The Future Is Here

Micah 6:8

"The Lord has shown you what is good. He has told you what he requires of you. You must act with justice. You must love to show mercy. And you must be humble as you live in the sight of your God."

Have you ever wondered how to create change in your city through grassroots community organizing? Have you ever wondered if there is a biblical framework for how to impact public policy in a just & merciful way?

So much of what we deal with as youth workers are directly connected to how our cities, schools, and communities are governed. Each community has its own unique set up policy issues that affect the way our kids learn, live, and develop. As you live in proximity with your students, your heart may feel burdened to create a more just society where youth can safely grow up and thrive.

There's hope. You can be a part of organizing & bringing change to your community.

In this episode of The Future Is Here Podcast, our host and CEO Tommy Nixon sits down with guest Alexia Salvatierra (Professor at Fuller Seminary) to take you through a biblical framework for why & how you can create a grassroots movement & impact policy change in your city.

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Our Kingdom citizenship doesn’t allow us to be content with injustice, and neither does the future of the Church. In this episode of The Future Is Here podcast, our host and CEO Tommy Nixon sits down with pastor, author, speaker, activist, racial justice educator, Dominique Gilliard to discuss why we must remember incarcerated people the way scripture does. This is an episode you DO NOT want to miss.

Dominique is the Director of Racial Righteousness and Reconciliation for the Love Mercy Do Justice (LMDJ) initiative of the Evangelical Covenant Church (ECC). He is the author of Rethinking Incarceration: Advocating for Justice that Restores, which won the 2018 Book of the Year Award for InterVarsity Press. Gilliard also serves on the board of directors for the Christian Community Development Association and Evangelicals for Justice. In 2015, he was selected as one of the ECC’s “40 Under 40” leaders to watch, and the Huffington Post named him one of the “Black Christian Leaders Changing the World.”

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In a world where "Evangelical" has become a dirty word, we as believers in the future of The Church must ask ourselves, "How do we reclaim evangelism?" UYWI believes we must lead this next generation to be on fire for Jesus, and excited about sharing the beautiful and powerful truth of Christ. But what does that look like and how do we separate it from the increasingly notorious connotation of the mere word, "evangelical." In this episode of The Future Is Here podcast, our host and CEO Tommy Nixon speaks to Erica Schimelpfenig, Executive Director of YouthWorks in Minneapolis, about including all kids of color in living on mission and what that movement looks like for the future. 

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UYWI believes some of the best art comes from suffering and pain—that it is most affecting when created from the margins of the urban contexts that we are involved with. It is no coincidence then that Christian tradition was birthed out of suffering, that spirituals and many worship songs come from slavery. Even modern music, such as rock & roll and hip hop—for the most part—comes from a place of expressive pain. In this episode of The Future Is Here podcast, our host and CEO Tommy Nixon speaks to Thomas Terry, spoken word artists and founder of label and art collective Humble Beast, to go beyond the surface, to the underground, and bring up the beauty that will shift our perspective on art and the gospel.

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The evangelical industry is a $1.2 trillion dollar industry that includes megachurches, book deals, television deals, movies, music, and curriculum—all put together. With an institution this large and flowing with dollar signs, we've got to be critical of the things we've built. We must open up this conversation to uncover what needs to be corrected for the future of the church to thrive. In this episode of The Future Is Here podcast, we’ve invited our Creative Director Shuree Rivera and Jam The Hype’s George Moss—both who are very familiar with the industry—to discuss the above with critical eyes that look to the future.

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Peacemaking is not just a good idea, it’s the mission of God and the vocation of God’s people. So what would the world look like if the Church took seriously, our call to be peacemakers? In pursuit of the answer, our guest Jon Huckins from The Global Immersion Project talks to our host Tommy Nixon about how he immerses himself into conflicts around the globe. In this episode of The Future Is Here podcast, learn how peacemaking is central to our faith, for it is an actual way of life and the very adventure that we've been saved into.

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In this episode, our guest Dr. Efrem Smith breaks down how the Evangelical Church has orphaned reconciliation away from repentance and restorative justice. Everything changes when we understand that there's no reconciliation, unity, nor right relationship with God and others without repentance and restorative justice. It's a great cost to be a reconciler, to truly repent and say yes to the work of restorative justice. Though it is part of the gospel, people may call you a Marxist, a Socialist, and exile you from Christian orthodoxy just for doing what is biblical!  But God calls us into this great work. Now more than ever, we need individuals to lead in this manner. It's time to build a new church with the theology of repentance, reconciliation & justice at its core.

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The Church of the future must be trauma-informed. The World Health Organization has found that approximately 70% of individuals worldwide have been exposed to some type of traumatic event in their lifetime. This figure is even more pronounced in urban populations. In fact, one study found that nearly 90% of individuals who reside in low-income urban areas have experienced many types and combinations of trauma. With this evidence, church leaders must operate from a place of healing. You can't give what you don't have. When church leaders are operating from unresolved trauma, it is possible to do more harm than good. We must address these underlining issues as leaders. Episode 3, featuring Dr. David Wang, is an invitation to deep healing. Dr. Wang is a licensed psychologist, pastor, and associate professor of psychology and pastoral counseling. He is also the editor of the Journal of Psychology and Theology and serves on the editorial board for Spirituality in Clinical Practice (an APA journal).

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In this episode, Tommy Nixon speaks with UCLA Professor, Pastor, and author of “The  Brown Church,” Robert Chao Romero to unravel the multi-ethnic reality of the Kingdom of God and discuss why it is so important to have the WHOLE body of Christ contribute to the Church and Kingdom. This means embracing the beautiful inevitability of the future of the church being brown. 

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Our host Tommy Nixon speaks to Steve Carter, pastor, author, and co-host of The Home Team Podcast, about what the future of church-going looks like and how megachurches who are not embracing this new normal through the digital age, will suffer heading into #thefuture, a future that is young, urban, & multi-ethnic.

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