Signal Café Podcast with Chris Forbes

In this special compilation episode of The Signal Cafe, we bring together two separate podcast conversations into one extended discussion. First, Chris Forbes and Matt Tullos interview Steve Lacy from StreamingChurch.tv about AI, church technology, streaming, and recognizing emerging technology signals. Then, in an episode originally recorded for the Church Solutions Podcast, Steve Lacey and Phil...

Chris Forbes and Matt Tullos talk with Dennis Draeger, Foresight Director at Shaping Tomorrow, and Chris Turner, Director of Communications for the Tennessee Baptist Mission Board, about artificial intelligence, sentience, and the growing role AI plays in human life. The conversation explores whether AI is truly intelligent or simply performing intelligence through predictive language and immersiv...

Chris Forbes and Matt Tullos talk with Rick Presley about recognizing overlooked environmental signals and why they matter for ministry and the future. They explore how bias, political framing, and cultural assumptions can limit awareness, often filtering out important signals. Subtle changes such as fewer insects, declining songbird populations, groundwater contamination concerns, land-use change...

In this episode of The Signal Cafe , Chris Forbes, Matt Tullos, and Mike Mirabella explore how digital environments and AI are shaping identity, relationships, and formation. They describe a “crossfade” era where physical and digital realities blend, forming “virtual natives” who experience technology as fully integrated into life. AI is emerging as a relational influence, not just a tool. While d...

In this episode of Signal Café, we step inside a local Edmond, Oklahoma community group that spent nine weeks using Incite Futures Labs tools to ask a pressing question: What will shape lifelong learning and leadership formation in the church through 2040? Through horizon scanning, signal clustering, and driver mapping, the group explored rapid AI expansion, demographic growth along Route 66, inst...

In this episode of the Signal Café, Chris Forbes and Matt Tullos reflect on how leaders navigate uncertainty when signals are noisy and direction feels unclear. Using weather forecasts, seasons, and biblical language of time, they explore the difference between reacting to events and discerning the moment leaders are actually in. The conversation touches on anxiety, institutional distrust, informa...

In this episode, we identify metamodernism as an emerging cultural signal with significant implications for the future of ministry. Younger generations are holding doubt and hope together, showing renewed openness to spiritual questions while rejecting institutional distrust, performance, and transactional religious messaging. This shift points toward a future where credibility rests on formationa...

In this Signal Cafe episode, Chris Forbes and Matt Tullos talk with Shaping Tomorrow's Foresight director Dennis Draeger about the craft of horizon scanning and why ministry leaders must learn to identify early signals of change. They explore emerging shifts in culture, politics, generations, digital fatigue, ancient faith, and global South renewal, showing how careful observation reveals pat...

"The sons of Issachar understood the times and knew what Israel should do" (1 Chronicles 12:32). That same wisdom is needed today as ministry leaders face a changing world. The Future Commission 2050 Project (FC50) cohort, comprising Matt Tullos, John Kyle, Rusty Gunn, and Doug Rogers, explores how foresight transitions from workshops into everyday ministry practices. They share how the...

In this episode of Signal Café , we delve into how to identify and utilize legal signals in strategic foresight. Legal developments often shape the future in subtle ways, but with a trained futurist eye, they can provide early indicators of larger shifts. To help us think more clearly about this, Dr. Joel W. Harder joins us. Dr. Harder formerly served as the Chaplain of the Oklahoma House of Repre...

The next ten years will change everything. Is your ministry ready? Economic instability, cultural shifts, technological disruption, and institutional decline are reshaping how churches and mission organizations serve in the world. The question is not if change will come, but how ministries will respond with wisdom and faith. Foresight gives leaders tools to see what is emerging, steward resources...

Exploring the signals, trends, and drivers behind the rise of network leadership and what it means for missions, local churches, and the Great Commission today. In our second episode of Signal Café , we talk with veteran missionary and network coach Eldon Porter about a critical signal shaping the future of global missions: the collapse of command-and-control leadership models. Porter identifies t...

In this first episode of Signal Café , Matt Tullos interviews host Chris Forbes about his new book, The Next Era of the Cooperative Program . They discuss how strategic foresight can help Southern Baptists respond to challenges like declining trust, generational shifts, and the future of shared funding. The conversation draws from Chris’s work on the Future Commission 2050 Project, which invited S...