“My theology is, like, we can do better. It is not as hard as we like to think it is to make the world that God calls us to make,” said the Rev. Shannon Ball, the latest guest on the “New Way” podcast.
“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, is the most recent 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.
“There’s a real hard letting go that has to happen. The backpacks that we brought into the industry with us, those need a refreshing like never before,” the Rev. Brady Radford said in conversation with the Rev. Sara Hayden on the “New Way” podcast.
“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.
Lewis answered, “There’s a lot on the line, actually.” Sturm and Lewis make up the atmospheric jazz and folk acoustic duo Endless Field. Lewis, a guitarist, and Sturm, a bassist, compose and record songs out in the wild.
Sturm is also the convener of a new worshiping community that meets in the Times Square neighborhood of New York City. He is the latest guest on the 1001 New Worshiping Communities movement’s podcast, “New Way,” hosted by the Rev. Sara Hayden and produced by the Rev. Marthame Sanders.
The Rev. Neema Cyrus-Franklin, Around the Table’s project coordinator for its nationwide initiative supporting faith practices in the home, recently appeared as a guest on the “New Way” podcast.
The latest installment in the “New Way” podcast of the 1001 New Worshiping Communities movement includes a conversation about the formative years experienced by Minister Antonia Coleman, who works in the PC(USA)’s Office of Innovation and its Center for the Repair of Historic Harms. Listen to Coleman’s discussion with “New Way” host the Rev. Sara Hayden here.
“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.
When it comes to “Spirit-inspired worship,” the Rev. Veronica Cannon sets a very high standard and advises that churches and the people who attend them not compromise.
“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.
