There's a moment from my short-lived but otherwise successful piano-playing phase in my youth that I will never forget.  At a lesson one day, my piano teacher, Mrs. K, took away the books and told me to just play something of my own. I can't remember if she articulated it quite this way, but in my memory, she effectively told me to compose something on the spot. I held my hands over the keyboard for what felt like an eternity of silence. I froze. I was terrified to play even a single note. Mrs. K finally relieved me of the embarrassment, and we went back to our usual lessons.

We’re thrilled to share this essay by innoFaith founder, Danielle Goldstone, published in Duke Divinity’s Faith & Leadership. In it, she shares an insight emerging from the 2024-25 Mapping Spiritual Innovation Project in which innoFaith was a collaborator: Spiritual innovators and legacy religious institutions both have important roles to play in supporting the flourishing of our communities, so let’s design thriving local spiritual ecosystems that empower all spiritual stakeholders in a place to bring their gifts into collaboration for the good of all.

We hear often that we must innovate to survive, to progress, to succeed, but being told to innovate can be like being told to relax—easier said than done and incredibly frustrating to be told. That’s why I appreciate Leah Kral's book, Innovation for Social Change. Kral demystifies an intimidating concept, breaking it down into an accessible roadmap, including stories that ground it in reality and tools that make it actionable.

In October, innoFaith co-hosted a conversation in Chicago on spiritual innovation and local spiritual ecosystems. This conversation emerged from a national Mapping Spiritual Innovation project that we've collaborated on over the past year with Chaplaincy Innovation Lab, Glean Network, Faith Matters Network, as well as a range of other supporters and advisors. The research and our conversations with spiritual innovators have pushed us to ask not only about the role of the innovators but also that of legacy religious institutions in the midst of this shifting landscape. We are inspired by the different ways people and institutions nurture spiritual and religious life and how, out of that commitment, they create positive social change. We see enormous potential for the revitalization of faith and spirituality, in both old and new ways, as well as the thriving of communities if we can nurture and connect the roles that these different actors play.

A new report by CoCreative, The Human Heart of Systems Change, explores the challenges, needs, and opportunities in collaborative systems change work through interviews with twelve network leaders, field leaders, and funders. These conversations surfaced important insights about how the field can evolve to meet our current moment, including adopting a more human, love-based approach – a need that we believe illustrates why faith communities should see themselves as essential players in the work of systems change.

Over the past year, innoFaith collaborated with Chaplaincy Innovation Lab, Glean Network, Faith Matters Network, and other allies and advisors, to conduct a national field study on spiritual innovation. Thanks to the hard work of the research team at CIL, we’re pleased to announce that the initial report has just been released. With a rapidly shifting religious landscape in the U.S., we hope that this report is just the beginning of much more attention to this growing dynamic of innovation happening under the radar in the faith sector.

Faith & Philanthropy, an exploratory joint grantmaking initiative that aims to shape “a philanthropic landscape that embraces the transformative potential of spirituality and faith to address the pressing challenges of our time,” recently released a Spiritual Imagination report featuring twelve grantees rooted in various spiritual traditions that are leveraging faith and spirituality for social impact.

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.

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. 

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.

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.

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?

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.