Igniting Imagination

This week, Shannon Hopkins and Rev. Mark Elsdon continue their take over of the Igniting Imagination podcast to speak with Rev. Dr. Willie James Jennings, Professor of Theology and Africana Studies at Yale University Divinity School. Shannon, Mark, and Rev. Dr. Jennings dive into a powerful conversation about faith, land, and community, exploring how church property decisions are deeply intertwine...

This week, Shannon Hopkins and Rev. Mark Elsdon are taking over the Igniting Imagination podcast! They’re joined by Bob Smietana, National Reporter for Religion News Service and author, to dive into this season’s theme: “Properties with New Purpose.” As we've been partnering with churches across the country, many questions have come up. This week’s episode centers on one of the big ones: “What bro...

Welcome to season 13 of the Igniting Imagination podcast! This season, we invite you into a story of hope and possibility, where church properties are reimagined as vibrant hubs for community flourishing.  Rev. Lisa Greenwood and Shannon Hopkins, co-founder of Rooted Good, explore the evolving role of churches as valuable community assets. With church properties transforming across the U.S.,...

Welcome to the season 12 finale of the Igniting Imagination podcast! This week, host Rev. Lisa Greenwood and co-host Rev. Kathi McShane speak with Rev. Dr. Blair Thompson. Lisa, Kathi, and Blair reflect on conversations with various esteemed guests throughout the season, revealing how joy, hope, and building community hold new significance in contemporary contexts. They share personal stories and...

Joy is not just a fleeting emotion but a deep, sustaining force that connects us through authenticity and community.  This week, host Rev. Lisa Greenwood and co-host Rev. Kathi McShane are joined by Rev. Tyler Sit, a pastor, community organizer, and social entrepreneur, and Rev. Rich Havard, Senior Program Officer for Wayfarer Foundation, to explore the transformative power of joy in faith an...

This week, host Rev. Lisa Greenwood and co-host Rev. Kathi McShane speak with Rev. Dr. Kenda Creasy Dean and Rev. Dr. Michael Beck to explore the concept of "small boats," or small experiments that are giving us vision and hope for the church as we look to the future. Traditional leadership models are transitioning to leadership that empowers others in the community, fostering gifts and spiritual...

This week, host Rev. Lisa Greenwood and co-host Rev. Kathi McShane continue exploring themes that will be essential to the future church – and they are happening right now. Rev. Bill Lamar IV, Pastor of Metropolitan African Methodist Episcopal Church, and Rev. Dr. Reginald Blount, Associate Professor of Formation, Leadership, and Culture at Garrett-Evangelical Theological Seminary, join Lisa and K...

What is the role of power in the new spiritual landscape emerging today? This season, we are exploring the themes we believe are glimpses of what will be critical guideposts for the future church. This week, host Rev. Lisa Greenwood and co-host Rev. Kathi McShane speak with Vipin Thekk and Rabbi Elan Babchuck. Vipin Thekk, Founder of the Changemaker Communities initiative, is an experienced facili...

What are we seeing right around the corner from where the church is today? Around the corner is closer than we think. The Spirit is up to something and the invitation is to get close to what is happening right now, to pay attention, to notice, and to wonder.  This week hosts Lisa Greenwood and Kathi McShane speak with Rev. Alicia Forde, a pastor, poet, and organizer, and Tamice Spencer-Helms,...

Rev. Dr. Kenda Creasy Dean reminds us in her new book,  Innovating for Love,  that we don’t create new things for the sake of change, for innovation’s sake, but rather so that we can love better. We are always finding new ways to love our neighbors in the ways Jesus calls us to love. Carlos Huerta, the Executive Director of the Center for Community Transformation in Fresno, certainl...

Pastah J, as his friends and parishioners affectionately call him, is a remarkable testament to the notion that innovating is what happens when you love the people you are with. We often make innovation out to be the next, big, creative, tech, cool thing when really it's about figuring out how to love our neighbors better and how to more deeply and faithfully root ourselves in Jesus' call. It's mi...

Our Locke Innovative Leaders offer a powerful picture of what is possible for the church. They don’t just see a need, they see great potential that exists in that need, and they respond with the next faithful step, always gathering others to help create and build. It’s remarkably consistent. Moy Mendez, a pastor in Chicago and the Executive Director of the Hope Center in Blue Island, is a great ex...

We are so excited about this season of the  Igniting Imagination Podcast  as Rev. Dr. Kenda Creasy Dean and Rev. Lisa Greenwood have conversations with four exceptional, innovative faith leaders who are profoundly influencing the way we think about the church’s mission and witness. It’s stunning and inspiring! Our guest this week is Rev. Dr. Heber Brown, III. Heber’s story, the story of...

Have you enjoyed Season 10 of our Igniting Imagination Podcast as much as we have?! We started with Margaret Wheatley and we are ending the season with two remarkable innovative leaders, who also happen to be part of our leadership learning and innovation team, Rev. Kathi McShane and Derrick Scott, III. If you haven’t been listening, this conversation can guide you toward the episodes that most sp...

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

Dr. Randy Woodley, professor, scholar, farmer, and indigenous American, speaks of indigenous ways of leading that seem, on the surface, to be counter-intuitive, and yet as we sit with them, we see how resonate with Jesus’ teachings they are. We are so curious what you think as you listen. What do we have to learn from indigenous cultures about leading in this season? What old patterns do we need t...

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

Rev. Dr. Dave Odom, who leads Leadership Education at Duke Divinity, works with hundreds of congregations and leaders from multiple faith traditions across the country. As such, he has a unique vantage point to view the realities of the church and what is needed for leaders today. In this week’s podcast episode, Dave shares that a new kind of support is needed for the work of ministry today – spec...

The Rev. Dr. Amy Butler is a master at facing reality and claiming leadership. In her newly released memoir, Beautiful and Terrible Things: Faith, Doubt, and Discovering a Way Back to Each Other , she weaves together what is real and messy and hard with what is true and hopeful and redemptive, reminding us that the journey of faith is inextricably all those things. In our conversation with Pastor...

If you are having conversations about innovation in the church, chances are that Andy Root’s name has come up. Writing books like, When the Church Stops Working and The Church After Innovation and The Pastor in a Secular Age , Dr. Andrew Root is leading the way in helping leaders to name and face current reality and lean into new ways of leading. What we love in Andy’s work, and it comes through i...

Our guest is Dr. Aaron Kuecker, President of Trinity Christian College in Chicago. We can’t wait for you to hear what they are doing at Trinity Christian to tend to the wellbeing of their students. It is intentional and generous and nothing short of life-changing – from their approach to the funding model to how they are protecting the mid-week “Wellbeing Wednesday.” You can’t help but think: What...

This conversation with Dr. Pauline Boss, author of Ambiguous Loss: Learning to Live with Unresolved Grief , is hope-filled, encouraging, validating, and motivating. Her insights manage to be both practical and weighty. She reminds us that we live in a mastery culture – that is, we want to be in control, have the answers, and win – which is, of course, a myth, so we are a nation (yes, a whole natio...

Jump into 2024 with a special Bonus Episode of Igniting Imagination! We have invited two of our most frequent (and beloved) guests, Rev. Rachel Billups and Rev. Matt Rawle, to engage with  Carey Nieuwhof’s list of 7 Church Trends That Will Disrupt 2024.  Matt and Rachel reflect that this year’s list seems particularly spot on. From the endangered stable church to the normative adoption o...

Read Rev. Dr. Paul Escamilla’s response to the Wheatley episode on our website here.   In this episode, you’ll hear us: Discuss of Wheatley’s unsettling insistence that we are ‘addicted to hope’ (9:19) Consider what the notion of “islands of sanity” means for local congregations (13:55) Analyze becoming vs. gaining (22:34) Interpret Wheatley’s Two Loop theory for the work of the church today...

Dr. Margaret Wheatley has greatly influenced our leadership ministry work over the past several decades. We have given her book Who Do We Choose to Be? Facing Reality, Restoring Sanity, Claiming Leadership to many leaders. Meg’s foundational idea that “conversation is the currency of change” is at the heart of everything we do. The Two-Loop Theory she developed with Deborah Frieze has helped us cl...