“What does it feel like to be stuck?” asked the Rev. Sara Hayden, host of the “New Way” podcast, a production of the 1001 New Worshiping Communities (1001 NWC) movement. Her guest, Dr. Corey Schlosser-Hall, deputy executive director for Vision and Innovation at the Presbyterian Mission Agency, gave both a theological answer and a personal anecdote. According to Schlosser-Hall, to be stuck is to be without confidence and faith, i.e., lacking in “con-fidelis.” Feeling stuck reminded him of driving a brown Ford Pinto station wagon in high school and having to navigate the North Dakota winters with only rear-wheel drive. Sometimes, one needs more to get unstuck and stop spinning one’s wheels than to exert more effort doing the same thing. Sometimes, one needs a group of people pushing from behind or sand to help with traction under one’s tires.
The Rev. Shawna Bowman, an artist, poet, community organizer and the pastor of Friendship Presbyterian Church on Chicago’s Northwest side, was recently a guest on “New Way,” the podcast of the 1001 New Worshiping Communities movement. The Rev. Sara Hayden hosts the podcast, which is produced by the Rev. Marthame Sanders.
“Here is the church, here is the steeple; open the doors, and … wait a second — the people have been priced out of the neighborhood,” the Rev. Sara Hayden said in her introduction to a recent episode of the “New Way” podcast. “Affordable housing is just one of the vexing challenges facing communities today,” Hayden, an associate in the 1001 New Worshiping Communities Movement, said before introducing two pastors in the Los Angeles area who are examining the complexities around affordable housing and finding local solutions. In the two-part series produced by the Rev. Marthame Sanders, Hayden sat down with the Rev. Carlton Rhoden, a longtime community organizer and pastor of Westminster Presbyterian Church, and the Rev. Victor Cyrus-Franklin, is the supervising pastor for affordable housing development of Inglewood First United Methodist church and is the newly appointed senior pastor of Holman United Methodist Church.
“What’s the worst that could happen?” musician Ike Sturm asked his co-composer and bandmate, Jesse Lewis, as they stood with their instruments and recording gear on top of a glacier in Alaska.
Cyrus-Franklin is a pastor, parent, part of a clergy couple, an advocate for youth, a certified coach, a trauma-informed yoga instructor and a group facilitator. The “New Way” podcast is hosted by the Rev. Sara Hayden, associate for the 1001 New Worshiping Communities movement, and produced by the Rev. Marthame Sanders of Mudeif Productions.
“I was raised to see that faith and justice were completely linked, and so I just think it’s about living out one’s faith,” says the Rev. Dr. Liz Theoharis, who talks with the Rev. Sara Hayden on the “New Way” podcast about being raised by an activist mother and where she is finding hope and challenge in her own activism and motherhood today.
Cannon admits she can get herself in trouble when she is teaching about this particular mark lifted up through the Vital Congregation Initiative (VCI), because she boldly tells people that if they don’t encounter Jesus Christ when they attend worship, then they may need to move on.
“So much of our lives is spent in the company of others. These encounters shape us, whether we’re passing time silently next to a stranger in the crowded row of an airplane or in the innumerable moments of life shared between our own roommates, co-workers, siblings or spouses,” the Rev. Sara Hayden, host of the New Way podcast, explains in her introduction to a two-episode interview with the Rev. Troy Bronsink, founder of The Hive, a center for contemplation, art and action.
“Home is tied to people, family, friends. It can be church, community, places where one belongs and feel welcome,” said the Rev. Mamisoa Rakotomalala in an episode of The New Way podcast called “Where We Call Home.”
“It’s no secret that communities built from scratch have the upper hand when it comes to innovation,” the Rev. Sara Hayden announced to open a new series of the New Way podcast discussing innovation and technology in new worshiping communities.
