A Tool for Cultivating Community

In our experience, conversation is one of the most important tools we have been given for cultivating community. In conversation, we learn to receive others -- in all the messiness of their gifts and brokenness -- as siblings created in God's image. We also learn to make ourselves available to be received and known by others. It is also in conversation that we imagine new sorts of economies that honor the people and communities that participate in them.

The articles in this newsletter challenge us to imagine how conversation might be the way to a richer, more meaningful life with those around us -- in our churches and in our neighborhoods. Jonathan Tran's article on the struggle within antiracism is a sort of pointed case study in what happens when we lose sight of the good ends that we desire and yield to the temptation to fragment and struggle for power instead of receiving our co-workers and moving forward together in conversation with our ends firmly in mind.
 

Cultivating Communities works alongside cohorts of churches that are in close-proximity to each other, providing resources and helping them discern what it might look like for their congregations and their places to flourish. Our first two cohorts (one in the mountains of East Tennessee and one on the west side of Chicago) are now underway, and a third cohort will start soon here in Indianapolis.

(Learn more about our cohorts and 
the Cultivating Communities Learning Journey)

What Conversation Can Do for Us Our culture is dominated by efforts to score points and win arguments. But do we really talk anymore? Conversation, in its ideal form, involves no audience, just partners; no fixed agenda, just process. Perhaps it’s in long, wandering discussions that we learn how to be human.  ( via The New Yorker )

AWAKENINGS 2023

Disruption in the Life of the Church. 
A brave space to have hard conversations that will awaken the Church.

The Missio Alliance National Gathering

Evanston, IL (Just North of Chicago) April 27-29

More info: https://www.awakeningsgathering.com/

PLUS, USE the Promo Code CC23 to get $25 Off the regular admission price

Antiracism’s mission drift Jonathan Tran argues that, detached from practiced commitments and practical goals, antiracism has become a runaway train hijacked by managerial classes claiming the progressive banner while indefinitely postponing a politics committed to meaningful change. In the hands of vanguard elites, antiracism turned into a toxic mixture of well-heeled manners, personal grievance, and militant dogmatism—with little purpose or direction. (via The Christian Century)