In keeping with Christ & Cascadia’s mission to celebrate innovative faith praxis, we invite you to follow real congregations as they learn to become more responsive to their communities, and more resilient as a result.

In this video, Christ & Cascadia Editor and Resilient Congregations Coach Forrest Inslee talks with the pastors of four churches in the Cascadia region at the start of their journey in the Resilient Congregations program. The Resilient Congregations program teaches congregational teams the skills of ethnography (which we also call deep listening), as well as design-thinking in 4 stages:

  1. Listening to your congregation’s stories to understand your identity
  2. Listening to the wider community to understand (not assume or guess at) community needs and opportunities
  3. Designing a program with the community to meet the real needs in ways that fit with the congregation’s identity
  4. Implementing the program with seed-money provided by The Center for Transforming Engagement

We’ll be following these four congregations this year as they move through the 4 stages to learn how to better serve their rapidly changing communities—so be on the lookout for future video updates!

 

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  • Center for Transforming Engagement

    Christ & Cascadia is a component of the Center for Transforming Engagement, which goes beyond traditional leadership training to cultivate resilience in the midst of changing social and cultural contexts. Our offerings equip leaders and teams to (re)build communities of resilience, belonging, and regenerativity. We work with congregations and organizations to live with faith, hope and love while applying the tools of the social sciences to rebuild trust in institutions. Through trainings, workshops, courses, and online resources, we embolden leaders of all types and stages to transform their service of God and neighbor – and in the process, to be transformed. Learn more at: https://transformingengagement.org/

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