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.
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.
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.
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.
Meet Umar Hakim-Dey, board chair for LA Voice, a PICO California federation in the Faith in Action network and founder of Inkerij, a social enterprise that provides advisory services for social impact organizations. Originally from, and still residing in, Compton, California, Umar is an innovative community organizer, committed bridge-builder, and deep-hearted advocate for social justice.
Meet Rev. Dr. Amy Butler, current pastor at National City Christian Church in Washington, DC, and founder of Invested Faith. Amy helps churches give new life to their assets—especially at what can be an otherwise painful stage of winding down—by investing in faith-rooted social entrepreneurs. Amy and Invested Faith remind us that God is always at work in the world if we are open to seeing that work in new ways.
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.
Meet Sara Abdel, passionate and collaborative interfaith advocate for women, refugees, and economic justice. Originally from Egypt, Sara’s search for knowledge and justice and commitment to putting her faith into action has taken her to Capitol Hill and numerous local and global organizations and companies. Founder of Thrivers on the Move, she now directs her energies toward supporting immigrants and refugees to find jobs and careers where they can thrive.
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.
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.
Meet Reem Rahman, passionate mom and systems change expert, one of the folks behind the beautiful changemaking.net resource from Ashoka in our resource library. Reem brings her deep faith, curiosity, and commitment to everything she does, which now includes creating the most compelling homeschool we’ve ever heard of and writing a children’s book.
Meet Vipin Thekk, Senior Director at Ashoka and amazingly curious, spiritual, reflective, and energetic human. From Krishna to Integral Theory to evolution to the Bodhisattva vow, buckle up for this one, folks. We can always count on Vipin to take us on a stimulating ride through head, heart, and spirit.
We’re excited to launch a new series, Meet an innoFaither, to introduce the amazing folks in the innoFaith world and what they’re working on and thinking about. We hope it helps you find and engage with each other across the network to advance faith-based social innovation and interfaith collaboration for social impact.
In this first edition, we’re thrilled to introduce you to Kimberly Daniel, Senior Director for Communications at the Forum for Theological Exploration and leader of the FTE initiative, DO GOOD X.
