Meet an innoFaither, inspiration
Danielle Goldstone
Meet an innoFaither: Rayce Lamb

Meet Rayce Lamb, Founder of Faithonomics and Baptist pastor seeking to inspire wild imagination. Rayce, who is also a certified financial education instructor, is passionate about supporting faith-rooted leaders to flourish spiritually and financially while pursuing creative ideas for good. He has just launched the Doers Creative, a digital community for faith-inspired creators, and also leads the Wild Imagination Fund, which seeks to eradicate poverty in his home city of Winston-Salem, NC.

Meet an innoFaither: Rayce Lamb
research, ideas, inspiration, theology, report
Danielle Goldstone
Faith to confront society's biggest challenges: ...

In January, the World Economic Forum released a report, Faith in Action: Religion and Spirituality in the Polycrisis, arguing for the relevance of religion and spirituality in a time of complex, intersecting, global social challenges. It features several examples of collaboration between business and faith-based organizations to address some of these challenges, as well as important insights and lessons for faith, business, and other leaders. It is an invitation to forge more multi-sector collaborations that leverage the wisdom and assets of faith to drive impact at scale.

Faith to confront society's biggest challenges: A report from the World Economic Forum
Meet an innoFaither, inspiration
Danielle Goldstone
Meet an innoFaither: Marcia Dinkins

Meet Marcia Dinkins, Founder and Executive Director of Black Women Rising and creator of the Black Appalachian Coalition. Based in Ottawa Hills, OH, Marcia is elevating Black voices to help drive positive change. In Appalachia, where Black stories are particularly invisible in the narrative of poverty in the region, Marcia is engaging the Black community to tell their stories and advocate for solutions to regional issues like air pollution and healthcare access.

Meet an innoFaither: Marcia Dinkins
book, ideas, inspiration, theology
Danielle Goldstone
Insights for Change: Liberate leadership from ...

Like every institution in the 21st century, religion today confronts existential questions about its future, uncertain of its place in an era where trust in institutions has eroded and traditional hierarchical organizational structures have started to flatten. The formerly reliable foundations of our religious life feel insecure–for no one more than clergy, who are largely trained to be solo, prophetic leaders of congregations. But in this uncertainty lies possibility. A new book by two religious leaders, Rev. Kathleen McShane and Rabbi Elan Babchuck, will help clergy, and all faith-rooted leaders, embrace the liberating opportunity this current moment provides. It’s time to adopt a new form of leadership, free of the burdens of pyramid-shaped empire that have shaped our past. 

Insights for Change: Liberate leadership from the pyramid
research
Danielle Goldstone
Mapping Spiritual Innovation: innoFaith ...

innoFaith is excited to be partnering with Chaplaincy Innovation Lab, Glean Network, and other partners on a national field study on spiritual innovation for social impact.

Mapping Spiritual Innovation: innoFaith co-launches a national field study

ideas

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Faith to confront society's biggest challenges: A report from the World Economic Forum

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Faith to confront society's biggest challenges: A report from the World Economic Forum

In January, the World Economic Forum released a report, Faith in Action: Religion and Spirituality in the Polycrisis, arguing for the relevance of religion and spirituality in a time of complex, intersecting, global social challenges. It features several examples of collaboration between business and faith-based organizations to address some of these challenges, as well as important insights and lessons for faith, business, and other leaders. It is an invitation to forge more multi-sector collaborations that leverage the wisdom and assets of faith to drive impact at scale.

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Insights for Change: Liberate leadership from the pyramid

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Insights for Change: Liberate leadership from the pyramid

Like every institution in the 21st century, religion today confronts existential questions about its future, uncertain of its place in an era where trust in institutions has eroded and traditional hierarchical organizational structures have started to flatten. The formerly reliable foundations of our religious life feel insecure–for no one more than clergy, who are largely trained to be solo, prophetic leaders of congregations. But in this uncertainty lies possibility. A new book by two religious leaders, Rev. Kathleen McShane and Rabbi Elan Babchuck, will help clergy, and all faith-rooted leaders, embrace the liberating opportunity this current moment provides. It’s time to adopt a new form of leadership, free of the burdens of pyramid-shaped empire that have shaped our past. 

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A completely solvable crisis: Faith communities and the loneliness epidemic

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A completely solvable crisis: Faith communities and the loneliness epidemic

Earlier this year, U.S. Surgeon General Vivek Murthy released a report about an epidemic of loneliness and isolation in the U.S. Since Robert Putnam published his highly-acclaimed and widely-read book Bowling Alone in 2000, we've all been aware of the fraying social fabric in our country and the decline of organizations like faith communities that build social capital. The situation has now reached crisis proportions. With so many people crying out for community and connection, why are faith communities, which have fostered community and connection for centuries and millennia, failing to meet the demand?

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Insights for Change: Weaving networks

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Insights for Change: Weaving networks

Houston, we have a problem. The complexity of the issues we face, both global and local, are simply too great for any one person or organization to take on alone. And yet, the systems in which we operate tend to incentivize heroic leadership, organizational competition for funding, and transaction over relationship. The good news? There's a different way if we shift our frameworks, incentives, and approaches: cultivating networks.

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Insights for Change: Tapping our transformative potential

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Insights for Change: Tapping our transformative potential

Last month, I attended a gathering of “spiritual changemakers.” Participants at this event, Soularize—co-hosted by Ashoka, The Presencing Institute, and Co-Creative—came from around the world and from all layers of spirituality and religiosity. They shared a common commitment to imagining a different world in which all people thrive, and to the role that spirituality plays in creating that world.

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The time is now: Three principles to awaken the future of religion

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The time is now: Three principles to awaken the future of religion

A couple of decades ago, the United Church of Christ launched a marketing campaign with the phrase, "God is still speaking." For people of faith, some version of that idea—that even in our modern world, faith still matters, the divine is still real and present, the wisdom of our traditions has something to say about our modern predicament—keeps us believing, praying, and acting according to our faith values and principles. Of course, some of our theologies proclaim that regardless of what we do or don't do, that God will find a way. Some of our theologies also teach, though, that we are the way, co-creators with the divine. So if we listen, if we pay attention to where faith is moving today in this time and place, what might we hear?

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Insights for Change: "We have to evolve past random worthy efforts"

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Insights for Change: "We have to evolve past random worthy efforts"

Ending homelessness is not a pie-in-the-sky aspiration for the organization Community Solutions. They are working to actually end it and have shown it’s possible. Fourteen counties across the U.S. have already reached “functional zero” homelessness—meaning it’s rare, quickly flagged when it happens, and quickly and sustainably resolved—using the Community Solutions methodology. In this Ashoka interview, founder Roseanne Haggerty talks about the approach and methodology.

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Insights for Change: Our purpose matters more than our form

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Insights for Change: Our purpose matters more than our form

I had the pleasure of being part of Spencer Burke’s Next Sunday Summit last month. Check out my conversation with Spencer on how our purpose as faith communities matters more than our form and how we need to expand our horizons and imagination about our spiritual, community, and change power.

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So you think things are bad? Build something better. Start by building bridges.

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So you think things are bad? Build something better. Start by building bridges.

If you need a place to start, read We Need to Build: Fieldnotes for Diverse Democracy, a new book by Eboo Patel, Founder of Interfaith America. It is at once a rare tribute in these anti-institutional times to the importance of civic institutions, and a broad call to action relevant to an era of rapidly multiplying social movements. But unlike most calls to action these days, We Need to Build does not emotionally incite us to a particular political position or rally us behind a cause. It invites us to do the deep, sustained work of building the society we want.

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"We've misidentified the problem": Beyond politics on abortion

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"We've misidentified the problem": Beyond politics on abortion

For a long time—long before the recent leak of a U.S. Supreme Court draft opinion suggesting the Court is poised to overturn Roe v. Wade—I’ve wished we could have a more nuanced cultural conversation about abortion. A conversation that would fully respect the rights of women without having to deny the sanctity of life before birth, that would trust women while embracing that women have different perspectives on the topic, that would center the equity issue of discrepancies in healthcare based on wealth and race, that would have as its goal creating the best outcomes for both women and children. Such a conversation feels like a pipe dream.

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With love as our guiding star, we are all innovators now

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With love as our guiding star, we are all innovators now

Faith-based innovation is having a moment. Or at least the start of a moment, one that will likely continue for some time as faith institutions wrestle with questions of how to remain relevant in this day and age and into a future of uncertainty. Faith-based innovation is by no means new, though, as Kenda Creasy Dean, professor at Princeton Theological Seminary and co-founder of Ministry Incubators, points out in her new book, Innovating for Love. And we definitely should not view it merely as a solution to institutional crisis, or a balm for institutional anxiety.

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Insights for Change: Center the margin

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Insights for Change: Center the margin

A Way Out of No Way pushes us to interrogate the forces and narratives that shape our own thinking. It makes us ask whether and how our innovation will perpetuate or transform the dynamics that exile people to the margins of society. Doing so will undoubtedly make all of us more effective change makers.

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Building a Just + Loving Economy: Faith + Finance Webinar Series

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Building a Just + Loving Economy: Faith + Finance Webinar Series

We’re super excited about this webinar series being put on by our friends at Faith + Finance. Don’t miss it!

Join Faith+Finance for the premier series “Building a Just + Loving Economy” as they explore how the economy works and how it can become an expression of our deepest values.

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Insights for Change: Creative courage to build for an envisioned future

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Insights for Change: Creative courage to build for an envisioned future

On a recent call, a friend of mine in Poland shared his take that the innovation of the underground Solidarity movement in 1980s Poland was that it basically ignored the tanks on the streets that threatened political repression. While the tanks rolled, the people went about building their own underground civil society, which then became the foundation for democratization. Surely they couldn’t actually ignore the threat, and Solidarity continued to organize protests against the government even after they went underground. But I think he meant that they did not let the tanks steal their focus. They didn't just act against something, they built something new. Underground, they built the structures for a democratic society.

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Insights for Change: From service to solutions

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Insights for Change: From service to solutions

As faith communities, we engage in so many essential social service efforts in our communities. It is sacred work to be present to people marginalized by the systems of our societies. It is also sacred work to change those systems. As we serve, we have the opportunity to learn, collect data, spot patterns that can help point to systemic solutions.

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Insights for Change: Success metrics for faith communities in a changing world

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Insights for Change: Success metrics for faith communities in a changing world

In April, we hosted a conversation with Henry De Sio, Stephen Lewis, and Rabbi Elan Babchuck about how people and communities of faith can lead in a world of explosive change. One thread that emerged in the conversation was the question of how faith institutions think about success in a changing world. As Elan explained, “The old way has an old set of KPIs [Key Performance Indicators]: budgets, butts [in seats], and and buildings. This puts us in the entertainment industry, not the transformation industry.” So let’s start imagining a different framework, one that helps us position our leadership to bring transformation to an increasingly complex world. What would that look like?

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Changemaker in the mirror: Equipping ourselves for a new game

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Changemaker in the mirror: Equipping ourselves for a new game

Even before the pandemic abruptly disrupted the entire planet all at once, our world had become a place of constant change and accompanying uncertainty. It’s a new game, different than the one many of us have been taught to play - the one that plotted a linear, generally secure path from education to job to career. And to power, for those with the ambition and privilege to land in positions of leadership. The game has changed, and how we equip ourselves for it is the question at the heart of a new book by Henry De Sio, Changemaker Playbook: The New Physics of Leadership in a World of Explosive Change. Hint: everyone leads.

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Faith and philanthropy: Bridgespan Group report points to an untapped opportunity

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Faith and philanthropy: Bridgespan Group report points to an untapped opportunity

A new report by the Bridgespan Group, Elevating the Role of Faith-Inspired Impact in the Social Sector, makes a case for bridging secular philanthropy and faith-inspired social impact organizations. The report addresses three myths: 1) that secularism is dominant, 2) that faith-inspired organizations represent only a minor part of the sector, and 3) that faith-inspired organizations are not innovative.

Was January 6 a last gasp or a first spark? It's up to us to decide

Was January 6 a last gasp or a first spark? It's up to us to decide

As predictable as the events of January 6 should have been, they have forced us to make a choice. And we should all take a deep breath and a hard look at ourselves, as a society and as individuals, before proceeding. …Our institutions remain strong. But what about us? Depending on how we direct it, that fury we feel can drive us either to real change or to civil war. Stepping out of the emotions of the last week (or years) and into a creativity or innovation mindset can help us choose the former. Specifically, if we activate our empathy, loosen our grip on our ideologies, and leverage our assets, we have a real chance at forging new horizons for our democracy in changing times.