Election: How Does Faith Influence Your Thoughts and Fears?

Photo by Frank McKenna

Over the past few months, we asked a few of TCL’s participants to answer the following questions:

How does faith influence your thoughts and fears during election season?

What are your commitments as part of your faith tradition to how you will engage in the aftermath?


Please hear from these three diverse perspectives as a window into the souls of Americans.

1. How is faith influencing your thoughts and fears this election season? I pray often for our national, state, and local leaders. I pray for wisdom for conservatives and for wise counsel. 

2. What are your commitments as part of your faith tradition and how do they inform how you will engage in the aftermath of the election? My commitment to Christ and His word tells me to treat everyone with respect and humility. No matter who wins, I trust God that He (God) is still sovereign despite circumstances. 

-Eileen, Christian
July 2024


1. How is faith influencing your thoughts and fears this election season? Growing up Jewish I was always aware that I was “different”. While I only once experienced overt antisemitism, I did realize some work and social opportunities were not available to me. Similarly, while Catholic students were excused early from grade school (I believe it was on Wednesdays) to attend religious lessons, I and other non-Catholic students had to stay and continue our regular classwork. At the same time, I felt fortunate because while I was a different religion and had to (or chose to) listen to disparaging jokes or stereotypical comments at “my” expense, at least I didn’t look different. The same could not be said of the few African American or Hispanic classmates I had. This early education in how our differences were used to categorize “us” and “them” was not lost on me. Over time it seemed that while the bigotry and hatred had been greatly reduced and a better understanding of each other was taking place, over the past several years it appears I was naive. While I thought that the hate groups which were, and always will be, present were only small fringe groups it now appears they are given the opportunity to come forward with the recognition and encouragement of certain political leaders. We are and always were a nation of immigrants. Historically, we have distrusted and mistreated the most recent immigrants. I thought we had gotten past that, apparently not. It worries me that much of this campaign season has been spent blaming “them” for everything that is perceived as wrong. I fear that the hate mongering will not end after the election, even if its proponents lose soundly. I fear it has taken root and grown to a level where we may have jumped back decades in our understanding and acceptance of the differences in us and our cultural backgrounds that actually make us a better community because of those differences.

2. What are your commitments as part of your faith tradition and how do they inform how you will engage in the aftermath of the election? My faith tradition is an interesting one. The Israelites and then the Jews were the Chosen Ones, and were given laws, practices and customs to differentiate themselves from the “others”. Yet, because of their difference they were blamed for all that was going wrong or perceived as evil by the others. I hope that after the election I will continue to remember that we are more alike than we are different. Ultimately most of us want the same things. I know this is an overused expression, but forgetting it is a recipe for disaster, and all too often war.

-Gene, Jewish
September 2024


1. How is faith influencing your thoughts and fears this election season? I ate lunch today in Cuero, Texas, sitting in a local diner amid table after table of jubilant voters. They were relieved that the nightmare of the last four years is over and that happy days are here again. The name of the diner was Bahnhof Cafe, which was simple enough for me to remember when the woman at the DMV recommended it. I took the opportunity to tell my trip companion about Deitrich Bonhoffer. This theologian, who thought deeply about the role of Christianity in public life, returned to his native Germany from the United States in mid-1939, sacrificing his comfort, safety and, ultimately, his life, in an effort to forestall the atrocities he was witnessing.

Going into election night, I felt strangely calm and open. I wasn’t hopeful; I wasn’t afraid and worried. I anticipated the result that unfolded, so I sat and witnessed. This morning, I wasn’t gutted or sad; I wasn’t worried or scared. This is apparently who Americans are now. Here all of us are.

2. What are your commitments as part of your faith tradition and how do they inform how you will engage in the aftermath of the election? I’m no Deitrich Bonhoffer. I won’t walk into the fire. I’m not brave enough for that. I know, though, that God is with me and for me. Cindy Rigby may have given me the words to describe it, but I know it to be true in my heart of hearts anyway. What I will do is protect myself and my dear ones. I will walk towards safety, with effort and expense and risk alongside. I will do each next faithful thing. That will look like completing my passport application and end-of-life paperwork just in case, and ultimately packing up my stuff and driving to Illinois. A place that won’t be hostile to who I am.

And when I get there, I’ll do in that new place what I’ve done every day in each place up until now: I will be Christ in the eyes of all who see me, Christ in the ears who hear my voice, Christ in the hearts of all who know me. Because I know that Christ surrounds me and surrounds those I love and surrounds all those who are about to get very, very hurt, both stateside and overseas. I will pray that others will step into Dr. Bonhoffer’s shoes, and I will hold the hands of those who can’t.

God bless us all.

-Ollie, Christian
November 6, 2024

Pre-Election Encouragement from Pastor Carrie

Photo by Priscilla Du Preez

Nov 5 is arriving soon. It's a big day, and the days, weeks and months which follow it will be perhaps even more important as we each decide how to treat our neighbors in the wake of election results, and how to nurture -for ourselves and for others- our spiritual, mental and emotional health along the way.

I know so many of us are experiencing stress, if not outright distress, over this election season. Folks are understandably worried for many reasons and on many levels. My prayer for us is that we would remember deep in our beings that the government is very important, but not a god. For those reading this who are people of faith, there is something -Someone(s)- beyond ourselves who offers us care, strength, resilience and connection whose depths reach far past what we can manufacture for ourselves. I wish each and all of you deep Peace today and in the days ahead. I wish for our unshakeable conviction to make our voices known in our political convictions while prioritizing behavior of embodied love and dignity for all human beings whose paths we cross, even when it is difficult. 

I thank you, because if you are reading this, you likely value that bridge building conversations have not been shut down everywhere. They continue in our midst. They will continue in our midst, regardless of political outcomes. Dialogue is a courageous act; I'm grateful for your courage! You are a part of that miraculous space being held for foundational love of neighbor. I thank God for you, and for our connection as peacebuilders. 

I look forward to continuing our crucial conversations together, and I look forward to looking back on this time and being thankful that we were here, together.

If you'd like to read on, here are some additional personal reflections I wrote in early Oct as a reminder and re-commitment to dialogue in such a pivotal moment for our country and culture:

Matthew 22:36-40 (nrsvue)

36 “Teacher, which commandment in the law is the greatest?” 37 He said to him, “ ‘You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind.’ 38 This is the greatest and first commandment. 39 And a second is like it: ‘You shall love your neighbor as yourself.’ 40 On these two commandments hang all the Law and the Prophets.”

I have 2 priorities this election season.

The second one is to vote. Pretty dang important.

The first one is to focus on loving my neighbors who do not vote like me and do not think like me.

Please allow me, especially in this season, to encourage you to live in the reality of who our neighbors are, and to commit to words and actions that love them.

Here are my efforts that I hope may help yours, too:

My focus is on understanding and curiosity, and trying my best to move away from judgment. Even when I am judged.

My focus is on giving dignity to my neighbors, whether they are neighbors whose rights and protections I am concerned for, or neighbors whose votes will trouble me.

My focus is on refusing to oversimplify my American neighbors. I do not believe half of the country is stupid. I want to live in the realities of humankind being complex. I want to remember that it is not informational differences that lead us to different conclusions, but rather subcultural, paradigmatic differences. To create understanding, it doesn't mean sending articles to people. It doesn't mean yelling at people on the internet or in-person. It means entering my neighbors' world to understand their worldview and genuinely caring about it and committing to learning from it. This is much harder work than concluding 165 million people are stupid, because it is work that accepts the reality that other good, intelligent people might conclude something I cannot currently fathom concluding for myself.

It also means bringing an open mind and an open heart to conversations with folks who are different than me. Instead of assuming they need to change, I come willing to be changed myself. What can I learn from this person who is speaking to me?When that is mutual, everyone changes, learns and grows for the better. The hard part of that is, of course, losing control over one's own agenda and hopes for how others need to change; the good part is by letting go, the possibility for all of us to change in yet un-imagined ways emerges.

What I am describing is not something I do perfectly and may never do perfectly. But it is my highest priority for several reasons, including that my faith commands me to love my neighbor and this is me taking that very seriously, to think about what that means and how it needs to look in my life and then trying my best every day at doing this.

It is also important because strong communities exist due to doors that are kept open to conversation, understanding, compromise and change that occurs together. If we shut the door on one another, if we insult each other and denigrate each other, if we belittle one another, then the possibility of creating a critical mass for the kinds of communities we want and need over time is also shut down.

Some say to me that standing up for the rights of the marginalized (whether unborn babies, LGBTQ neighbors or other children of God) stands in tension with staying in relationship with those who would vote against those marginalized neighbors. That the line must be drawn. That choosing to be in relationship over being right sounds nice, but that sometimes being right is important to the basic rights of human lives.

I believe standing up for what we believe in, and protecting the vulnerable in our midst is crucial. There are ways to do this without tearing down those voting against the interests of the vulnerable. If we believe dignity is for all humans, I encourage you (and me) to not take dignity away from people even when they take it away from humans, from souls, we are trying to protect. If we believe in dignity for all, we must model giving dignity to all, and to not inadvertently make it a trading game, or a game at all. If dignity is for everyone, then the hard part is that it is for everyone.

The power of committing to love of neighbor, while seated in the realities of our neighbors different than us, is a power I've seen grow people together in ways my faith tells me only God can make possible. It is a lifetime's worth of work, but it is worthwhile for the ways it forms us and draws us together meaningfully, and for people of faith, the way it draws us to God. Seeing God's work in this way spurs me on to continue to see what happens when we take seriously the mandate to love others -meaning with our minds, our hearts, our souls- in all the best ways we can.

If you are in the trenches of trying to love neighbors that are hard to love with mind and heart and soul, and if you ever need encouragement, please just say the word. We are in this hard work together! God's Peace be with you, child of God, as we take seriously the call of peacemaker (Matthew 5:9).

Announcing Our 2025 Empowering Experiments Mini Grant Recipient!

Holly Porter Phillips is a pastor, writer and trained spiritual director through Anam Cara. After years of wrestling with her place in the church and overthinking life with God, she’s found new ways of encountering the Spirit through simply being. Holly serves as co-pastor at a small church in Austin, Texas where she lives with her musician husband, their three kids and a backyard full of birds.

We are pleased to announce the newest recipient of our Empowering Experiments Mini-Grant: spiritual director, Holly Phillips! Her project is entitled Listening Like a Spiritual Director. The project aims to help more faith leaders adopt the posture of a spiritual director, rather than an authoritarian figure. With the current landscape of church shifting, Phillips sees a need for pastors to serve as a witness to the lives of the community. She says: “When I first began applying to spiritual direction training programs, my director said to me “spiritual direction is the future of the Church.” At the time I didn’t understand what she meant, and imagined it to mean more people would practice or attend spiritual direction. I have grown to realize that what she likely meant is that the posture of spiritual direction, much more than the practice, is the future of the Church. As described above, I believe that there is a shift happening, where people are no longer looking for a pastor to tell them what to do – people are looking for someone to bear witness to their lives. The top priority of this project is to help pastors and other ministry leaders engage with the changing roles they (we!) are being called to. This workshop series will allow pastors to grow spiritually by learning to listen more closely to themselves, to others and to God.”

Listening Like a Spiritual Director will take place once per-month in early 2025 (January, February, March, April) in Austin, TX. Local pastors will meet for 1.5 - 2 hours monthly for four months for a time of centering, teaching and practice. These groups will be part instruction and part spiritual direction groups.

Phillips’ mission aligns with The Church Lab’s mission to envision the Church’s future and the future of faith practice, and we are thrilled to empower her important work!

Facing Calamity: Finding God?

Bushra Zafar is a longtime participant in The Church Lab’s dialogues. She religiously identifies as Ahmadiyya Muslim, and she graciously agreed to write on her experiences with persecution both in Pakistan and America and the ways in which her faith informs how she processes these experiences. We are deeply grateful to Bushra for taking the time out to vulnerably share her stories so that we may grow in understanding and compassion. 

As I sat down to write about persecution, I was faced with the decision of which aspect to focus on. Should I write about the blatant persecution faced by my cousin, who as a teenager got burning hot water thrown on him just for his faith, then as a grown man and a father got caught in the suicide attacks on two Ahmadi mosques in Lahore, Pakistan in 2010? Or the more insidious persecution, where he along with wife and son, for the past 8 years are living statelessly, waiting for a country willing to offer refuge? Alternatively, I could discuss the assassination attempt on my father due to his faith. Or on a grander scale should I tackle how my country of choice, the United States, is behaving myopically to the events in Palestine and Israel. In the end, I found inspiration in the resilience of the persecuted Palestinian civilians, whom I witnessed being martyred, maimed and displaced again and again. Despite the constant loss, when news of another loss was reported to them, in countless videos I would hear them respond with the words: 

“Sufficient for us is God, and an excellent Guardian is He” (Quran 3:174).

Growing up in Pakistan during the oppressive regime of military dictator, Zia ul Haq, being an Ahmadi Muslim was made illegal. Merely saying “Assalam-o-Alaikum”, a greeting of peace, could lead to jail. Many Ahmadis in the 80s were jailed for the offense, and as a lawyer my father got to represent some of them in court. Many Ahmadis even lost their lives at the hands of mob violence. In Islam, anyone who loses life while testifying steadfastly to their faith is honorably called a martyr. The Arabic word for martyr is “shaheed”, although its etymological meaning is more closely that of “witness”. Here, I must confess that as a child, witnessing the painful persecution made me idealize martyrdom. I saw it as a shortcut to finding salvation, which normally requires the toil of righteous living, and bearing through persecution. It’s only with time and experience that I have understood that the true essence of martyrdom lies in bearing witness to one's faith by living each day in the presence of God, not through death but through living.

Now, the question remains: what does living in the presence of God actually entail, and how can it be put in action in our daily lives? Mirza Ghulam Ahmad, the founder of the Ahmadiyya Muslim Community and the Promised Messiah in his book “How to be free from sin” expounds on this subject and makes the case that only through living in the presence of God can a person achieve true salvation and it can only be achieved through balancing two things, namely:

  • the Rights of God and 

  • the Rights of Man.

As an exercise in testing this theory, let's juxtapose Taliban’s religious extremism and French secularism. They exemplify the consequences of losing balance in either direction. The Taliban's extreme focus on the Rights of God results in the infringement of human rights, including the policing of women's apparel. Conversely, the French are committed to keeping God out of public life, again, leading to, among other things, to the policing of women's apparel. These contrasting approaches highlight how extremism in either direction can ultimately lead to persecution of people who may have a differing viewpoint.

The question remains that how can we find comfort in a world where God’s commandments of doing good unto others, a teaching found in all major religions, is ignored because of corrupted interpretations or intentions? What’s the prescription for breaking the cycle of hate and violence?

As I look at the broken world around me, I for one find comfort in the response by God’s chosen ones who refused to reply in kind to hate and advocated for love and compassion. I find comfort in the words of Mirza Ghulam Ahmad: 

“You should conquer hearts and hearts are not conquered through wars, but through superior morals.” (Malfuzat Vol.10 P.437)

 The words of forgiveness on the lips of Jesus (peace be on him) while on the cross inspire me:

“Father, forgive them; for they know not what they do” (Luke 23:34).

I learn from the wisdom of a victorious Prophet Muhammad (Peace be on him) as he entered Mecca. To avoid bloodshed, he announced clemency even for his most ardent enemy, Abu Sufyan, the Meccan leader who had tortured and persecuted him and his followers. I also find comfort in the words my father said to me when Zia ul Haq died in a plane crash in 1989 and I gleefully brought him the news that the wicked persecutor of Ahmadis had finally met his fate. He replied in the most somber manner with a couplet of a Sufi poet:

“Do not rejoice in the death of your enemy, for your friends too will die one day.”

So, in the end, through analyzing the response to the persecution one might be able to discern whether the persecuted have the power to see God and be seen by Him. The ones who respond to calamity with equal or greater force or those who say, through their pain:

 “Sufficient for us is God, and an excellent Guardian is He” (Quran 3:174).

Election Season Dialogue Series

Photo by Marek Studzinski

As we head into the thick of election season, TCL is getting ready to offer up some politically-centered dialogues. We hope to provide impactful support as many of us serve as both activists AND bridgebuilders leading into and coming out of Election Day on Nov 5.

TCL will hold a series of dialogues this fall:

  • a Republican spotlight on Sept 30

  • a Democrat spotlight on Oct 7

  • a post-election debrief dialogue on Nov 11

All are 6-8pm Central. They can be attended IRL or online, with an RSVP to carrie@thechurchlab.org.

What is a spotlight dialouge?
A spotlight dialogue is where we will spend a chunk of initial time showcasing a voice or voices from a particular political party, and what their experiences are like. I will provide support and help to spotlight voices so they feel ready and steady, and so I can facilitate the whole group dialoguing the rest of the session around themes that will come up from the spotlight voices. 

Would you like to be a spotlight voice?
If you are willing to share your perspective as a "spotlight voice" of what it's like to be a part of your political party in this moment in history, we'd love that! It'd be so helpful for others to better understand your world and where you're coming from. Please click the RSVP link below and write to let us know you're game to share your perspective by August 30 for the Republican dialogue, or by Sept 7 for the Democrat dialogue.


Want to share but not as the spotlight voice?
If you want to share your voice, but you're hesitant, you're welcome to email me and I'll zap you 10 questions to answer in writing or on a video of 3-7 minutes (either one would work well) that we could share out during group time. I'd need your responses by or before Sept 9 for the Republican dialogue and Sept 23 for the Democrat dialogue.


Want to observe but not share?
If you just want to observe one or both of these dialogues, you can RSVP and simply let us know that you're observing anytime before 10am the morning of the dialogue.


Otherwise, you are welcome to simply come participate in the dialogue (no need to be a "spotlight voice,") so long as the ground rules we introduce at the beginning of the dialogue are amenable to you. RSVP's for participants can also be done anytime before 10am the day of the dialogue.

Please don't hesitate to lmk if you're interested!

With gratitude,

Carrie

Featuring Our Spiritual Entrepreneurship Guest Speakers

One of our main missions at The Church Lab is training and supporting innovative ministry initiatives. This year we will complete our first seminary cohort for spiritual entrepreneurship at Austin Presbyterian Theological Seminary. The cohort is entitled SpirEnt (short for Spiritual Entrepreneurship) and we invited six spiritual entrepreneurs at varying levels of their career to speak to the students about their experiences and to answer any questions they may have.

As a thank you, we want to share with you a bit about these entrepreneurs and the meaningful work they do!


Stephen Norberg is a social entrepreneur who has started 6 businesses (including Ants Gourmet, Inc. which makes sauces, spreads and seasoning out of ants!) and 2 nonprofits. He hosts an anti-bullying podcast called Fight Monsters in which he hosts conversations on adversity, trauma, emotional health and spirituality. 


Amina McIntyre is a Theology and Practice Fellow at Vanderbilt University and a playwright. She serves as the assistant director of the Sun-Walking Fellowship, an organization which cultivates creative approaches to reimagining youth ministry. She considers herself a womanist artist minister, who writes plays that examine the human condition of longing and seeking. Her plays are meant to be agents of healing as they address the complexities of race, gender, religion and socioeconomics.


Jillian Mason Shannon is the owner of Neotopia, a bookstore in San Antonio that sells books and holds classes and events in the realm of theology, philosophy and culture. The space is meant to be a sanctuary for seekers and skeptics to help participants deconstruct our preconditioned notions about God and reconstruct to promote human flourishing. 


Ryan Cagle is a trained spiritual director and graduate of the Center for Action and Contemplation’s Living School. He hosts a podcast and spiritual direction experiment called Roll for Spirituality which discusses the intersection of tabletop role-playing games and spirituality. 


Ben Johnston-Krase is an organizing pastor of Farm Church in Durham, NC. The congregation meets on a farm and addresses food security by honoring people with locally grown food. Farm church asks the question: How can we love and honor people with good food? 


Alicia Llewellyn is a co-founder of Quite Uncommon, a technology firm that organizes, builds, tests and launches innovative ideas. She is also a strategist at NASA. Her background is in education, communication and theology. She wrote a book we recommend entitled “What Comes Next?: Shaping the Future in an Ever-Changing World - A Guide for Christian Leaders.” 

What IS the bridge?

photo: Joe Beck

By Carrie Graham

I was recently training facilitators around bridge building, and one participant asked a central yet very astute question:  What IS the bridge?

If we are peacebuilding, a.k.a. "bridgebuilding" with one another, exactly what is the bridge?

Here are a few thoughts on this that feel timely:

First, what it's not: Building a bridge does not mean building consensus or persuading effectively. These are worthy efforts in many scenarios. They are simply different pursuits than what bridgebuilding refers to here.

The bridge we are building allows us to understand each other more fully, allows us to love our neighbor for all of who they are, for where they are the same and where they differ, for their sense of humor and taste in food and care for others just as much as the beliefs that contradict with our own. 

Why do that? What is building this bridge for? 

There are many reasons. The one most compelling to me personally is that it's transformative. Oftentimes, we go into a dialogue hoping others will be changed. Dialogue is a process of becoming true friends with people who differ from ourselves, which changes us. It changes everyone involved in unexpected, unpredictable ways. More touching to me is that it changes us toward growth, toward a maturity we did not suspect possible. It moves us from a posture of defense to a mutual posture of vulnerability, from a sentiment of holding one's ground to a freedom to be sincerely curious about the lens through which a person so different than us sees the world, understands it, cares for it. 

In so doing, it also provides a space for us to exist as our whole selves, free to be curious, to express ourselves without fear and with kindness and directness, to connect, to play, to be more whole than when we started.

Ultimately, on this bridge, we learn to freely welcome and be welcomed, somehow in the face of - rather than the denial of - mutually exclusive beliefs. We are invited into a spiritual maturity which allows for this paradox to exist in our minds, hearts and interactions.

The shorthand for dialogue is indeed making friends. It's just with people we might never think we'd become friends with, joke around with, delight in, reach out to when a need arises. 

When we find ourselves in friendships with others with mutually exclusive beliefs, this then helps us to imagine the humanity of strangers with different beliefs. It shifts how we interact with others at work and even how we engage with our loved ones at home. 

When social and political tensions rise and we have already invested in these bridgebuilding tools, they come to our aid. It is not a perfect scene, but we find ourselves being more thoughtful about the purpose and utility of what we share not just with other dialoguers but in any environment, as well as in what we ask, where and when and how. We find our voice, too; we know its worth and can let it ring both clearly and compassionately at once. Here is where the bridge becomes a place of community service and leadership.

With division at an ever heightening climax, where burning bridges with others feels like the best thing to do to preserve and protect our own dearly held convictions, there is a long-term tragedy embedded in this scene that is converting into an ever nearer threat of reality. Insistence on distrust of others -whether nearby or seemingly far away from us- by nature escalates and moves to speaking without listening, shouting for a way of life in a way that insists that others are at best wrong and at worst a real and present threat to our own way of life. This process is both sadly reinforced, and the downward spiral of it is exacerbated, in our online engagement. 

In some cases that said threat is true and real; our opinions and policies threaten to, or already do, in some cases impinge on some citizens' way of life, their values, their beliefs. It is a deeply affecting, deeply emotional experience to watch this happen before our eyes. The bridge's purpose is not to be an impediment to standing up for one's beliefs, for activism which involves us exercising our voices and expressing our convictions. The bridge is a companion and anchor to any such efforts.

History tells us, however, that louder and louder shouting -when the ingredients are centrally anxiety and fear and not care and love- leads to violence. We have already seen that. Escalation leads to war, to death; it doesn't lead to a better life for anyone. It doesn't accomplish what we hope it will. It feels smart to choose "might makes right." It feels pragmatic, realistic. Unfortunately it is none of those things. 

The bridge can be, though. Leaning into seeking to understand before being understood, as the prayer of St. Francis of Assissi states it, is not at all naive work, as it seems to some. It is, if anything, the opposite. It is hard, urgent-yet-long-term work which faces directly what many of us are afraid to confront: the neighbor status of the person who we feel threated by, and the difficult road of finding a way to honor each other that is accomplished not by shouting or hoping others will change, but being willing to be changed alongside neighbors of difference in a long-term commitment (-this time frame including years beyond our own time, as an investment in future generations) to this bridge. Here is where we find solutions, here is where we find our better selves, a better life for all of us, a platform of compromise that upholds the greater good and nurtures a paradigm for precisely that. It is a more nuanced way of holding one another with the insistence that we can, after all, love our neighbors as ourselves. 

Thanks be to God.

Amen. 

-Rev. Carrie Graham

founding pastor, The Church Lab

Movie review: The Pope: Answers

*This review reflects the individual views of the author, and not the views of the entire organization.

In March of 2024,  some folks from The Church Lab gathered together to watch The Pope: Answers and discuss their reactions afterward. The response to the documentary was overwhelmingly positive and inspired rich dialogue by TCL. This is unsurprising. The documentary shows ten young adults from all over the world, presenting Pope Francis with the very real issues of their lives, and they held nothing back. The young adults included a sex worker, a young man who was abused by a priest as a child, an atheist, a non-binary person, a feminist, an evangelist who protests outside Planned Parenthood, and more. The diversity of their experiences and their opinions ensured heated debate - but what we saw was a demonstration of advanced dialogue. 

The Pope set the tone for healthy dialogue, as he did more listening than talking. He seemed non-judgmental over the - sometimes provocative - experiences of these young people, only expressing the occasional grimace (as with the mention of women aborting their fetuses with a clothes hanger). One may have wished to hear more input from the pope at times, as most of the documentary was back-and-forth dialogue between the participants. However, the fact that he embraced the opportunity to hear from the people and observe rather than insert himself says a lot about his intentions. Rather than seclude himself in his bubble and force his own theology on the outside, he allowed the real world to puncture his bubble. 

When Pope Francis did take his turn to speak, he was clear on his opinions. Once everyone expressed their diverse points of view, he would point out that the best points of each side are the ones that come from a place of sensitivity for the human person. He’d remind everyone that these are not mathematical problems, but human problems. In other words, when we are dealing with issues of the heart, we can’t look to a spreadsheet or statistical data for our answers. We must look into one another’s eyes and hear them speak from the heart.

That being said, Francis appeals to the dogmatic rules of the Church in times of difficult confrontation. For instance, when a young woman - who identifies as a feminist - challenged him as to whether a women could ever be in his role, he maintained that the ministry is a role for men, while women carry equally - if not more important - roles elsewhere. This answer seemed to disappoint the woman who asked the question, and that reaction was likely shared by a large portion of the audience. Yet, it serves as a blunt reminder that dialogue doesn’t always mean we change our mind, or say what the other people want to hear. Perhaps agreement is not the goal, but engagement and relationship despite disagreement.

A final take away from Pope Francis is his profound point that we tend to over identify with adjectives, confusing these adjectives for nouns. We say things like, “I'm a feminist/nonbinary/conservative/Christian/atheist/insert your own.” But God, he says, is more concerned with nouns that adjectives. “Adjectives are not baptized, nouns are.”

Each person - from the Gen Z participants to Pope Francis himself - remains authentically themselves throughout, never bending under pressure or fear of criticism. I found this film to be exciting to watch for that reason especially. It felt like a once in a lifetime opportunity to hear Pope Francis comment - unprepared - on the true realities of our generation. Whether or not final conclusions were drawn on difficult issues, the true take-away was that the only way to evolve as a culture is by practicing the way we speak to one another despite our differences, and to view each other not as mathematical problems but as our fellow human beings. 

By Jillian Mason Shannon.

Shannon is the pastoral assistant at TCL and a spiritual entrepreneur. She is the owner of Neotopia, a non-profit bookstore in San Antonio, TX that holds classes and events surrounding subjects of theology, philosophy and culture.

Spotlight Organization: Cure with Love!

Emanuel “Boo” Milton started Cure with Love Strategies, LLC in 2020 to build out immediate and sustainable strategies to provide relief and support to communities. Since its start, Cure with Love has distributed over 3,000 physical units of social emotional learning kits, connected 90 youth with optical health care, and advised multiple leaders in nonprofits, government, and youth services in effective impact.

When I became aware of Emanuel “Boo” Milton’s company Cure with Love, I was taken by its specific mission to help teens and young adults with conflict resolution. In particular, the Cure with Love program “C.H.I.L.L.” which trains teens on how to deal with conflicts when they arise. In this way, Cure with Love specializes in preventative work--helping young people, specifically in the Baton Rouge area, deal with conflict before it escalates. We at The Church Lab view dialogues as preventative measures to conflict. As we have witnessed, those who are practiced in the tools of dialogue are more readily equipped to handle tensions in relationships when unexpected conflicts arise, whether that’s interpersonal conflict or big systemic division such as with the upcoming political election. Not only does dialogue prevent conflict, it also encourages richer, more flourishing relationships in and through inevitable tensions. 

Please enjoy the following excerpts from a conversation between myself and Boo as we relate the similarities between his mission and TCL, and hear how he explains the way Cure with Love came about, and how its evolution mirrored his own story. 

“I actually began my work in the interfaith realm. A lot of people don’t even realize that. But right after high school I got linked with an internship with Interfaith Federation for Greater Baton Rouge. But my work then shifted into public safety, violence prevention work. So to even think about the intersection of interfaith organizations (as preventative) and public safety blows my mind. 

Cure with Love is really an evolution of who I’ve become, manifested into a business model. I started off in high school as a rapper. Then as I evolved as a person and things started shifting, God opened the door for radio. So I was a radio personality for a couple years after that. I had a number 1 show on MAX 94.1 here in Baton Rouge. And as I started to evolve even more, God showed me that what I enjoyed most about the entertainment industry wasn’t the vanity of it, but the connection with people. 

From there, I started throwing more community-based events. My first event was “Boo Milton and Friends Give Back Weekend”--manicures and haircuts for kids or anyone in the community who wanted it. Then came my dodgeball event. We had about 120 people participate and 1,000 people in attendance. We had security at the event, but we made sure to have at least one officer on every team to increase positive community and police relationship.

We did a survey with 10% of those in attendance and 76% said they made between 1-5 connections and 18% said they made more than 5 connections. All it takes is 1 connection for you to really feel an impact. Another question on the survey was “How often do you see law enforcement act in a positive way in the community?” Before the event, 79% said never. After the event, 90% said they did. So we created a touchpoint for those who never see law enforcement in a positive way, see them in this space. 

After this, I got a fellowship with a group called Cities United. A network of over 150 cities that work with their mayors on creating public safety plans for that city. If we can get [mayors] on board, then we can make the most impact saving the lives of young Black men and boys, because they are the most victims of homicide.

We look at violence as a public health crisis and we look at preventative measures for violence. Law enforcement is a piece of that but they often monopolize the conversation about public safety. It’s illogical because people call the police after something happens. Their job is to enforce the law, so a law has to be broken for them to even engage. At that point it’s already too late. It’s a reactive measure instead of a preventative measure. 

I knew what I was doing was helping, but I needed the language and the knowledge of how this connects and makes sense to the larger landscape of saving lives. So Cities United gave me that language. From there I started Cure with Love. 

Once I started Cure with Love I started expanding the types of things I do to different outreach initiatives. For instance, C.H.I.L.L. is a conflict resolution model. It stands for Calm, Hear, Interpret, Lead, and Learn. This teaches kids the core of decision making as a whole, anytime you get hit with any type of conflict--anywhere from a flat tire to larger interpersonal relationships.

Social media is by far the biggest conflict teens are facing today. There are conflicts that you don’t even realize stem from social media. So engaging in social media in a healthy way from the jump is what stops all that from happening. 

DigCitCommit (Digital Citizenship Commitment) is a toolkit for dealing with social media. It emphasizes the idea that we are citizens in this society. What defines a citizen is living in a certain community and abiding by a certain set of rules. With the internet, you live in this digital world but there are no rules. How do we create a space that is safe and healthy for everyone in a world with no rules? So some of the largest tech companies in America came together and created competencies, ways we can live on the internet that don’t just present a list of don’ts but tell them what they can do.

Ultimately, our goal at Cure with Love is to create and leverage moments of joy and connection. Because joy and connection are the foundations of any type of positive social impact. So I prioritize relationship building as a preventative measure. 

It’s like what you guys do with interfaith work- connecting people of different faiths so that whenever war or something does happen we have these core moments of connection. If we can do a better job at creating positive moments between people then we can get to the social impact that we want to see.” 

TFW: You Flopped!

by Jillian Shannon

It’s 5:55pm. Class starts at 6pm. You pace the room waiting for people -anyone!- to arrive. A part of you hopes no one shows so you can call the whole thing off. (You’re not as prepared as you would like.) You play scenarios in your head: I would rather nobody show up than just ONE person. Imagine teaching a class to just one person?! How awkward! 

Jillian Shannon is the pastoral assistant at TCL and a spiritual entrepreneur. She is the owner of Neotopia, a non-profit bookstore in San Antonio, TX that holds classes and events surrounding subjects of theology, philosophy and culture.

At 6pm on the dot, two people arrive simultaneously. You begin the class, but you’re already in your head. You float above your body and watch yourself speak, and judgmentally tally the amount of times you end a sentence with “right?” - your nervous tick. You wonder what the students are thinking as they watch you with blank stares. Are they into this? Are they bored? Did she just look at her phone?\

It’s 6:25 and you’re out of material. Class is supposed to end at 6:50. Usually you leave space at the end of class for questions and comments, but this group is particularly quiet. 

Luckily the students pull through and ask some interesting questions! Maybe they enjoyed the subject matter after all. Still--you know this wasn’t your best. And you will beat yourself up for it for the rest of the night. Maybe tomorrow too.

The above scenario happened to me a few weeks ago. I wonder if any of you can relate? As a newbie in the spiritual entrepreneurship world, a recent graduate and sudden “authority” on complex subjects, I so often live beyond my comfort zone. Most of the time, the uncomfortability pays off. Then there are times when you feel like you failed and you are tempted to question what you’re doing. 

As the name “The Church Lab” suggests, spiritual entrepreneurship involves experiments, and not all experiments go according to plan. But failures (or perceived failures) are an important part of the process. Here are some of the take-aways from my reflection on this night:

  1. It would help to establish my personal rules and boundaries. What is my minimum number of participants? i.e. if only one person shows up to a class, do I cancel? Reschedule? Adjust the style of the class and continue as a one-on-one? 

  2. My personal style (this may be different from person to person) is to overly prepare. I thought I knew the subject well enough to swing it in the moment, but when the circumstances threw me off balance, I became insecure with the material. If I had a solid lecture prepared, it would have helped a lot. 

  3. The irony of this particular situation is that the topic of that class was Thomas Merton’s false self/True Self. The false self is our superficial identity, our preferences, our appearance, or, as we call it in the West, our “personality.” The false self worries about gaining the approval of others. Our “True Self”, or our “essence” as they call it in the East, is our incorruptible spiritual nature. The True Self is attentive to a different vibration in the room. In that particular class, I worried how I was being received and that worry interfered with my role as a vessel for information and connection. 

Pastors, teachers, leaders and speakers of any kind dealing with spiritual matters must face this issue a lot. We know that the reason we feel called to speak is to connect other people to something greater than ourselves and to access that sacred space beyond the superficial realities to which we’re accustomed. Yet, we occasionally collapse into the smallness of the moment, concerned for our own image and the reputation of our work.

Spiritual entrepreneurship requires us to put our egos and personal agendas to the side and act as a vessel for whatever mission we are trying to accomplish. This leads us to accept failures as a part of the learning process. Perhaps, then, we can more easily laugh off the flops and find more joy in our vocational process.

Spotlight Organization: Neotopia!

Hello TCL readers! Jillian here, your pastoral assistant from over the summer! I am absolutely thrilled to be back to work with Carrie and The Church Lab.

As you know, The Church Lab loves to empower innovative ministry initiatives. One of the ways TCL plans to empower fellow ministries is by spotlighting them on the blog. We’ll be kicking off this new tradition with my own company, Neotopia!

Neotopia began as an instagram page deconstructing our preconditioned notions about God, and reconstructing to promote human and cosmological flourishing. This is done by looking at God and religion through a lens that merges—rather than rejects—science, and through biblical interpretations that are usually only learned by going to seminary. The goal is to bring theological education to the everyday person who wouldn’t ordinarily seek a seminary degree, but is still interested in the subjects.

Last year, the Neotopia instagram came off the pages and into the flesh with a bookstore (Neotopia Books) in San Antonio, TX. This bookstore sells books in the realm of theology, philosophy and culture, and holds classes on subjects like biblical interpretation, science & theology, and mystical contemplation. 

Most recently, Neotopia became established as a 501c3 organization so that we may obtain the necessary funding to keep up this work. The classes and events have proved to be fulfilling to the community, and Neotopia serves as a sanctuary for seekers and skeptics (of any or no religion) who may not otherwise have a spiritual community with which to express their deeper questions about God. 

To follow along with what we’re up to over in San Antonio, follow the instagram or check out the website for a curated selection of books to sink your teeth into!

Thank you for welcoming me back into this community. I look forward to the meaningful work ahead!

TCL's 2024 Peacebuilding Tips and Peptalk!

photo credit: ASAP Pang


Most people I have been asking about peace in 2024 respond with similar words: 


overwhelmed, angry, hopeless, scared. 


I noticed a handful of years ago that rhetoric in my circles began to elevate peacebuilding as a concept, though not always as a committed practice in their lives. This is understandable; it is hard, slow work! Just because a problem has urgency does not mean the solution is quick. Quite the opposite here. If peacebuilding is a priority in your life, I do not recommend leaning on sound bites or social media to help you or the world out in making a difference for the better.


Yet more recently, I have ceased to hear even much talk about the importance or timeliness of dialogue. I less frequently hear an elevation of peacebuilding as an idea. Instead I hear rhetoric like, "It's time to stand up for what is right." "I'm tired of listening. I'm tired of talking." I get that, totally. So many of us are weary and exhausted, confused or grieved. Some of us, at this stage, are just plain shutdown. Done with the whole conversation about any given news-related concept in particular. In many cases, folks are just trying to care for their mental health and survive in the individualized difficulties around us, much less the political and systemic ones.


It is clear that HOPE -even just conceptually- has taken a nosedive in the realm of nurturing peace against the backdrop of our political election and international wars and strife, suffering and injustices.


Hope is key for being fully alive. In all regards. Let's talk about Hope.


The Church Lab (TCL) is committed in 2024 as a witness to Hope that cannot be snuffed out, regardless of how broken the circumstances are. 


TCL is distinct by its primarily spiritual pursuit of dialogue. We exist for the future of faith practice. We believe anyone, with any entrypoint into a conversation around spirituality and beliefs, can both have their journey dignified while also actively supporting others' spiritual growth, even as we exist in various traditions and on different paths. 


Most importantly, we believe that our work hinges on that which is Greater than ourselves. We believe that there is something beyond ego, beyond the individual, that acts to draw us to our concept of God and/or common humanity, which deeply connects us one to another. It is slow, beautiful work. It does not hesitate in the face of hopelessness.

We don't have to manufacture hope in the dialogue community; we simply bear witness to its movement, again and again. 


TCL wishes to invite you into this experiential work of Hope this year by welcoming you to our dialogues, to our hangouts, to our theology nerd nights, to trainings or workshops which may pique your interest. If you're not ready to join, you are always welcome to observe and not participate. If you're not ready to observe, we hope you'll subscribe to our mailchimp (at the bottom of any page of our website) to be updated on blogs like this, as well as our activity, as a source of inspiration to you.


We are excited to get to work this year, bearing witness to the Hope we witness in and among our dialogue work and our various spiritual journeys. 


And who knows where Hope might show up otherwise. 


Let's get to work in keeping our eyes, minds and hearts open to goodness that may rise up despite our finite individual lenses' odds. May our collective lenses, offered to one another, offer our communities something greater than ourselves. May it allow us to notice Hope rising that much more.


Regardless of what you feel ready for with or without TCL, please allow us to share these tips for peacebuilding in your own world in 2024. May it offer even a seed of help and Hope as we begin our 2024 together.


=================


11 Tips to Get Started on Reflecting Hope for Peacebuilding in 2024:


  1. Expect yourself and others to be fully human. This is not a synonym for making mistakes. Being human presumes mistakes; move beyond this to consider richly what we will do with that presumption. What is the role of forgiveness and grace in your life, of empathy or repair, for yourself and for others? How does an awe of human resilience factor into your daily life? How can this ongoing consideration affect your life for the better? Forgiveness and grace breed resilience, safety, vulnerability, which breed mutual transformation.

  2. MULTI-PARTIALITY, a concept I picked up from an excellent organization called BuildUp (howtobuildup.org), is a great 2024 lens. It is a commitment to default to any given viewpoint's legitimacy in that people's journey has brought them to that viewpoint for good reasons worth having curiosity about. We can be better peacebuilders when we give dignity to our journeys, and engage with unloaded question asking for our own learning and understanding purposes, rather than for the primary purpose of tearing down the viewpoint itself. Gaining a more textured understanding of viewpoints gives humans more texture. It is the opposite of dehumanizing. It is foundational to peacebuilding. It is a refusal to dehumanize by leaning into -perhaps counterintuitively, initially- the presumption that there is a path to understand how someone got somewhere. This does not mean we have to no longer own our own paths and opinions and stances; they can both be held simultaneously.

  3. Seek to understand before being understood (from the prayer of St. Francis of Assisi). This is a muscle which our culture does not often ask us to exercise, if ever. What does it mean to see if all involved in a particular conversation, whether 1:1 or in a group, are game to mutually agree to practice understanding everyone else in the conversation, not as a means of gaining your own defense against their viewpoint, but as if you were about to be commissioned to live in this world according to that other person's viewpoint. A full dedication to it. What is incredible about this process is that if everyone puts forth a good faith effort into this, the result more often achieves what actors individually "defending" themselves does not: all are heard, all have a voice. Learning commences. Change within each of ourselves is born.

  4. This is exercise. This is ongoing work to be integrated into life more and more deeply over the span of our lives. This is not a one-time effort. This is just like any other muscle: it needs practice, and it gets stronger and more deeply solidified with ongoing practice.

  5. Become self-aware of stereotypes, whether they feel acceptable to you or not. Do you have stereotypes about people who vote differently than you? Who make particular social media statements or noticeably abstain from them? Who live in areas with which you're not familiar, or areas you associate with past harms to you? Do you have stereotypes about people being particularly uneducated, or ignorant, out of touch, or impractical, or heretical? Whether you are in a place to shift those assumptions, it's good to develop an awareness of all the stereotypes we carry around with us, and to register that it does impact how we engage with ideas and the world.

  6. Be wary of the use of "they" to refer to people or institutions doing something you aren't in favor of or that hurts you or someone you love, or even the opposite. Boycotting "they" as a group plural in such situations can help speaker and listener(s) alike to develop a more precise sense of who is doing what, how or why we came to believe that. It keeps us from catastrophizing or creating empty conspiracies that fuzzier narratives tend to breed in and among us. Instead of using "they" in this context, try using specific names or organizations, a person or people. Try to be precise about numbers; is it really "everyone" that "always" or "never" does something? That is rare indeed. Is it actually 500 people or 50 or 5 or 1? The often invisible "army of they" can escalate not only conflicts, but our own emotions about it, whether or not it's a real army.

  7. Pause when feeling hate or spite or other negative emotions toward someone. Get curious. We can ask ourselves: "Where is this coming from? What are my beliefs about this person and what they are saying? How is it connected to previous experiences I've had that may make my feelings -including fear or anger- even stronger? Is there a power dynamic at play? Do these feelings exist because I feel threatened or tired, because this person may try to exert some kind of authority or power over me?" Understanding where negative feelings toward others come, and getting curious about them, can often soften them or direct them in more constructive ways. It often takes the oxygen out of a negative -or potentially harmful- feeling around someone or something that can otherwise snowball very easily.

  8. Take dehumanization seriously, particularly with jokes, as they can serve as a signal that it's ok in your social circle to dehumanize. I know, that sounds like such a strong claim! It can seem like being a party pooper to refuse to joke or make fun of someone or a group of people, but data shows that being willing to crack jokes about a group of people in an insulting way (even if it seems harmless) is an entry point into normalizing dehumanization. This is where it starts, friends. If we make jokes about groups of people with whom we have serious issues, we can pause and ask yourselves to what extent it's a positive coping mechanism, or if there are other jokes we could make that are not implying an entire people group has less value, voice or dignity than ourselves. We don't have to lose our sense of humor; it's just about being more intentional. Harmless-seeming humor has been shown to play an active role in taking increasing amounts of dignity away from people, including groups of which you may be a part. We can make minor shifts in what we crack jokes about in order to make a major shift in humanizing all those around us.

  9. Be aware of what you stand for. You can stand for particular opinions and policies and still carry a high -or even highest- value of giving dignity to all humans, to letting people be people. You can have conviction on various issues and exercise a conviction of compassion, kindness…not only to those who agree with you but in general. As a muscle which begs for practice day in and day out. Peacemaking itself IS a stance. A tough one, and a worthy one. It is one Jesus modeled and stood for again and again. 

  10. Be in your own world. Individual relationships -the time they take, the intention, the understanding, even the laughing together- have a spiderweb effect that ripples out into bigger systems. Quick change is often empty; it dissipates. Be a worldchanging peacemaker by changing your own world: Find a friend in your vicinity who you know is different from yourself. Don't begin by jumping into the deep end and talking about all the ways you're different. Begin by learning about one another's lives, enjoying common ground, building one another up as people as much as possible. Once y'all have become people you deeply care for and trust, and vice versa, move to trickier ground only then. I highly recommend getting practice and training from The Church Lab or other dialogue practice ground, whether religious or not, while pursuing this. 

  11. People will tell you -you may even tell yourself- that peacemaking is impractical, illogical, impossible. It is made that way when it is a low value in our lives and the lives around us. Practicing peacebuilding, the slow and good work of it, not only breeds Peace; as its possibility unfolds as a reality in your own life, it builds up Hope for others who may move from wishing for a better world to participating in one. It is not illogical; it is vital. The more of us who practice bridge building, the more practical is becomes.


Please join us for our own dialogue muscle practice! Subscribe to TCL's mailchimp at the bottom of any page on our website to keep up with upcoming events and to access RSVP links! Or email Rev. Carrie Graham at carrie@thechurchlab.org with questions or thoughts on how we might be able to be a resource and support to you in your own peacemaking endeavors.

Advent Conspiracy 2023!

credit: Robert Thiemann

On Dec 3, we gathered to have a beautiful conversation and represent TCL's community as we gave away the remainder of our operational budget tithe (10%). 

We focused on local, state, national and international causes. We contributed to both systemic and personal aid causes. We kept a keen eye out for causes that are maybe overlooked, as TCL is committed to creatively meet needs that may fall through the cracks. We still had to narrow it down from there! There are SO many incredible orgs doing vital work. Check out the organizations our TCL community supported. Let us know if you end up partnering with one of these orgs, so we can share about your experience!

  • Pending in January:

We have partners doing international peacebuilding work who have offered to recommend local, grassroots organizations doing peacebuilding work in the Middle East. We have reserved funds as we await their recommendations in coming weeks. We are excited to lift up those doing incredible, high stakes, thoughtful peacebuilding work in areas where some may have lost hope for precisely that.

Casa Marianella welcomes displaced immigrants and promotes self-sufficiency by providing shelter and support services.

Migrants on both sides of the U.S.-Mexico border are blessed to be served by an incredible network of pastors who Fellowship Southwest is proud to support.

Seedling’s mission is to mitigate the impact of parental incarceration on children in Central Texas through school-based mentoring.

Truth Be Told is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit service organization located in Austin, Texas providing trauma-responsive programming for justice-involved women, disrupting cycles of incarceration.

The Freedom to Read Foundation (FTRF) is a non-profit legal and educational organization affiliated with the American Library Association.  FTRF protects and defends the First Amendment to the Constitution and supports the right of libraries to collect - and individuals to access - information.

Pastor Carrie's TCL 10th Anniversary Reflections!

What does one say to commemorate 10 years of ministry with TCL? It must be thank you. 

Many years ago, my late mentor encouraged me to take a blank piece of paper and write anything that came to heart and mind about my call. He said it might take a few seconds or many months, but once I had it down on paper, I was to ask how this need was already being met. Are there churches or non-profits doing this work? How can I join in? How can I support and serve alongside? He said that if I found this need not being met, only then consider if I am being called to start something new. Great advice all around.

At this point I had been a pastor for a spell, I had facilitated interfaith dialogues for some years. This work had begun to blur together on its own, creating some important questions about spiritual life in the U.S. In doing this blank paper exercise, I eventually came to know something new was on the horizon.

The Church Lab’s mission is to explore innovative paths of spiritual growth for all, discovering the Church’s future and the future of faith practice. No biggie. 

Ten years ago, most of us didn’t know each other. Now when I get to see each of your faces, countless cherished memories spring into my mind’s eye.

Now here we are. God making something out of nothing. Among us, inside of us even. I could not have conjured this up. TCL’s community has defined and shaped what our mission means, what it looks like, how it happens, by being who you are, together. 

You have collectively defined who The Church Lab is through hundreds of dialogues, 3 pastors’ cohorts, Reimagining Service lay leader cohorts, churches with whom we’ve consulted, folks who join our workshops and trainings, folks who hang out for pastoral care and spiritual support, folks who care for each other among you during highlights and hard moments, our upcoming seminarian cohort for spiritual entrepreneurship, our board, our Advisory Council, our leadership support, my personal support system, all of our prayers, heartfelt donations and generous pledges that make this a concrete reality and more. Thanks be to God.

My own work with TCL has been harder than I could have imagined. For me, as for many faith leaders, pastoral work can bring a sense of isolation, often recovering from discrimination, implied and explicit messages of why and how The Church Lab cannot be done. It’s uphill and not ever meant to be downhill. The risks taken change but they are always high stakes. The uncertainty is certain.  It can be soul crushing labor. It has involved sacrifices I did not understand I was agreeing to when I signed up for this, said yes to this call. I’m guessing at minimum other pastors reading this know exactly what I’m talking about. But God uses these challenges to form me into the kind of person and pastor I aspire to be: one always learning to love more like Jesus. This work is always changing. The lessons are always evolving. So I am so delighted and grateful for our TCL experiment not just being about the content of our ministry but also its operations. How can the future of faith practice be a wholehearted and sustainable endeavor for not just me but all vocational ministers in this season of great change for faith practice? The theologically sharp and giant hearted Ollie Jarvis has been vital in defining this when forming Team TCL. Thank you immensely. To Andrea, Natalie, Jane, Carlos, Ashlyn, Julia, Marianne, Dash, Jenelle, Laura, Stephen, and of course our board and Advisory Council…anyone who has done formal work as part of Team TCL, I am beyond grateful to you.

But my part in TCL’s story is not centrally about my own daily grind. It’s about the honor of cheering you on, in walking with you, in bearing witness to your lives. I understand my pastoral role to be like Barnabas from the New Testament of the Christian Bible: I aspire to be a daughter of encouragement. The miracle is in your allowing me to do so, knowing you were volunteering to be changed. This is beyond human; to me, this willingness alone is God’s work in and among us.  

I get to see in this broken world how you exercise your faith, persevere in your lives with hope, and sometimes hope against hope. I get to see the love you extend to one another with no safety net. This is The Church Lab. You have each made it what it is by vulnerably and fully being the way God has made you to be, and seeing what happens when you do so together. You have come together to create a faith community representing any tradition and none at all. Who does that? How is that a thing? But somehow it is, by God’s grace!

You individually and collectively represent kindness, heart and depth in a world which rewards none of it. It is powerful to be around. Standing in the gap that says building bridges is not possible; we exist as proof that bridges are absolutely possible. We come together to laugh and giggle, to throw our hearts and our guts on the table, whether you left religion or dedicated your life to it, and you dare to trust that this will grow you spiritually, grow you as a person and us as a people. The bravery this takes as people who live in a very messy, divided world in a very messy time, and in a very transitional-messy moment for faith practice, is outstanding. Getting to walk with y’all in these moments again and again…that’s what has built and rebuilt my own heart again and again. 


This is hard work we all engage from each of our angles. But it’s not the blood, sweat and tears that make TCL TCL. For me, it’s the letting go. It’s receiving God’s gifts for us, which we encounter in each other. It’s the surprises we didn’t expect to be changed by. It’s the conflicts we resolve, or learn to live with in care, and come out stronger through. It’s the hopelessness which encounters the hope that we hold for each other. It’s hope encountered. Faith discovered. Love-in-action, shared. It IS the embodiment of the way perfect love drives out all fear, as 1 John references.


I love discovering the future of faith practice with you, through our experiments together. I can think of no other pursuit so worthwhile and fun. And none of us know what that’ll look like for sure. 


What I do know is that it has been and is an indescribable honor to dedicate my life’s work to supporting the lives y’all are committed to living. Truly, look what God has done in and among us. It cannot be described in words sufficiently. Though we have done an excellent job of hitting the highlights tonight.


I hope the following may speak to all of us, whether as a mantra or blessing or prayer. This is the prayer of St. Francis of Assisi, which represents to me who we are and who we’ve defined TCL to be:

Lord, make us an instrument of your peace: where there is hatred, let us sow love; where there is injury, pardon; where there is doubt, faith; where there is despair, hope; where there is darkness, light; where there is sadness, joy. O divine Master, grant that we may not so much seek to be consoled as to console, to be understood as to understand, to be loved as to love. For it is in giving that we receive, it is in pardoning that we are pardoned, and it is in dying that we are born to eternal life.

Thank you. Thanks be to God for y’all. May God bless each of you and our community in The Church Lab.

My cup runneth over with Joy; may this be true for all of us as we continue life together. Amen.

Meet TCL's New Pastoral Assistant, Jillian!

Hi all! Jillian here 👋 I’m the new pastoral assistant for The Church Lab. I live in San Antonio, TX, and I look forward to connecting with the TCL community very soon! 

Some things about me:

I recently graduated with my Masters in Theology from Perkins School of Theology. My narrower field of interest is “process theology.” It is my strong belief that religion should be compatible with—rather than siloed from—science. Therefore my specific passions lie in the convergence of theology with other sciences (cosmology, astronomy, psychology, and so on). This type of study ultimately promotes progressive ethical stances and healthy interreligious dialogue. 

Before my journey in divinity school, I lived in New York City for 14 years. I went to college for acting and continued in the arts world for a while after school. My community in New York was religiously diverse—in fact, I was the only self-identifying Christian in the group. That experience made me more sensitive to the ways Christianity is viewed from an outside perspective, and it strengthened my desire share alternative ways of looking at Christianity. It also gave me the opportunity to learn from different faith backgrounds and make interreligious connections.

When I’m not working with TCL, I’ll be hanging out with my husband, Chris, and 5-year-old son, River. My husband runs a vintage clothing store and my son loves painting, skateboarding and swimming. I can usually be found sitting outside reading a book and watching River do his thing. Oh, and I have another boy on the way in September. 😀

I love music (especially indie and R&B) and artsy films. My guilty pleasure is reality TV (namely BravoTV and shows about finding love). I run a theology and culture instagram account called Neotopia that incorporates all of the above interests when relevant. 

I so looking forward to getting involved in all the great things TCL is doing! Here’s to more innovative practices and open dialogues that BREAK barriers rather than cater to them!

xo, Jillian Shannon

What 2023 Holds

photo credit: Cristian Escobar

Happy New Year, everybody!

This year TCL is leaning into growth. Not numeric growth, but the growth inherent to our mission. We hope to lift up and support the spiritual growth of anyone who has anything to do with us. 

This is what we mainly focus on doing already; how will we emphasize it in a special way in 2023?

First, we have focused on caring for each other as an already-existing dialogue community the last few years, getting us through the pandemic and emergence from lockdown. Now we will move toward bringing in yet more fresh perspectives, working toward readiness for nuanced topics again, and connecting in person when possible.

We will embody these values in our own operations, as the way we run will lean into sensing where God leads and being faithful to that unfolding direction, day by day. This is challenging and exciting spiritual work! We will seek to prioritize people over business, purpose over outcome.

We will work to connect through and celebrate our stories of spiritual growth and connection across difference, and of what it means to offer a spiritual home for both the devoutly religious and those who hang their spiritual-home-hat primarily in TCL's explorative sphere. We will share our stories with others who might be inspired, encouraged or helped by them! This includes the book projects Carrie will continue to work on. 

We all continue to emerge from our post-pandemic malaise and define new norms for ourselves and for our systems. For those who are not religious and find themselves emerging with new existential and spiritual questions, we seek to be a home for exploration and growth in a way that suits the needs of this moment in history. 

Through all this and more, TCL begins 2023 with a commitment to open-hearted work which gives dignity and hope to the spiritual growth for anyone seeking it. Come as you are. <3

TCL Advent Conspiracy 411!

 
 

On Dec 4, we gathered to have a beautiful conversation and represent TCL's community as we gave away the remainder of our operational budget tithe (10%). This is part of TCL’s annual Advent Conspiracy event!

Want to learn what Advent Conspiracy is? Watch this short video!

We focused on local, state, national and international causes. We contributed to both systemic and personal aid causes. We kept a keen eye out for causes that are maybe overlooked, as TCL is committed to creatively meet needs that may fall through the cracks. We still had to narrow it down from there! There are SO many incredible orgs doing vital work.

It is important to us to make sure that the whole of TCL's community can support the direction of our giving decisions. We made sure that where some of these causes might relate to issues with varying religious perspectives, the causes to which we contributed focused on the mental and physical well-being of particularly young people, rather than advocacy for a particular issue itself.

Please do let Pastor Carrie know if you have any questions about any of these causes!

There are many ways to support these amazing organization. If you are interested in volunteering or finding other ways to get involved, we encourage you to check out the links. Let us know if you end up partnering with one of these orgs, so we can share about your experience!

With gratitude,

Rev. Carrie

Donations were sent to:

a) Iranian Diaspora Collective

b) Casa Marianella

c) Freedom to Read Foundation: Judith F. Krug Memorial Fund

d) KIND health clinic

e) Transgender Education Network of Texas

f) Fellowship Southwest: Knox Fund for Immigrant Relief

g) Disability Rights Texas: The Texas Protection and Advocacy Agency


TOTAL: $4,634.90

Orgs we think we hope you will learn about, give to and/or volunteer with:


Thanks for participating in a community who is committed to giving to our communities!

A Special Note About Spring 2023 Events!

image credit: Mortiz Knoringer

The Spring 2023 Calendar is here!

Coming up soon, we have some new events, some classic events; all worthwhile events! 

Please check out our spring lineup and join us!!

Click HERE to find events. Save the dates in your 2023 calendars!

Some important things to know about TCL's spring dialogue work:

The last few years, during pandemic lockdown and initial emergence from it, we have emphasized nurturing our existing dialogue community. We have tackled nuanced topics, to be sure, with emphasis on lifting up our common spirit most often. It has been a special season for us as dialoguers.

Going into the spring of 2023, we are sensing it is time to seek evolving our experiments in a couple of key ways:

  1. We seek to be more invitational to new dialoguers once again. If you haven't been to dialogue in a while, or you have thought about it but never tried, this spring is a GREAT time to come observe or try participating!! Email carrie@thechurchlab.org for more info.

  2. We seek to stretch ourselves into dialogues of both a common spirit and in exploring loving our neighbor in distinctions. Both are important aspects to building bridges and wholeheartedly loving our neighbors. Especially as our culture loses hope in the possibility of fruitful bridge building in scenarios of difference, we are here to engage the work that can provide that much-needed hope, not to mention a unique form of spiritual growth for all involved. 

In order to do these two things, we are

  1. keeping all dialogues open to digital access and in-person access alike, yet with 3 dialogues in the spring asking those who are within driving distance to come on over for an in-person session if at all possible. This will help give us a space to invite newcomers to connect with us IRL, as we find ourselves in a season where few people are looking to join new efforts which call for more Zoom meetings. It also helps us engage more sensitive dialoguers, or more relationally-enriching dialogues, that are trickier when 100% digital. That said, those of us who zoom in from other locales are already doing above-and-beyond work to be fully present, and we are honored for their presence in any and every dialogue.

  2. keeping a couple of session topics open until we get closer to the day, so we can discern as a group if there is a dialogue we have not been able to pursue in recent years that we might collectively be interested in and ready for when that given spring session arrives. This allows us to grow and stretch in the ways our group deems fitting for the moment, rather than creating a pressurized situation to be engaged with a topic that we may not desire or be ready for quite yet. We can feel that out as we move forward together.

    What will stay the same? Because of the wonderful people involved, this will continue to be fun. This will continue to be enriching and enlightening. This process will continue to connect us deeply. I am so looking forward to dialogues with you all!

I hope you will check out calendar today, save the dates of dialogues and all other events which pique your interest.!

Here's to learning and growing together as we kick off TCL's 10th year of service in 2023!


With heaps of gratitude,

Rev. Carrie Graham

founding pastor, The Church Lab

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