Fabric Podcast

We continue our dive into the deeper stories and invitations of the conflict in our lives. We come by our default positions and knee-jerk reactions honestly. In this episode, Melissa Lock shares her experience and insights about all of this conflict stuff!

The three ways we tend to “fake it” with conflict: bland (fake peace, smoothed over), burnt (explosive conflict), and “packet heat” (the instant stuff; hot takes and human-less digital rage). What if we chose a healthier alternative to our conflicts? 

Most of us were taught that good relationships are the ones without conflict. But long-term love and community can't survive on avoidance, so this series is about how to stay in the heat, together, and let it make us closer.  Conflict isn't a sign that something's gone wrong; it's what any relationship that lasts has to make room for. 

It can be helpful to zoom out a bit, and name that too often in church spaces, people get preferences and purposes all jumbled up, and end up either fighting or feeling resentful about questions like, “does that even count as church?” Let’s say this out loud: it all counts, if we’re able to take fear head-on. In this episode, we welcome back pastor Natalia Terfa to Fabric to talk about what really...

Keeping the institution alive was never the point, even though most organizations seem to behave like it is. This week, let’s name the scarcity mindset that convinces orgs to protect themselves instead of staying relevant, honest, and worth showing up for. Belonging before belief. Always.

Twenty years ago, a small group of people decided church could be different. Greg Meyer looks back at what that decision made possible, not as nostalgia, but as proof that change is possible, and ought to be explored.

…the more they stay the same. The landscape Fabric emerged out of in 2006 has only gotten more clear now. More people burned & bored. More people rightfully skeptical of Church, wondering if it has anything left to offer them. As we celebrate 20 years of Fabric, let’s also affirm why spaces like this one are needed more than ever.

Ian has a conversation with Christian Ledesma, principal at Minneapolis' Roosevelt High School that wonders about humanity in the era of AI, robotics, and automation while taking stock of where we are with leadership, community, and education after living through COVID, school shootings, and the recent ICE occupation of Minneapolis. 

Katie Eckeberger (@MrsOberger on Instagram) is a queer Christian singer-songwriter and a voice from Singing Resistance MN, who sang her way through “Operation Metro Surge” with courage. Ian McConnell starts a conversation with Katie about music, faith, and showing up when it's hardest.

A live conversation with Tabitha Montgomery of Flourish Placemaking Collective, whose work reimagines what public space can be when it's built with— not just for — the people who live there. If service is what we’re called toward, how can we make it a way of living beyond simply one-off events we participate in? 

The Loose Threads podcast is a series of interviews recorded in front of a live audience in Minneapolis, MN.  Our guests are people doing real, high-impact work in our community.  In this episode, it's Joe Davis and Dave Scherer, who have been walking and working together for years with overlapping passions for music, justice, teaching, and spirituality. Listen as Chris Tripolino pulls on the thre...

Loneliness isn't just about being alone, it's about being unseen, unwoven, unplaced. This week we name the deep human ache to belong to something larger than ourselves, and ask what it would take to become a community that tends that fire in each other.   LINKS: Keepers of the Fire |  Connect   |  YouTube   |  Coming Up TRANSCRIPT: The Ache This Week I want to describe a feeling and see if you kno...

The longing for stillness is its own kind of fire… quiet, insistent, easy to dismiss until you can't anymore. This week we practice the art of the honest pause, and ask what yearning reveals when we finally get still enough to hear it.   LINKS: Keepers of the Fire |  Connect   |  YouTube   |  Coming Up

Underneath every longing– for love, for purpose, for belonging, for rest– there's often a simpler, older ache: to exist without fear. This week we hold that tenderly, name how far the world still is from that vision, and commission each other as keepers of the fire for ourselves, for one another, and for that big, divine vision of love that could be.

Good morning Fabric! Will you help me spread that greeting around a little bit?  See if you can high-five or fist bump 2 or three people near you and say “Good Morning”,  I’m glad you are here!” or “Hi Friend!” Great work everyone! Thanks for helping to spread the welcome and to warm ourselves up a little for this morning! You might need it😊 I’m Heidi Esposito, director of children, youth and fam...

What if your restlessness isn't a distraction from your purpose? What if it is your purpose, trying to get your attention? This episode explores the relationship between yearning and calling, and consider the possibility that the fire in your belly already knows something you haven't caught up to yet.   LINKS: Keepers of the Fire |  Connect   |  YouTube   |  Coming Up

We don't just want people in our lives, we ache for the ones who know us fully and stay anyway. This week we sit with the longing for connection that goes beyond convenience or proximity, and ask what it might mean to stop settling for less than we were made for.   LINKS: Keepers of the Fire |  Connect   |  YouTube   |  Coming Up TRANSCRIPT: Relationships: What we reach for in each other Before we...

After five weeks asking what it means to forgive, this week we flip it and ask the harder question: what kind of person am I in the lives of others? Becoming forgivable turns out to be one of the most liberating, and most demanding, practices there is. LINKS: Book of Forgiving  |  Connect   |  YouTube   |  Coming Up

Reconciliation isn't the same thing as forgiveness. We've probably been confusing the two for too long, and it’s had real consequences for real people. In this episode, let’s look honestly at what genuine repair actually requires, who's responsible for what, and why it's worth the hard work of getting it right.    LINKS: Book of Forgiving  |  Connect   |  YouTube   |  Coming Up TRANSCRIPT: Ian cal...

Here's the uncomfortable truth: forgiveness isn't primarily for the other person… it's for you. (Ugh, we know.) This week we explore what it might mean to stop letting a past wound have the final word over your present life.   LINKS: Book of Forgiving  |  Connect   |  YouTube   |  Coming Up TRANSCRIPT:   Retell from Freya's perspective — what was she feeling as Wally spoke? Name those feelings out...

Forgiveness has a pace of its own, and sometimes the most honest thing we can do is admit we're not there yet. This episode explores what it means to give ourselves (and each other) permission to be in process, without the pressure to be further along than we actually are.    LINKS: Book of Forgiving  |  Connect   |  YouTube   |  Coming Up   TRANSCRIPT: Brief framing before reading: We're talking...

Before we can forgive anything, we have to be honest about what actually happened without minimizing, over-spiritualizing, or skipping to a resolution. This week we slow down to affirm this first step in the process: naming the hurt with precision. As it turns out, telling the truth about your wound is the first act of healing.   LINKS:   Current Conversations | Connect | YouTube |  Coming Up TRAN...

"Show and Tell: Waking Up to Participation" Show and Tell Most of us remember show and tell from elementary school. You brought something from home — something that mattered to you — and you stood up in front of the class and you showed it and you told about it. Why it was special. Where it came from. What it meant. It was a simple practice. But underneath it was something profound: the assumption...

Two travelers walk miles with a stranger, their eyes somehow unable to recognize who he is… until suddenly, they do. Like a Magic Eye image, beauty and meaning are often already present; sometimes we just need to soften our gaze to recognize it.   LINKS:   Current Conversations | Connect | YouTube |  Coming Up TRANSCRIPT: "The Road Is Already There: Waking Up to Beauty" Opening:: The Magic Eye Sho...

Thomas gets a bad reputation for doubting, but maybe he was just honest — and maybe that honesty is exactly what brought him back into the room. This week we explore how naming what's broken, rather than hiding it, is often the very thing that opens us to belonging.   LINKS:   Current Conversations | Connect | YouTube |  Coming Up TRANSCRIPT: "Touching the Wound: Waking Up to Belonging" Open: Poor...