S3 A1 Assignment | Reflective Question - Reading & Leading the Signs of the Times

M. Cross

Igniting Vibrant Ventures

Rev. Heesung Hwang

Lesson 3, Assignment

Reflection

1.  Which trends feel most urgent or personal to you?

I have a real concern about the spiritual education of future generations. We have at least 2 if not 3 generations who have no idea of the concept of attending church, Sunday School, etc. the basics of faith. It is almost impossible to share with them because there is no basis of commonality. We have to find and incorporate new ways of drawing young people to church without being churchy.

2. Show do these cultural and religious shifts affect the people you hope to serve?

There is a great impact. To some, church seems to be a thing of the past. Christ is always relevant. He disrupted the trends but insinuated something new. But our churches lag behind because we’re glued to “This is the way we’ve always done it.” Antiquated modes and means have thinned out the pews while we press ignoring that it isn’t working.

3. How is your project responding - or how might it need to adapt?

We’ve had to learn a hard lesson that nothing stays the same and we must change in or to have an effective ministry. But thankfully everything we’ve endured has given us opportunity to rethink and redo everything. Our project is specifically addresses our infrastructure which will leave us culturally in a better position to address not only spiritual needs but include neighborhood and community needs.

Also, after many dangers, toils and snares we are blessed to have a new pastor who is familiar with, understands, and respects tradition but also has an eye to and plan for the future and the bridge we need to build to be effective in our ministry purpose.

4. Where is the Spirit moving in the midst of all this change?

I can honestly say the Holy Spirit is the instigator and driving force behind all that is happening and will happen in our ministry. The congregation is excited and motivated with our new pastor and to carry out the vision the Spirit has given to her.

The trends that feel most urgent and personal to me right now are mental wellness, dechurching, spiritual fluidity, digital identity, and the growing need for psychological safety within both communities and faith spaces. What stood out to me most from this week’s lecture is the idea that people are not necessarily abandoning spirituality. Many are still searching for connection, meaning, prayer, healing, and community, but they are looking for spaces that feel more honest, participatory, and grounded in real lived experience.¹

In my own ministry and community context, I see this constantly. Many people still want spiritual connection, but they are cautious about institutions. Some are carrying church hurt, disappointment, distrust, burnout, or exhaustion from systems where they did not feel heard or valued. Others are navigating economic stress, caregiving responsibilities, trauma, chronic illness, or mental health struggles that make consistent participation difficult. What I continue to notice is that people are often carrying hidden burdens while still trying to function emotionally, spiritually, and socially.

I especially see this among younger adults. Many are thoughtful, socially aware, spiritually curious, and deeply concerned about justice and authenticity. At the same time, they are not automatically connecting to traditional institutional models. They are asking whether faith communities are actually willing to listen to their experiences and whether belonging is real or only theoretical.

This connects directly to what we discussed earlier in the course about the purpose gap. The issue is often not a lack of purpose or desire to engage. The deeper issue is whether the surrounding systems create conditions where people feel safe, informed, respected, and genuinely included.²

This is also where my own project continues to evolve. My listening-based ministry and congregational renewal work are responding directly to these realities. What began as a project focused on engagement has become something deeper. I am increasingly realizing that the core issues are trust, participation, communication, visibility, and relational connection within changing cultural conditions. Listening itself becomes both a spiritual practice and an organizational practice.

In many ways, this reflects the ministry I already find myself doing informally. A large part of my work involves simply being present with people and listening to what they are carrying. Some of those conversations involve grief, trauma, mental health struggles, chronic illness, disappointment with church experiences, or feelings of isolation. What I have learned through those conversations is that people often need spaces where they can speak honestly before they are ready to participate more fully in community life.

This week’s lecture also challenged me to think more concretely about structure and adaptation. It is not enough to simply create listening spaces. The church also has to create systems that support ongoing participation, communication, transparency, and belonging. If people are increasingly living within hybrid relationships, digital spaces, and nontraditional forms of community, then ministry also has to rethink how trust and connection are cultivated both inside and outside church walls.¹

I was especially struck by Dr. Hwang’s discussion of polycrisis and collective exhaustion. That language helped me make sense of what I am seeing around me. People are carrying overlapping pressures all at once, including economic instability, political division, climate anxiety, social fragmentation, technological change, and spiritual uncertainty. That affects how people show up in ministry spaces and what they need from leadership.¹

At the same time, I also see signs of hope. I believe the Spirit is moving in the growing desire for authenticity, healing, justice, intergenerational connection, and deeper belonging. I see the Spirit moving wherever people are creating honest conversations, building relationships across differences, supporting mental wellness, and forming communities rooted in compassion rather than performance.

I also believe the Spirit moves through disruption itself. Some of the older models that once created stability are no longer reaching people in the same way. While that can feel unsettling, it also creates room for ministries to become more honest, adaptive, relational, and responsive. As Dr. Hwang discussed in the lecture on disruption, faithful leadership is not only about preserving what already exists, but also about having the courage to step into what is emerging.³

For me, that means continuing to develop practical ways for listening, participation, and belonging to become visible and sustainable within the life of the church. It also means recognizing that ministry today requires both spiritual grounding and cultural awareness. The church cannot respond to this moment by becoming emotionally smaller or more distant. It has to become more relational, more adaptive, and more willing to meet people where they actually are.

References

Rev. Dr. Heesung Hwang, Are You Reading the Signs of the Times? Lecture, Pacific School of Religion, Week 3.

Patrick B. Reyes, The Purpose Gap: Empowering Communities of Color to Find Meaning and Thrive.

Rev. Dr. Heesung Hwang, Disruptive Approach One Lecture, Pacific School of Religion, Week 3.

Which trends feel most urgent or personal to you?

Polycrisis, dechurching and religious polarization. Epworth’s members are progressive and politically well informed. Anxiety runs high with the social/political conflicts within our nation and around the world, as well as the destruction of the planet. We are also concerned about the religious polarization of our times and the growing sense that younger generations find religion to be irrelevant.

How do these cultural and religious shifts affect the people you hope to serve?

Our members have expressed the desire to deepen our religious and spiritual experiences as a community in order to find the strength to weather the storms of our times and to find guidance and conviction in living out Jesus’s call for justice. We want to reawaken to the spiritual power that Christianity has to offer.

How is your project responding—or how might it need to adapt?

Our project addresses how we worship together, pray and interpret scripture. We seek to create new rituals and experiences in order to embody our faith and open up to a deeper meaning within the faith we profess. We will seek to engage other members of the congregation, particularly those younger ones, to be co-creators with us in designing experiences.

Where is the Spirit moving in the midst of all this change?

Within our individual hearts, minds and breath. Within the experience of love in community. Within our longing for peace and justice. Within the process of loop change itself.

The trends that feel most urgent to me include the loss of structure and community that is the work from home movement, political polarization, unknown threats of artificial intelligence, mental wellness and digital distraction.

In terms of our church project, the trends that seem most urgent seem to be declining physical attendance in church, digital distraction, the epidemic of busyness. People seem too busy, too distracted, too strung out to make church, and by association spiritual contemplation (spiritual growth seems a long shot) a priority. At a time when we are ever more urgently in need of a place for quiet contemplation. That said, there has been a clearly expressed desire on the part of members in our congregation for a deeper spiritual experience.

Our church project is aiming to respond to that expressed desire. Thus our project does seem to be responding to the trends that I perceive as threatening.

Spirit is definitely moving in our cohort. As we meet—with greater and greater frequency as the project nears its conclusion—I feel a great connection with my CRC fellows. The courses we have taken to date have taken hold, rearranged us, opened us up, made us vulnerable and hopefully more wise. I hope that Spirit will continue to guide us as we continue in this project, even beyond the upcoming dates of graduation.

Among the trends presented, I’ve selected these six as the most urgent and personal to me:

AI Integration, Culture Wars, Climate Resilience, Christian Nationalism, Eco-Theology, and Social Activism. They may seem random or disconnected but I believe they are connected and inseparable. Perhaps the obvious connection is that all have been enabled or accelerated by technology. But the impacts are not evenly distributed throughout society. I would say that AI integration is a fast-moving force which must include functional understanding, legislated limits and guardrails, and development of creative tools. The last, developing creative tools and new uses, lagged 3-4 years behind the broad public awareness of new technologies like the internet and software. Artificial general intelligence is an umbrella technology that has the potential to alter the direction and power of nearly all the trends we are considering.

I view Culture Wars and Social Activism as opposite sides of the same coin: people searching for identity, belonging, and moral certainty in a an increasingly uncertain world. Eco-Theology is a form of Climate Resilience based in a spiritual context. This is important because when healing the earth is done as a spiritual practice, its power and impact is magnified. Climate change is no longer an abstract future problem; it is reshaping where and how people live. It is producing fear, displacement, grief, and inequality. Eco-Theology – I like to call it biblical common sense – is calling faith communities to rethink humanity’s relationship with creation—not as domination over the earth, but as stewardship, interdependence, and sacred responsibility. 

The people we serve at Epworth UMC are distraught by the cruel politics of the Trump era. We grieve about the destruction of earth’s life support systems and seek to amplify our impact on social justice across the board. Through our interviews, Holy Conversations, surveys, and ideation sessions, our CRC team has discovered that our community is yearning for deeper spiritual grounding so we may live as more authentic followers of Jesus which, in turn, will compound our impact in our work for justice, peace, and right relationship.

In response, Our CRC team is initially launching several experiments designed to respond to the needs we have uncovered. “Fifth Sunday; a Worship Lab” will occur each month of the year that has a fifth Sunday in it. We will experiment with new ways of deepening the human experience of worship. Another project responds to the congregation’s response to art and music in our lives. We are converting our existing Chapel into a multi-use space which will function as an art gallery, music venue, spoken word venue, and contemplative space. Another response to a congregational need is to redesign and relaunch how our dormant Stehpen Ministry might serve our spiritual practices of prayer and listening. Third, we plan to extend our work of empathic interviewing into an ongoing activity encompassing the whole congregation as interviewees and interviewers. Finally, I, as artist-in-residence, will continue to design and lead co-creation art projects which link people together through creativity and making.

We see these projects as opportunities to reconnect people not only to one another, but also to the natural world and to a deeper sense of spiritual belonging. Our over-arching intention is to inspire empathy, creativity, and community within and beyond the Epworth congregation.

Leonard Bailey

5/1426

Igniting Vibrant Ventures

Reflective Question - Reading & Leading the Signs of the Times

One trend that feels really urgent to me is the mental health crisis mixed with how disconnected people feel right now. A lot of people are burned out, stressed, lonely, and trying to figure out purpose while constantly dealing with pressure from social media, money, work, and just life in general. We’ve talked about trends like mental wellness, dechurching, hybrid worship, and spiritual fluidity, and honestly all of those feel connected.  

I think a lot of people still want spirituality and community, but they do not always trust institutions anymore. A lot of people are leaving churches because they feel judged, unheard, or exhausted by performative religion and division. At the same time though, people are still searching for healing, purpose, and real connection.

That definitely affects the people I hope to serve because so many people are operating in survival mode emotionally and spiritually. People want spaces where they can be honest, feel supported, and not have to pretend they have everything together.

My project responds to that by trying to create spaces where Black and Brown communities can grow spiritually, creatively, and emotionally while also building real opportunities and connections. This lesson also made me realize that the project has to stay flexible and meet people where they are, not just inside traditional church spaces but also through community events, music, storytelling, mentorship, and digital spaces too.

The Spirit is moving wherever people are choosing authenticity, healing, justice, and community over performance. I see it in people mentoring others, creating safe spaces, having real conversations about mental health and inequality, and trying to build deeper connections in a world that feels really disconnected right now.

Deborah Anderson

CRC Igniting Vibrant Ventures/Prof Rev Heesung Hwang

3.1 Reflection

 The trends that feel most urgent and personal to me are de-churching, spiritual fluidity, loneliness and mental health concerns, political and religious polarization, and the growing hunger for authentic community and meaning. I see many people stepping away from institutional religion—not always because they have rejected God, but because they no longer trust churches to embody love, honesty, justice, or belonging. At the same time, people remain deeply spiritual. They are searching for healing, connection, purpose, and spaces where they can ask honest questions without fear.

I also feel the urgency of hybrid and digital ministry. The pandemic permanently changed how people gather, and many now experience community in more fluid ways. Especially in a smaller and aging congregation, we cannot assume people will simply return to church life as it once was. Yet I also believe this moment holds tremendous opportunity. Smaller congregations may actually be uniquely positioned to offer what many people are longing for: genuine relationships, care, creativity, and spiritual depth.

These shifts deeply affect the people I hope to serve. In Florence, many people carry grief, isolation, economic anxiety, health struggles, and uncertainty about the future. Some are disconnected from family or community. Others are spiritually curious but hesitant about organized religion. Many long to make a difference but are unsure where they belong. I also serve a congregation that worries about the future of the church itself. There is both fear and hope present at the same time.

Our Ministry Teams Project is responding by helping move the church from passive membership toward active, relational ministry. Rather than relying solely on traditional committee structures, the Spiritual Life, Service & Outreach, and Care & Nurture Teams are intended to create spaces where people can live out faith in tangible ways. The project recognizes that people are seeking connection, purpose, service, and healing—not simply attendance.

               The project may still need to adapt further by becoming even more community-facing, collaborative, and flexible. Intergenerational relationships, ecumenical partnerships, storytelling, digital communication, and ministries centered on compassion and belonging will likely become increasingly important. I also believe churches will need to become more trauma-aware and attentive to emotional and spiritual well-being.

In the midst of all this change, I believe the Spirit is moving wherever people are gathering authentically, listening deeply, caring for one another, and working toward healing and justice. I see the Spirit moving in small circles of conversation, in storytelling, in shared meals, in creative acts of care, and in communities willing to experiment faithfully rather than cling fearfully to the past. I do not believe the Spirit is abandoning the church. I believe the Spirit is inviting the church to become more courageous, relational, compassionate, and alive.

 Rev. CJ Dunford

Igniting Vibrant Ventures – Week 3 – Are You Reading the Signs of the Times?

Which trends feel most urgent or personal to you?

• How do these cultural and religious shifts affect the people you hope to serve?
• How is your project responding—or how might it need to adapt?
• Where is the Spirit moving in the midst of all this change?

The collapsing Empire of the USA

Over the past 7 years I have experienced an awakening that deepens day-by-day. Coming into my identity as a transgender nonbinary person and sharing love with someone like me, finding a clearer understanding of what has been happening in Palestine for over a century and connecting that to the history of the US, especially the genocide of indigenous peoples and enslavement of Africans, things which I already knew of, but the connections are becoming clearer. These things along with countless other lines of evidence have awakened me to the fact that the old world is dying, and I want to find my place in hospicing modernity so that future generations will be able to build a world that works for everyone.

Many people in the Jōdo Shinshū community, especially ministers and lay leadership are so heavily invested in a mirage of what our community once was, and are so insulated from the harsh realities of the world, that my awakening makes me seem insane, so I have learned how to mask effectively, to know when to let go, and where to strategically push forward. It is extremely hard, but those of us who see what is happening and wish to respond have to be like water, like trees that grow around boulders and ancient buildings.

I do not wish to speak for Rev. Victor, and I have observed that we both feel a sense of carefully investing our energies toward planting in liminal spaces, finding opportunities where there are gaps and just really building new events, learnings, and growing community in these opportunities. Personally, I have accepted that I will not be able to have a meaningful career in full-time BCA ministry, as I cannot unsee or unexperience what I have done in order to accommodate those who wish to embalm what has become ossified and lifeless.

I feel like our project has become nurturing our friendship and supporting one another as we continue to build community with other justice-minded Buddhists. Ideally they would probably be Pure Land Buddhists, but my sense is that we both appreciate a pan-Buddhistic approach, with our feet firmly planted in the tradition in which we were ordained.

How do we address the fall of the US Empire? None of us is superhuman, and rather than trying to keep this violent machine alive, I am choosing to spiritually nurture myself, my comrades, and the Earth.

Which trends feel most urgent or personal to you?

The three that feel most urgent are: Physical presence as cultural currency. There is a need to build programs that bring people together in a room. The research confirms that people are exhausted by screens and hungry for embodied experience.

The shift from institution to individual. The trend data says power is moving toward proximity, not scale. That is both an opening and a pressure, but a clear directive that organizations have to be nimble enough to hold that trust without the backing that large institutions have.

Tradition reimagined. The research finding — that 66% of people globally believe traditions stay alive when they evolve, not when they are preserved unchanged.

How do these shifts affect the people you hope to serve?

The people walking into City of Refuge or a Stitch & Repair workshop are living inside the polycrisis the PPTX names on slide one. They are navigating economic instability, digital overload, fragmented community, and grief — often without language for any of it. The dechurching trend is real among them. Spiritual fluidity is real. Many are done with the temple, the church, and the synagogue, but they are not done with longing.

How is your project responding — or how might it need to adapt?

Sage & Needles is already aligned with where culture is moving. The challenge for me is infrastructure. The Damon framework in the script — the three-legged stool of spiritual, social, and financial renewal — maps directly onto what Sage & Needles needs right now.

The spiritual leg is present. The contemplative practice is woven in. The social leg is growing. Programs and partnerships such as Community Threads, WHEW, and City of Refuge show that the relational work is real.

The financial leg is the unstable one. Sliding-scale pricing and grant dependency are sustaining innovation. The script pushes toward disruption — social enterprise models, real estate partnerships, and earned revenue that fund the objective. For Sage & Needles, that might look like a repair studio, a textile school with earned tuition, or a licensing model for the curriculum I have already built.

The barriers Damon names — tired leadership, scarcity mindset, short-term thinking — are worth honest examination. I have previously identified myself as an architect-type thinker who finds management tasks corrosive to creative work. For me, that is not a flaw, but rather information about what structures need to exist around me.

Where is the Spirit moving in the midst of all this change?

The Spirit seems to be moving in the places the institution left.  It is in places such as, micro-churches, niche communities, and small gathering spaces. Howard Thurman wrote about finding the grain of the universe and moving with it. The question is not whether the Spirit is moving. The question is what structure is needed to sustain the movement without burning one out in the process.

VOgundipe - Igniting Vibrant Ventures - Week 3

• Which trends feel most urgent or personal to you?

There are so many trends that feel urgent today. How does one choose between them, especially in a community that is diverse in so many ways? At what point does selection resemble, if not become, blindness to other trends? One question that may shine light on these impossible questions is: what is at the core of these trends?

One take is that at the core of these trends is the question of our ability to see each other. Can we see each other? And by this I am saying that in looking across the trends shared in the Powerpoint, we could ask the question, am I able to see myself in others and others in myself?

Is AI a good or bad trend? It will depend on our ability to truly see each other. Am I able to see myself in the people that may be about to have a data center built in their backyard that will deplete natural resources? Conversely, am I equally able to see myself in the researcher that advocates the building of this data center because of the ability of AI models to save lives through the ability to identify illnesses much earlier which allows them to save the lives of 50% more of their patients. There are equivalent crucibles linked to all of these trends. The hope is not in simply picking trends, but in the ability to find ways to bridge our diverse views on them into something that is organized and thoughtful. By this I mean that as we navigate them imperfectly yet compassionately we need to apply and further build the ability to see the humanity in each other. If we don’t do this, it doesn’t matter the trend, it will serve to further distance us from each other.

• How do these cultural and religious shifts affect the people you hope to serve?

All of these cultural and religious shifts affect the people that I hope to serve in many ways. It is important for me to listen to how my community shares about how these shifts affect them. Of course I have my own views, and this is appropriate, but what is most important is that I listen to my community. And in listening it has struck me that there are many unknowns, the community is trying to make sense of these shifts. When I listen to the spirit behind even the most definitive voices in my community I hear searching. I hear a feeling that an answer is needed, yet even in these definitive voices many questions remain. I hear that we need the space to walk together with breathing room to explore and re-examine how these trends are impacting us as we walk forward and with vision. I hear that we need to be ready to re-evaluate as we learn from our experiences.

• How is your project responding—or how might it need to adapt?

Our project is a small drop in the bucket in the direction of being able to see others in ourselves and ourselves with others. In this sense the trends are quite important because there may be trends or shifts that the community can agree on. As the community works towards engagement this serves as an opportunity to realize and gain lived experience in the broader goal of being able to see others in ourselves and ourselves in others. In this sense we are always adapting: hands-on experience with a specific trend/goal to help us understand the broader goal, so that we might be able to face the specific trends/goals in a manner more in accordance with that which is pleasing to God.



• Where is the Spirit moving in the midst of all this change?

The Spirit is moving me to have no fear of failure and to pursue the will of God until there is no breath left in my body. If this is done then there can be no such thing as failure. The Spirit is humbling me to understand that it is not necessary for me to see the fruits of pursuing this will in my lifetime, as all the fruits that I have ever eaten have been those brought to harvest by the labor of others. May I work in community and be one of many stewards that bring sweet fruit to harvest for future generations, and may they not think of me and only think of the grace of God as they take in the nourishment. Amen.

The intended impact would include providing opportunities for artistic development, promoting diverse voices, encouraging collaboration, and building stronger community connections. In projects connected to Summons Productions and Refuge of Mt. Olive, this purpose aligns with existing goals surrounding empowerment, outreach, leadership, and creative innovation. The focus on inclusive creativity also reflects the ongoing work of developing events, productions, workshops, and public experiences that connect people across different backgrounds.

It’s hard to say which trends are most urgent to me. There is so much happening in the world right now that no matter which way you turn, there is something that must be urgently addressed. I also see a lot of interconnectedness in the trends. For example, hybrid work/worship ties to mental health and ethical tech use; all of these impact how we connect with each other and how we approach interaction as a community. 

In terms of how these trends affect the Florence community, I think that there is a definite need for connection. Economic insecurity is growing, and the impact is being felt across both the retirees on fixed incomes (who make up the majority of the population) and the younger community members who are also facing lack of resources and housing challenges. The growing need for community and connection also opens the door for interfaith work as many of our churches are small and facing similar challenges with membership, finances, and leadership.

The ministry teams we are working on launching respond to this need for community and connection by expanding the role of the congregation in the multiple areas of church life. They move us from a model centering the church board and the pastor to one that centers congregants as decision makers and shapers of ministry. By becoming more active in various areas of church life, community bonds will be strengthened, and new bonds will be formed as ministry and outreach expands. There is also the potential for certain aspects of the team to morph into more ecumenical work rather than remaining solely focused on Florence UMC.

The Spirit is where it always is in work – wherever 2 or more are gathered, in shared meals and conversation, nudging us along to sink deeper into the work of being a community of God.