a new conversation, a new way of thinking, a new imagination in you.

In this conversation, you’ll hear:

• Co-host Rev. Dr. Kenda Creasy Dean shares the qualities of innovative leaders she’s observed.
• Heber’s God-sized vision for a small plot of land on his church property.
• How networking allowed something small to have an outsized impact.
• Heber’s call to a mission, not a church.

About Rev. Dr. Heber Brown, III

Rev. Dr. Heber M. Brown, III has been a catalyst for personal transformation and social change for more than 20 years. For nearly 14 years, he served as pastor of a Baptist church in Baltimore, where he saw and personally experienced the impacts of food apartheid. This helped to inspire him to launch the Black Church Food Security Network which advances food security and food sovereignty by co-creating Black food ecosystems anchored by nearly 250 Black congregations in partnership with Black farmers and other food justice stakeholders. He serves on the board of Bread for the World and has garnered numerous awards including an Ashoka Fellowship. He is the author of the forthcoming book Nothing More Sacred: Radical Stories of Black Church Faith, Food and Freedom.

For more information about Rev. Dr. Brown, visit his website: https://www.heberbrown.com/

For more information about the Black Church Food Security Network, visit: https://blackchurchfoodsecurity.net/

Read all about the Locke Innovative Leader Award on our website: https://wesleyanimpactpartners.org/locke-leaders

To view videos of podcast episodes, please go to the Igniting Imagination YouTube.

Subscribe to our Learning and Innovation 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?

Have you enjoyed Season 10 of our Igniting Imagination Podcast as much as we have?! We started with Margaret Wheatley and we are ending the season with two remarkable innovative leaders, who also happen to be part of our leadership learning and innovation team, Rev. Kathi McShane and Derrick Scott, III. If you haven’t been listening, this conversation can guide you toward the episodes that most speak to you – it’s a great place to start! If you’ve been listening along the way, we hope you’ll find it helpful to pull on the threads that name the realities we are facing today and how we claim our leadership in the midst. It’s not an easy season, but I’m convinced we have an opportunity to lead in new ways that get us a bit closer to the world that God imagines. 

In this conversation, you’ll hear:

• Leading in a time of polarization.
• The importance of naming and understanding ambiguous loss.
• More responses to Wheatley’s “addicted to hope”.

Derrick Scott, III is the associate director of learning and innovation for Wesleyan Impact Partners. Derrick has been leading ministry in the collegiate and young adult context for over 20 years.

In addition to his work with Wesleyan Impact Partners, Derrick currently serves as the creative producer of Studio Wesley, a ministry that’s exploring how to serve college-aged young adults in the digital space. He is also the co-lay leader of the Florida Conference of the UMC. He is passionate about empowering a new generation of leaders and laborers who will live as disciples of Jesus Christ to transform the world.

He has an undergraduate degree in history, is a Cicerone Certified Beer Server, and is a textbook introvert. He loves eating sushi, flying on Delta, and pouring craft beer. He lives in Jacksonville, Florida with his Chihuahua-mix dog Winston and Bengal cat Julian. Most importantly, he hates mayonnaise.

Rev. Kathleen McShane is the director of learning and innovation for Wesleyan Impact Partners. Kathi retired from active ministry as an ordained Elder in the California-Nevada Conference of the United Methodist Church in 2022. She led four congregations and served for eight years as the vice president for Institutional Advancement at Pacific School of Religion. Before attending seminary and beginning her life in ministry, she was a civil litigator, practicing law in the San Francisco Bay Area.

In her final appointment in Los Altos, California, Kathi co-founded the Changemaker Initiative, which is a small national movement of churches committed to empowering lay people to become compassion-driven changemakers like Jesus. That work has led her toward multiple projects that are re-imagining leadership for the church of the future. She is the co-author, with Rabbi Elan Babchuck, of Picking Up the Pieces: Leadership after Empire.

Kathi lives on a vineyard on the Central Coast of California.

To view videos of podcast episodes, please go to the Igniting Imagination YouTube.

Subscribe to our Learning and Innovation 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?

In this week’s episode of the Igniting Imagination Podcast, we talk with professor Eric Barreto who invites us into a biblical imagination for our work together. We love how he reminds us to keep coming back to the good news of Jesus. Yes! That is what inspires us, forms us, equips and animates us! We hope this conversation gives you a new imagination for what’s possible and if it does, please share with friends and leave us a review! Thank you for listening!

In this conversation, you’ll hear:

• How childhood experiences shaped Eric’s understanding of faith and the church.
• The value of a seminary education today.
• Biblical wisdom for this time of polarization.
• The gift of Hispanic and Latino perspectives in biblical and theological studies.

About Eric Barreto

Dr. Eric D. Barreto is the Weyerhaeuser Associate Professor of New Testament at Princeton Theological Seminary. He holds a BA in religion from Oklahoma Baptist University, an MDiv from Princeton Seminary, and a PhD in New Testament from Emory University. Prior to coming to Princeton Theological Seminary, he served as associate professor of New Testament at Luther Seminary, and also taught as an adjunct professor at the Candler School of Theology and McAfee School of Theology.

As a Baptist minister, Barreto has pursued scholarship for the sake of the church, and he regularly writes for and teaches in faith communities around the country. He has also been a leader in the Hispanic Theological Initiative Consortium, a national, ecumenical, and inter-constitutional consortium comprised of some of the top seminaries, theological schools, and religion departments in the country. He is a member of the Society of Biblical Literature and the National Association of Baptist Professors of Religion.

Visit Eric’s website at: https://www.ericbarreto.com/

To view videos of podcast episodes, please go to the Igniting Imagination YouTube.

Subscribe to our Learning and Innovation 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?

Dr. Randy Woodley, professor, scholar, farmer, and indigenous American, speaks of indigenous ways of leading that seem, on the surface, to be counter-intuitive, and yet as we sit with them, we see how resonate with Jesus’ teachings they are. We are so curious what you think as you listen. What do we have to learn from indigenous cultures about leading in this season? What old patterns do we need to let go of, and new postures embrace? Where are you finding yourself renewed in your leadership and in your spirit? As always, we pray this conversation will spark a new imagination for you and for your ministry and if it does, please share with a colleague and leave us a review.

In this conversation, you’ll hear:

• Difficult truths related to eco-justice, diversity, racial justice.
• The gifts of indigenous spirituality and indigenous worldview.
• Why becoming rooted in the earth is essential.
• A decolonized approach to Christianity and church leadership.

About Randy Woodley

Dr. Randy Woodley addresses a variety of issues concerning American culture, faith, justice, race, our relationship with the earth, and Indigenous realities. He recently retired as Distinguished Professor of Faith and Culture and Director of Intercultural and Indigenous Studies at Portland Seminary, Portland Oregon. His expertise has been sought in national venues as diverse as Time Magazine, The New York Times, Politifact, Christianity Today, The Huffington Post, and Planet Drum: A Voice for Bioregional, Sustainability, Education, and Culture.

Dr. Woodley earned a Ph.D. in Intercultural Studies and remains active in ongoing discussions in a variety of areas concerning spirituality, earth-care, racial and ethnic identity, diversity, peace, social justice, eco-justice, interreligious dialogue, Indigenous studies, agriculture, and spirituality. 

Randy and his wife Edith, are the founders of Eloheh Indigenous Center for Earth Justice and Eloheh Farm & Seeds. Through Eloheh they invite people to a new relationship with Creation and model sustainable farming practices and Earth justice. You can learn more about their work here. And more about their Cultural Consultant work at Sho-Kee here.

Randy’s most recent book, Becoming Rooted: One Hundred Days of Reconnecting with Earth is available here.

To view videos of podcast episodes, please go to the Igniting Imagination YouTube.

Subscribe to our Learning and Innovation 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?

This week’s episode of Igniting Imagination is a bit of a departure for us – for the first time, our guest is a politician! Yep, State Representative James Talarico. We decided that if we are going to do a season on Facing Reality and Claiming Leadership, we ought to directly address the polarization in our country – and where better than Texas politics!?!

James Talarico, a lifelong Christian, active church member, and student at Austin Presbyterian Seminary while serving in the Texas House of Representatives, lives his deep faith in startling ways in his legislative work. If you find yourself disagreeing with his stances, then all the more, he wants to draw you into conversation and even collaboration. He lives a very biblical and profoundly challenging understanding of what it means to love your neighbor. We look forward to hearing your reactions. We pray it will spark new conversations for you, perhaps a new insight into God’s call for you or your church. 

In this conversation, you’ll hear:

• Why James is in seminary and how he navigates faith and politics
• Why polarization is the greatest challenge of our time and how people of faith can respond
• The threat of Christian nationalism to the country and church
• How to lead in an environment of constant criticism
• Stories of hope and making a difference at the local level

About James Talarico

Representative James Talarico is a former public school teacher first elected to serve in the Texas House of Representatives in 2018. Born in Round Rock, Rep. Talarico attended Wells Branch Elementary School and graduated from McNeil High School before earning degrees from The University of Texas at Austin and Harvard University. After college, he taught middle school on the Westside of San Antonio. He currently sits on the Public Education Committee, the Juvenile Justice and Family Issues Committee, and the Calendars Committee.

As a former teacher, Rep. Talarico has worked to ensure all Texas students have access to a quality education. In his first term, he helped write the most significant reform to the state’s school finance system in 20 years. He went on to pass major legislation to open up millions of dollars for student mental health and character education programs, establish the first-ever cap on Pre-K class sizes to reduce student-to-teacher ratios, and improve the quality and affordability of child care. As a type 1 diabetic, Rep. Talarico also passed historic legislation to cap insulin copays in Texas at $25 a month and import low-cost prescription drugs from Canada — dramatically reducing prescription drug costs for Texas patients. In addition, he passed laws to combat teen fentanyl overdoses, ban reality TV policing, increase accountability within the Texas Juvenile Justice Department, and give all incarcerated minors in Texas the opportunity to earn a high school diploma.

For these accomplishments, Talarico was named one of the Top 10 Best Legislators by Texas Monthly magazine.

Article by Adam Wren referenced in the episode can be accessed here. 

Talarico’s websites are here and here.

To view videos of podcast episodes, please go to the Igniting Imagination YouTube.

Subscribe to our Learning and Innovation 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?

Rev. Dr. Dave Odom, who leads Leadership Education at Duke Divinity, works with hundreds of congregations and leaders from multiple faith traditions across the country. As such, he has a unique vantage point to view the realities of the church and what is needed for leaders today. In this week’s podcast episode, Dave shares that a new kind of support is needed for the work of ministry today – specifically, catalytic leaders and organizations (even congregations!) who are discovering and supporting leaders and ministries doing God’s transformative work in the world. Catalysts multiply the witness! May this conversation be catalytic in your work. May it spark a new imagination and perhaps a new collaboration that multiplies your impact. If it does, we hope you’ll let us know. Email us, share with friends, leave us a review. Thanks for listening!

In this conversation, you’ll hear:

• The challenges of polarization in the church today and what leaders can do.
• What catalytic leadership is and why is it so important.
• Why being a healthy church is not the point.
• A story about a congregation that gives Dave hope for the church. 

About Dave Odom 

Rev. Dr. Dave Odom joined Duke Divinity School in August 2007 to launch Leadership Education at Duke Divinity and now oversees all of its programs and publications, including Faith & Leadership. He regularly teaches and facilitates events and both writes and solicits content for Faith & Leadership. Since 2014, he has directed Alban at Duke Divinity School.

In addition, Odom supervises select initiatives at Duke Divinity School, where he serves as an associate dean and consulting professor. He teaches courses on strategy and leadership along with consulting on program and staff development.

Before coming to Duke, Odom was the founder and president of the Center for Congregational Health in Winston-Salem, North Carolina, which supported healthy communities of faith through consultation, leadership development, interim ministry training and vocational discernment.

For more than 20 years, he has been active in the Cooperative Baptist Fellowship. He is an ordained Baptist pastor and graduate of Furman University, Southeastern Baptist Theological Seminary and Princeton Theological Seminary.

To learn more about Leadership Education, visit their website: https://leadership.divinity.duke.edu/

To view videos of podcast episodes, please go to the Igniting Imagination YouTube.

Subscribe to our Learning and Innovation 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?

To view videos of podcast episodes, please go to the Igniting Imagination YouTube.

The Rev. Dr. Amy Butler is a master at facing reality and claiming leadership. In her newly released memoir, Beautiful and Terrible Things: Faith, Doubt, and Discovering a Way Back to Each Other, she weaves together what is real and messy and hard with what is true and hopeful and redemptive, reminding us that the journey of faith is inextricably all those things. In our conversation with Pastor Amy, we get to experience a powerful leader, whose vulnerability and honesty offer a witness of the kind of leadership our beautiful (and terrible) world needs today. We hope you find it inspiring as you seek to navigate and lead in this season! If this podcast is meaningful to you, please share with friends and colleagues and leave us a review. Thanks for listening!

In this conversation, you’ll hear:

• Why Amy chose “Beautiful and Terrible Things” as her theme and book title
• The beautiful and terrible things present in the church today
• The connection between vulnerability and leadership and how Amy has leaned into vulnerability
• Amy’s vision for Invested Faith, the philanthropic initiative she founded 
• An excerpt from Amy’s book

About Amy Butler

Rev. Dr. Amy Butler is the founder of the philanthropic initiative Invested Faith. She previously served as the first woman senior minister of The Riverside Church in New York City, senior pastor of Calvary Baptist Church (D.C.), associate pastor at St. Charles Avenue Baptist Church in New Orleans, and intentional interim minister at National City Christian Church (D.C.). Pastor Amy holds degrees from Baylor University, the International Baptist Theological Seminary, and Wesley Theological Seminary. She's a mother of three children and currently lives in Hawaii.

Amy Butler’s website: https://www.pastoramy.com/

Invested Faith’s website: https://www.investedfaith.org/

Amy’s book is Beautiful and Terrible Things: Faith, Doubt, and Discovering a Way Back to Each Other.

To view videos of podcast episodes, please go to the Igniting Imagination YouTube.

Subscribe to our Learning and Innovation 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?

If you are having conversations about innovation in the church, chances are that Andy Root’s name has come up. Writing books like, When the Church Stops Working and The Church After Innovation and The Pastor in a Secular Age, Dr. Andrew Root is leading the way in helping leaders to name and face current reality and lean into new ways of leading. What we love in Andy’s work, and it comes through in this episode, is that he doesn’t turn to expected solutions or ways of behaving. Deeply grounded in scripture and our shared Christian narrative, he invites us to consider a counter-intuitive way of showing up. As always, it is our great hope that this podcast will spark a new imagination within you, perhaps a new conversation and a new way of leading in this season and if it does, please share with friends and leave us a review! Thanks for listening.

In this conversation, you’ll hear:

• Why the church is in crisis and why the problem we think is the problem isn’t really the problem
• What the Accelerating Age is and what it means for the church
• Excavating the idea of innovation and entrepreneurship 
• Andy’s questions and concerns about innovation in the church
• The question every church leader should be asking right now

About Dr. Andy Root

Andrew Root (Ph.D., Princeton Theological Seminary) is the Carrie Olson Baalson professor of youth and family ministry at Luther Seminary in St. Paul, Minnesota.

Andrew Root is the Carrie Olson Baalson Professor of Youth and Family Ministry at Luther Seminary, USA. He writes and researches in areas of theology, ministry, culture and younger generations.  His most recent books are Churches and the Crisis of Decline (Baker, 2022), The Congregation in a Secular Age (Baker, 2021), The End of Youth Ministry? (Baker, 2020), The Pastor in a Secular Age: Ministry to People Who No Longer Need God (Baker, 2019), Faith Formation in a Secular Age (Baker, 2017), and Exploding Stars, Dead Dinosaurs, and Zombies: Youth Ministry in the Age of Science (Fortress Press, 2018).

For more information about Dr. Andy Root, visit his website at www.andrewroot.org

You can view Andy’s video on the Church in the Accelerating Age here.

To view videos of podcast episodes, please go to the Igniting Imagination YouTube.

Subscribe to our Learning and Innovation 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?

Our guest is Dr. Aaron Kuecker, President of Trinity Christian College in Chicago. We can’t wait for you to hear what they are doing at Trinity Christian to tend to the wellbeing of their students. It is intentional and generous and nothing short of life-changing – from their approach to the funding model to how they are protecting the mid-week “Wellbeing Wednesday.” You can’t help but think: What if all campuses were trying similar things? How would this generation be shaped for good? Perhaps we might all be a bit more grounded and generous and less despairing. We are excited for you to meet Aaron and hear how truth-telling, transparency and a commitment to wellbeing is transforming individual lives, a campus, and a community. We hope it sparks a new imagination in you for what is possible in this season and if it does, let us know! Share with friends and leave us a review. 

In this conversation, you’ll hear:

• Challenges college campuses are facing today
• How Christian theology led to prioritizing student wellbeing
• Exploring a new economic model for higher education
• Leading an established institution through significant change

About Aaron Kuecker

Dr. Aaron Kuecker serves as president of Trinity Christian College. Before assuming this role, he had served as the College’s provost since July 2016. His work as interim president and provost represent a sort of homecoming to the Trinity community. From 2008-2013, Kuecker was associate professor of theology and director of education at the College. In the intervening years, he served at LeTourneau University in Longview, Texas, most recently as dean of the School of Theology & Vocation, professor of theology, and director of the Honors College.

Kuecker’s academic work has largely focused on identity formation in the early Christian church, with an emphasis on New Testament studies and biblical theology. He received his Ph.D. in New Testament studies from the University of St. Andrews in Scotland; his M.Div., from Western Theological Seminary; and his B.A. in political science from Central College. Before earning his Ph.D., Kuecker served as associate pastor and youth pastor at Community Reformed Church in Zeeland, MI.

For more information about Trinity Christian College, visit their website at https://www.trnty.edu/

To view videos of podcast episodes, please go to the Igniting Imagination YouTube.

Subscribe to our Learning and Innovation 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?

This conversation with Dr. Pauline Boss, author of Ambiguous Loss: Learning to Live with Unresolved Grief, is hope-filled, encouraging, validating, and motivating. Her insights manage to be both practical and weighty. She reminds us that we live in a mastery culture – that is, we want to be in control, have the answers, and win – which is, of course, a myth, so we are a nation (yes, a whole nation!) of unresolved grief, needing to name our profound sense of loss in the face of so much uncertainty. Wow! Think about the implications for the church – the essential role we can play in stewarding grief today, navigating uncertainty, residing in hope. This conversation feels like holy ground. We hope it ignites a new imagination for your leadership, your relationships, your way of being in the world.

In this conversation, you’ll hear:

• How Dr. Boss came to coin the term “ambiguous loss” 
• Loss vs. Grief in our culture 
• Learning to sit with loss and unanswered questions
• Ambiguous loss in congregations / leading congregations to grieve ambiguous loss
• Why closure is a myth and what that means for how we live and lead

About Dr. Pauline Boss

Pauline Boss, PhD, Professor Emeritus at the University of Minnesota is a Fellow in the American Psychological Association and the American Association for Marriage and Family Therapy and a former president of the National Council on Family Relations. She practiced family therapy for over 40 years.

With her groundbreaking work in research and practice, Dr. Boss coined the term ambiguous loss in the 1970s and since then, developed and tested the theory of ambiguous loss, a guide for working with families of the missing, physically or psychologically. She summarized this research and clinical work in her widely acclaimed book Ambiguous Loss: Learning to Live with Unresolved Grief (Harvard University Press, 2000).

In addition to over 100 peer reviewed academic articles and chapters, her other books include Loss, Trauma, and Resilience: Therapeutic Work with Ambiguous Loss (W. W. Norton, 2006) and Loving Someone Who Has Dementia: How to Find Hope While Coping with Stress and Grief (Jossey-Bass, 2011). Her most recent book is The Myth of Closure: Ambiguous Loss in a Time of Pandemic and Change (W. W. Norton, 2022). Her work is known around the world wherever ambiguous losses occur, and her books have been translated 23 times into various languages. As of 2022, Dr. Boss was granted Emeritus status as a longtime family therapist, and, as of 2023, Emeritus status in the American Association for Marriage and Family Therapy.

For more information about Dr. Boss, her writings, and the ambiguous loss online training program, see www.ambiguousloss.com.

To view videos of podcast episodes, please go to the Igniting Imagination YouTube.

Subscribe to our Learning and Innovation 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?