Mainline Protestants can still have an exciting and life-giving future. Living into that future will require us to learn deeply Harvard business professor Clayton Christensen's lessons of disruptive innovation, say three United Methodist Church leaders.
Max Nussenbaum and three other participants in Venture for America in Detroit started Rebirth Realty after buying this abandoned house at a tax auction and rehabbing it to live in themselves.
Photos courtesy of Rebirth Realty
Venture for America trains and mentors college graduates in entrepreneurship, which gives them business experience and helps revitalize American cities. Could this serve as a model for the church to encourage creative innovation among young Christians?
The Darkwood Brew set evokes a coffeehouse and jazz club. Photos courtesy of Darkwood Brew
An interactive Web television program features meditation, jazz, chat-room conversations and weekly communion.
It has been a tough year. Here are some stories of how faith leaders have made a way forward -- with resilience, creativity, innovation, prayer and hope.
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Innovation isn't a good unto itself; at its core, innovation is about solving problems, says the co-founder of RootedGood. She shares the lessons she has learned as a social entrepreneur.
"The Crown" is a historical drama streaming television series about the reign of Queen Elizabeth II. Image courtesy of Netflix
As the Netflix series makes clear, traditioned innovation benefits from history, not from nostalgia, writes a managing director of Leadership Education at Duke Divinity.
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As part of the Theological Education Between the Times series, a seminary professor writes about the effects of endemic power structures on students who come from abroad to study in the West.
iStock / DariaRen
From her perspective in the midst of the pandemic and with a new year dawning, a New York pastor advocates for leaders to look again for possibilities.
The Rev. Dr. Wanda Lundy, pastor of Siloam Hope First Presbyterian Church in Elizabeth, New Jersey, walks in the church graveyard that inspired the 313 Project. Photos by Alexis Llewellyn
A historic, predominantly Black congregation in New Jersey seeks to learn the names and stories of more than 300 unidentified souls buried in unmarked graves.
In his new book, Jennings discusses this image, "Family worship in a plantation in South Carolina," which illustrates what he calls the racial paterfamilias. Image courtesy of The New York Public Library digital collections
In the inaugural book of the Theological Education Between the Times series, an associate professor at Yale Divinity School describes his hope for forming gatherers of people rather than sustainers of an old, sick model of domination.
Bigstock/Daria Nipot
Using a method from anthropology, a pastor and researcher studies congregations through “deep hanging out” online.
Trinity United Church of Christ in Chicago raised millions of dollars to build a green roof, pictured here, which is covered in vegetation to absorb rainfall and regulate temperature. Photos courtesy of Trinity UCC
An urban megachurch on Chicago’s South Side is a leader in creation care, drawing upon the congregation’s history and addressing its current needs.
Book cover detail from "Christianity's Surprise"
Everything about the early Christians was surprising to the Roman Empire. Embodying that surprise would do modern Christians much good, says a professor of New Testament.
Leadership Education at Duke Divinity teaches a way of thinking that holds the past and future in tension, not in opposition.
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