Welcome back to the Strategic Imagination Sandbox, hosted by Learning Forte!  We return for the final portion of episode 7, with Stacy Williams-Duncan and our guests, Haley Bankey and Alicia Hager, as we talk about Assessment and Feedback Communication and Collaboration

Guest Bios:

The Rev. Alicia Hager is the Communications & Community Curator for The Gathering of Leaders and the Assistant Rector of Grace Episcopal Church in Holland, MI. When not communicating, curating, or priesting, Alicia loves spending time with her family, traveling, and all things feline. 

Haley Bankey is the Director for Partnerships & Program Innovation at the Episcopal Church Foundation and also serves as the Executive Director for Gathering of Leaders. Prior to working with Gathering of Leaders, Haley served as the Director of Operations and Management for her home parish of St. George Church and School in San Antonio, TX. She also ran her own faith-based operations consulting company with a primary focus on project management of multi-year, large scale community projects. She has been a website designer focusing on user experience, and is currently the Digital Product Owner for the Congregational Vitality Assessment Tool at ECF. Haley grew up in the Episcopal church in the middle east and brings an international perspective to her work. Her passion is equipping lay and clergy leaders alike through leadership training and community building to grow God's church into the future.

Copyright 2023 Learning Forte | www.learningforte.com | Intended for Participants in the Strategic Imagination Sandbox and not public distribution.

Welcome back to the Strategic Imagination Sandbox, hosted by Learning Forte! We return for part two of episode 7 with Stacy Williams-Duncan and our guests, Haley Bankey and Alicia Hager, as we talk about "Clear Objectives Lead to Effective Collaboration in Change."

Guest Bios:

The Rev. Alicia Hager is the Communications & Community Curator for The Gathering of Leaders and the Assistant Rector of Grace Episcopal Church in Holland, MI. When not communicating, curating, or priesting, Alicia loves spending time with her family, traveling, and all things feline. 

Haley Bankey is the Director for Partnerships & Program Innovation at the Episcopal Church Foundation and also serves as the Executive Director for Gathering of Leaders. Prior to working with Gathering of Leaders, Haley served as the Director of Operations and Management for her home parish of St. George Church and School in San Antonio, TX. She also ran her own faith-based operations consulting company with a primary focus on project management of multi-year, large scale community projects. She has been a website designer focusing on user experience, and is currently the Digital Product Owner for the Congregational Vitality Assessment Tool at ECF. Haley grew up in the Episcopal church in the middle east and brings an international perspective to her work. Her passion is equipping lay and clergy leaders alike through leadership training and community building to grow God's church into the future.

Copyright 2023 Learning Forte | www.learningforte.com | Intended for Participants in the Strategic Imagination Sandbox and not public distribution.

Welcome to the Strategic Imagination Sandbox hosted by Learning Forte!  We are eager to dive into episode seven and communicating with clarity to invite partnership and sustain energy.  This episode comes as the final episode of the final movement of the Sandbox. Unreal we are here already. 

This month’s topic is one of our favorites. Communication and collaboration go hand in hand. One supports the other and back again. They remind leaders not only that our work is not a siloed venture, but also that it requires intentionality- even practice. 

This month, in addition to Stacy Williams Duncan and me, we are grateful we have two guests: Haley Bankey and Alicia Hager. Haley is the Executive Director of The Gathering of Leaders and Alicia is the Community and Communication Curator of the Gathering of Leaders. GoL, as it is commonly known, assists in the empowerment, support and development of leaders. GoL provides a place for leaders to come together without contentiousness and partisanship to share their love of Christ and of the Church, to empower each other through mutual encouragement, to deepen their skills as transformational leaders, to establish networks which will aid their ministries, and to clarify their understanding of God’s emerging vision for the renewed Episcopal Church.

We love their values statement: We envision the renewal of the dioceses and congregations of the Episcopal Church through transformational leaders dedicated to the missionary call of Christ and growing the Church in spiritual depth and in numbers as it effectively serves all sorts and conditions of people through the transforming power of Jesus Christ.

Guest Bios:

The Rev. Alicia Hager is the Communications & Community Curator for The Gathering of Leaders and the Assistant Rector of Grace Episcopal Church in Holland, MI. When not communicating, curating, or priesting, Alicia loves spending time with her family, traveling, and all things feline. 

Haley Bankey is the Director for Partnerships & Program Innovation at the Episcopal Church Foundation and also serves as the Executive Director for Gathering of Leaders. Prior to working with Gathering of Leaders, Haley served as the Director of Operations and Management for her home parish of St. George Church and School in San Antonio, TX. She also ran her own faith-based operations consulting company with a primary focus on project management of multi-year, large scale community projects. She has been a website designer focusing on user experience, and is currently the Digital Product Owner for the Congregational Vitality Assessment Tool at ECF. Haley grew up in the Episcopal church in the middle east and brings an international perspective to her work. Her passion is equipping lay and clergy leaders alike through leadership training and community building to grow God's church into the future.

Copyright 2023 Learning Forte | www.learningforte.com | Intended for Participants in the Strategic Imagination Sandbox and not public distribution.

Welcome back to the Strategic Imagination Sandbox, hosted by Learning Forte! We return for the final portion of episode 6, with Stacy Williams-Duncan and our guest, Keith Anderson.

This episode hinges on how formative and summative assessment are vital for both near term actions and long term impact.

Our guest, The Rev. Keith Anderson, is a pastor ordained in the ELCA. He serves as the pastor at Upper Dublin Lutheran Church in Ambler, Pennsylvania. He is the author of The Digital Cathedral: Networked Ministry in a Wireless World (Morehouse, 2015) and co-author with Elizabeth Drescher of Click2Save Reboot: The Digital Ministry Bible (Church Publishing, 2018), the second edition of their popular book.

Keith was a pioneer in digital ministry and has been chronicling for over a decade the ways in which digital technologies shape churches and their ministries. As a pastor, Keith has been applying these learnings to the practice of parish ministry in a post-COVID environment. He has led his congregation in restructuring its staffing model, adopting a renewed statement of their Mission, Vision, and Values, authoring a Strategic Plan for 21st Century Ministry, becoming a “Reconciling in Christ” congregation, the Lutheran designation for being an open and affirming church, and establishing new processes, procedures, and systems in a post-pandemic environment.

Copyright 2023 Learning Forte | www.learningforte.com | Intended for Participants in the Strategic Imagination Sandbox and not public distribution.

Welcome back to the Strategic Imagination Sandbox, hosted by Learning Forte! We return for part two of episode 6, with Stacy Williams-Duncan and our guest, Keith Anderson. 

The Rev. Keith Anderson is a pastor ordained in the ELCA. He serves as the pastor at Upper Dublin Lutheran Church in Ambler, Pennsylvania. He is the author of The Digital Cathedral: Networked Ministry in a Wireless World (Morehouse, 2015) and co-author with Elizabeth Drescher of Click2Save Reboot: The Digital Ministry Bible (Church Publishing, 2018), the second edition of their popular book.

Keith was a pioneer in digital ministry and has been chronicling for over a decade the ways in which digital technologies shape churches and their ministries. As a pastor, Keith has been applying these learnings to the practice of parish ministry in a post-COVID environment. He has led his congregation in restructuring its staffing model, adopting a renewed statement of their Mission, Vision, and Values, authoring a Strategic Plan for 21st Century Ministry, becoming a “Reconciling in Christ” congregation, the Lutheran designation for being an open and affirming church, and establishing new processes, procedures, and systems in a post-pandemic environment.

Copyright 2023 Learning Forte | www.learningforte.com | Intended for Participants in the Strategic Imagination Sandbox and not public distribution.

Welcome to the Strategic Imagination Sandbox hosted by Learning Forte!We are eager to dive into episode six and focusing on near-term actions to generate long-term impact.  This episode comes as the first episode of the final movement 3 of the Sandbox, where we turn our attention to a clarity of objectives and messaging that can sustain collaboration and community vital to our hybrid vocations.

This month, in addition to Stacy Williams Duncan and Greg Klimovitz, we are grateful our guest is someone who knows quite a bit about focused efforts vital for collaboration, someone both Stacy and I have worked with frequently over the years. The Rev. Keith Anderson is a pastor ordained in the ELCA. He serves as the pastor at Upper Dublin Lutheran Church in Ambler, Pennsylvania. He is the author of The Digital Cathedral: Networked Ministry in a Wireless World (Morehouse, 2015) and co-author with Elizabeth Drescher of Click2Save Reboot: The Digital Ministry Bible (Church Publishing, 2018), the second edition of their popular book.

Keith was a pioneer in digital ministry and has been chronicling for over a decade the ways in which digital technologies shape churches and their ministries. As a pastor, Keith has been applying these learnings to the practice of parish ministry in a post-COVID environment. He has led his congregation in restructuring its staffing model, adopting a renewed statement of their Mission, Vision, and Values, authoring a Strategic Plan for 21st Century Ministry, becoming a “Reconciling in Christ” congregation, the Lutheran designation for being an open and affirming church, and establishing new processes, procedures, and systems in a post-pandemic environment.

Copyright 2023 Learning Forte | www.learningforte.com | Intended for Participants in the Strategic Imagination Sandbox and not public distribution.

We return for the final portion of episode 5, with Stacy Williams-Duncan and our guest, Emily Wray.

The concluding chapter of each episode hinges on assessment and evaluation of our work and leadership. 

Emily Wray is the founder of Make Sense Media, an award-winning Instructional Designer at Full Sail University and a Course Director in their Media Communications Bachelor of Science program.

Outside the classroom, Emily is engaged in a number of award-winning digital storytelling projects for reflection and therapeutic processing, for social justice, and for career development. Emily is civically engaged with several organizations that serve marginalized populations in the local community. Emily is also the author of the RISE Model, which is a framework for the giving and receiving of meaningful feedback. The RISE Model has been implemented in classrooms, corporations, and government agencies around the world. Emily is widely recognized for her work with RISE and is regularly invited to speak at high-profile educational events including SXSWedu, the New Media Consortium (NMC) Conference, the Apple Distinguished Educator (ADE) Institute, and Future of Education Technology Conference (FETC).

Copyright 2023 Learning Forte | www.learningforte.com | Intended for Participants in the Strategic Imagination Sandbox and not public distribution.

We are eager to dive into episode five as we focus on planning for feedback to enable responsive and progressive iteration.  This episode comes as the third and final episode of movement two of the Sandbox, where we turn our attention to the organizations we lead and serve and the values that shape their work. Last month we talked quite a bit about how constraints as our contextual reality can drive creativity. This week we dive into feedback and assessment of our work as a way to assure they are grounded in our values and move us towards real impact.

We are grateful our guest is someone who knows about feedback and assessment, someone who has developed a model we at Learning Forte use with great frequency.  Emily Wray is the founder of Make Sense Media, an award-winning Instructional Designer at Full Sail University and a Course Director in their Media Communications Bachelor of Science program.

Outside the classroom, Emily is engaged in a number of award-winning digital storytelling projects for reflection and therapeutic processing, for social justice, and for career development. Emily is civically engaged with several organizations that serve marginalized populations in the local community. Emily is also the author of the RISE Model, which is a framework for the giving and receiving of meaningful feedback. The RISE Model has been implemented in classrooms, corporations, and government agencies around the world. Emily is widely recognized for her work with RISE and is regularly invited to speak at high-profile educational events including SXSWedu, the New Media Consortium (NMC) Conference, the Apple Distinguished Educator (ADE) Institute, and Future of Education Technology Conference (FETC).

Copyright 2023 Learning Forte | www.learningforte.com | Intended for Participants in the Strategic Imagination Sandbox and not public distribution.

Welcome back to the Strategic Imagination Sandbox, hosted by Learning Forte! We return for part two of episode 5, with Stacy Williams-Duncan and our guest, Emily Wray.

Our last episode scratched the surface a bit on planning for feedback and assessment. This episode is the one we were really excited about, as we expand and integrate that conversation into the RISE Model developed by our guest, Emily Wray.

Emily Wray is the founder of Make Sense Media, an award-winning Instructional Designer at Full Sail University and a Course Director in their Media Communications Bachelor of Science program.

Outside the classroom, Emily is engaged in a number of award-winning digital storytelling projects for reflection and therapeutic processing, for social justice, and for career development. Emily is civically engaged with several organizations that serve marginalized populations in the local community. Emily is also the author of the RISE Model, which is a framework for the giving and receiving of meaningful feedback. The RISE Model has been implemented in classrooms, corporations, and government agencies around the world. Emily is widely recognized for her work with RISE and is regularly invited to speak at high-profile educational events including SXSWedu, the New Media Consortium (NMC) Conference, the Apple Distinguished Educator (ADE) Institute, and Future of Education Technology Conference (FETC).

Copyright 2023 Learning Forte | www.learningforte.com | Intended for Participants in the Strategic Imagination Sandbox and not public distribution.

Welcome back to the Strategic Imagination Sandbox, hosted by Learning Forte! We return for the final portion of episode 4, with Stacy Williams-Duncan and our guest, Kristen de Marco, executive director of Gateway HorseWorks.

Copyright 2023 Learning Forte | www.learningforte.com | Intended for Participants in the Strategic Imagination Sandbox and not public distribution.