This week we visit with dialogue community member Bushra Zafar. Bushra shares her experience living in this era of COVID in the context of her faith tradition, Ahmadiyya Muslim. TCL’s pastoral assistant Pam (Ollie) Jarvis moderates as you meet and get to know this wonderful member of our community!
It depends! Some people consider us their primary faith community, and others see it as a supplement to their own, if they have one.
No, we do not have a dedicated Church Lab space. That said, we meet in-person and online. When in-person, we often meet in homes, spaces in faith buildings or public spaces, depending on the purpose of our event.
No, and yes! Some of our offerings are explicitly Christian, and all are motivated by our understanding of how Jesus cares for people. That said, our dialogues are powered by an interfaith community.
BridgeBuilders Lab is simply alternative nomenclature for our offerings that suit nonreligious purposes. This includes but is not limited to workshops and trainings like Navigating Divisive Conversations and Facilitators’ Training.
Our official mission is to experiment with innovative paths of spiritual growth for all, discovering the Church’s future and the future of faith practice. As we see people sprinting away from religious institutions in the 21st Century, this means that all of our pursuits share one important thing in common: to make spiritual growth, existential questions, and curiosity about meaning accessible to anyone, regardless of religious background. We have many ways of doing this, including our dialogue community, active support of faith leaders and innovators, as well as in serving our community in various ways throughout the year.
Because this work has given us many tools to do peacebuilding work in an age of polarization, it has become a priority for us to serve our community by offering bridgebuilding tools, regardless of peoples’ interest in spiritual growth.
Whoever you are, you are welcome. Protestants, Catholics, Latter-day Saints, Muslims, Jews, Pagans, agnostics, atheists, Buddhists, Native Americans, conservatives, liberals, seekers and more.