This “Experiments in Action” blog series features individuals and communities who are trying something new. This post features a story from The Rev. Rebecca Ehrlich, Interim Director for Evangelical Mission and Assistant to the Bishop in the Allegheny Synod and founder of an online community exploring Christian Minimalism.

In December 2017, I was browsing through Netflix, and one of the suggested documentaries was Minimalism: A Documentary About the Important Things. I knew nothing about the minimalism movement or the two men who put the documentary together who call themselves “The Minimalists,” Ryan Nicodemus and Joshua Fields Millburn. But it looked interesting, and it was only an hour and 15 minutes, so why not?

In less than an hour, my life and worldview had completely changed. I knew that God, through this documentary, was calling me to live a more simplified and minimal life. When I watched the film again with my husband later that day, I put together that minimalism (focusing on the aspects of life that matter most and intentionally removing everything else) and the Christian faith and spirituality were connected in a meaningful way. I wanted to read more about minimalism through a Christian lens, so I did some research. Turns out, no one at the time was writing about the connection between Christian faith and minimalism in any great depth.

I knew that I couldn’t be the only one who wanted to delve into minimalism and the Christian faith, so I started a Christian Minimalism blog, christianminimalism.com, and a Christian Minimalism Facebook page— while also making incredible changes in my lifestyle and worldview. At first, only a handful of my friends and family were reading the blog and connected to the Facebook page. But more and more people discovered the blog and the page, and within a year there were just under 6,000 people connected to Christian minimalism through Facebook.

As more people started to discover Christian minimalism, more online conversations and participation began to happen. People all over the U.S. and the world, and from all different Christian traditions (and some from other faith traditions!) were having conversations about how to live out their faith through minimalism. A Facebook group, Christian Minimalism Community began so that people could post and have more in-depth conversations around these topics, and just under 1,000 people regularly connect as a part of that community today.

These online communities are a place where people can bounce ideas off of others who are also on this journey, as well as ask questions and discuss in-depth how to spiritually and faithfully live a lifestyle that Jesus himself lived and taught while on earth.

This online community has become especially important during the pandemic; Christian minimalism is even more relevant now as we are unable to do activities we could do previously, and online connections and discussions are essential when we are unable to meet together in-person. As folks contemplate what is most important in the face of life and death, these online communities are even more important than they were before. I am grateful that we have this community through the ups and downs of our contexts and lives.

The ELCA Innovation Lab Blog is new! We’d love to hear what you think. If you’ve got a few minutes, complete this short survey. If you have any additional questions or comments let us know at lab@elca.org. 

This post features a story from The Rev. Matt Short, Director for Evangelical Mission, Greater Milwaukee Synod.

In July of 2016, as a part of a three-month sabbatical, I had the chance to spend a week at the Taize Community in France. Three times each day, I would kneel on the floor of the Church of Reconciliation with thousands of others from across the globe as we sang and prayed with the brothers of the community. Three times a day, the cavernous sanctuary became, for me, a place of reflection, peace, and deep contemplation. It was the first time I personally experienced the truth behind Jesus’ words in John 7:38; “…out of the believer’s heart shall flow rivers of living water.”

The Church of Reconciliation,Taizé, France “Bourgogne Taize Eglise Reconciliation” by rene boulay is licensed under CC BY 3.0

When I first returned to the United States and emerged from sabbatical to begin active ministry again, I felt a sense of sadness that this beautiful sanctuary was so far from me. It didn’t take long, however, for me to realize that what I longed for wasn’t the physical structure of the Church of Reconciliation; it was the space created in my life by the rhythms of the sabbatical. That space is what allowed for the depth of reflection that felt to me like a river of living water. I soon realized that I could create a “sanctuary in time” by simply slowing down enough to ask deep questions and hold the space for reflection I deeply needed.

I am convinced that in our harried pace of daily ministry, exacerbated by the disorienting effects of the Covid-19 virus, space for reflection is one of the first things to go. For me, it is also at times like this that I need that “sanctuary in time” the most. Recently, I, along with several colleagues, facilitated a conversation in which we held that space for reflection.

There was nothing particularly profound about the process we used or the questions we offered as a frame for the reflective time. However, I am convinced that the brilliance lies in the simplicity of clearing a space in time and using open questions to open us to the movement of the Spirit.

During that time of reflection, we asked these questions:

As you think about your ministry during this time of pandemic:

• What do you notice? (Spend 5 minutes thinking or writing just about this.)
• What questions are emerging for you? (Spend another 5 minutes thinking or writing just about this, and avoid the temptation to answer any of the question. Just make a list of them.)
• What might God be nudging you to consider? (Spend 5 minutes thinking or writing just about this.)

The simplicity and open nature of the questions, along with the time set aside, acted as our sanctuary that day. This held open the space for us to let go of the drive to be productive for just a bit and listen to the leading of the Spirit. We then used the reflections as a springboard to innovation by following God’s “nudging” and identifying one new thing we could try.

A month after facilitating this time for reflection, we returned, asking the simple questions again:

• What new action did you try?
• What did you notice?
• What questions are emerging for you?
• Now, what might God be nudging you to consider?

The key, at least for me, has been the commitment to regularly holding space for reflection. I have found the regular practice of this simple process, whether alone or with others, acts as a sanctuary in time, allowing for the living water that’s always just beneath the surface to burst forth.

The ELCA Innovation Lab Blog is new! We’d love to hear what you think. If you’ve got a few minutes, complete this short survey. If you have any additional questions or comments let us know at lab@elca.org. 

Over the past few weeks, hundreds of participants have taken part in small groups as part of ELCA Young Adults ABIDE ministry. ABIDE invites young adults ages 18-35 to build community and talk about what it means to abide in this moment.

Last week, Mikka McCracken, Director of the ELCA Innovation Lab, spoke about our call to “fail boldly” and what it means to ABIDE in failure. Check out the video below which explores the importance of taking risks in service to our neighbor, and remembering that our worth is not defined by our success or failure but rests in our identity as loved children of God. 

ABIDE in Failure: Discussion Questions

1. When you hear the word failure, what do you think of? When it comes with working through failure, where do you find yourself? How does failure feel in your body?
2. When you’re sitting in the immediate aftermath of failure and its accompanying emotions, what helps you get through? Who are the people who have showed up for you at these times? Where do you see God?
3. Mikka talks about taking the call to turn outward toward our neighbors – to shine and share the light and love of God’s grace so freely shared with us. In doing so, we are surely in the failure likely zone more often. What was a time you took a risk to serve your neighbor? How might you take a risk to serve a friend, neighbor, or your community this week?
4. How does failure (or fear of failure) stop you from being creative and innovative? What tools or support can help you step boldly into the “failure likely zone”?

The ELCA Innovation Lab Blog is new! We’d love to hear what you think. If you’ve got a few minutes, complete this short survey. If you have any additional questions or comments let us know at lab@elca.org. 

What we are reading posts will feature articles, blogs, and books that the ELCA Innovation Lab is reading! These resources focus on innovation, equity design and design thinking. If something you are reading is resonating with you, please share it with us at lab@elca.org. We would love to hear from you.

Collective Genius: The Art and Practice of Leading Innovation

In their book Collective Genius: The Art and Practice of Leading Innovation, Dr. Linda A. Hill, Greg Brandeau, Emily Truelove and Kent Lineback define innovation simply as something new and useful.

Innovation is not about solo genius but focuses on building the culture and context for collective genius. For Hill and associates, each individual person has a unique slice of genius – their ideas, experience, and way of seeing the world. To build an innovation culture each person’s individual slice of genius must be unleashed and harnessed as part of the “collective.”

Through their research on innovative businesses and organizations such as Google, Pixar and Volkswagen, the team explores innovation culture – the willingness (i.e., shared purpose, values and rules of engagement) and capability (i.e., creative abrasion, agility and resolution) to innovate time and again.

Learn More

1. Check out the book’s website where you can download an excerpt from the book.
2. Read this article, Collective Genius, published by Harvard Business Review.
3. Watch Dr. Linda Hill’s Ted talk, How to manage for collective creativity.

Discussion Questions

1. What would it mean to take a Collective Genius approach to your work/ministry?
2. Have you been a part of creating innovations (i.e. something new and useful)? What was that like?
3. How can you help unleash each person’s individual slice of genius in your work/ministry?

The ELCA Innovation Lab Blog is new! We’d love to hear what you think. If you’ve got a few minutes, complete this short survey. If you have any additional questions or comments let us know at lab@elca.org. 

This post features information about ELCA World Hunger’s Daily Bread Matching Grants which support congregations and their partners as they work toward a just world where all are fed. Applications are currently being accepted for a new round of Daily Bread Matching Grants . To find out more check out this blog post from ELCA World Hunger and ELCA.org/dailybread.

A successful pilot

Approximately ninety-six percent of ELCA congregations participate in some form of feeding ministry, from community meals to food pantries and more. Today, ELCA World Hunger is connecting hundreds of those congregations with tools for building sustainability in the midst of the challenges caused by the COVID-19 pandemic through the new Daily Bread Matching Grants. But Daily Bread Matching Grants did not appear as a response to the pandemic overnight. They have been in development for over a year and, based on user feedback, have been able to adapt to best serve congregations with feeding ministries in a changing landscape.

How do Daily Bread Matching Grants work? Congregations raise financial support for their feeding ministry using the ELCA’s online crowdfunding tool. All funds raised by the congregation are theirs to use in support of the feeding ministry. A congregation sets a goal for raising $500 or beyond, and unlock a $500 matching grant from ELCA World Hunger. In just a few weeks, congregations have new connections and new capital to fuel ministry. Back in 2019, ELCA World Hunger piloted Daily Bread Matching Grants as a new way to support congregational feeding ministries.

2019 Daily Bread Matching Grant Pilot Goals & Results:

1. Goal: Support domestic anti-hunger ministries as they work toward a just world where all are fed in transformative, holistic and integrated ways.
   • Result: 19 of the 20 congregations unlocked their matching grant and together raised a total of $25,480
2. Goal: Identify, cultivate and engage new local hunger leaders
   • Result: 75% of congregations did not have a designated Hunger Leader before participating.

Responding to covid-19

Fast forward to the beginning of 2020 and the coronavirus began to spread across the United States. Food insecurity followed, and questions began to arise. For meal programs and feeding ministries, how might food distribution need to be adjusted to ensure the safety of volunteers and neighbors? How might the economic downturn increase the need for food?

“We wanted to respond quickly and make sure congregations were getting support as they serve their neighbors. Daily Bread Matching Grants seemed like a great way to do that while also equipping congregations to quickly raise funds in a pivotal moment when many people in the church and beyond were looking for ways to support their local feeding ministries.” said Juliana Glassco, Director, Planning and Engagement, ELCA World Hunger.

As part of the ELCA’s COVID-19 response plan, ELCA World Hunger announced a special launch of Daily Bread Matching Grants with up to 100 grants of $500 each, available to ELCA congregations. One thing was clear: ministries needed quick access to monetary resources to respond to need in their communities. With the unique ministry moment and experience of past iterations in mind, this new version of the grant had a key feature:

• The $500 grant from ELCA World Hunger was dispersed to congregations immediately once their application was approved. They would receive funds as soon as possible, whether or not they met the $500 fundraising goal. This change was made to specifically address the widespread and immediate need caused by COVID-19.

Interest in the grants was significant and over 250 applications were received in the span of a few days.

In response, the number of grants available was expanded to 200. On April 3^rd congregations opened their fundraising pages and began accepting gifts.

Together, congregations raised over $200,000 in support of their feeding ministries. Once the amount raised was matched by ELCA World Hunger the total impact from online giving was over $313,000.

Reflecting on the experience, a congregational leader of Messiah Lutheran Church, Schenectady, NY said “It not only allowed us to add funding for our food pantry, it also helped us raise awareness, which will help us position the pantry to be a long-term solution for our community’s hunger needs.”

Into the Future

Learn more about iteration and integrating feedback here.

“We’ve learned that, with the right tools and timely support, we can help to unlock the incredible generosity that exists in congregations and communities across the country,” said Glassco.

While online giving was familiar to some congregations and brand new for others, across the board the Daily Bread Matching Grants generated excitement in congregations. In addition to offering future grant opportunities to congregations, ELCA World Hunger is now able to connect with those ministries as they consider their next steps, even offering access to coaching for ministry leaders through ELCA Coaching.

ELCA World Hunger will continue to look for ways to unlock generosity and help ELCA congregations serve their neighbors.

The ELCA Innovation Lab Blog is new! We’d love to hear what you think. If you’ve got a few minutes, complete this short survey. If you have any additional questions or comments let us know at lab@elca.org. 

This “Experiments in Action” blog series features individuals and communities who are trying something new. This post features a story from Tree of Life, Minneapolis, MN a Lutheran church start-up that is queer-affirming, millennial-led, and for the spiritual but also slightly religious. This post is written by The Rev. Marissa Sotos, pastor at Tree of Life.

Before Covid-19: Background

Before Covid-19, Tree of Life Lutheran was a millennial-focused mission start in the North Loop neighborhood of downtown Minneapolis that was turning toward intentional long term planning. We had established Evening Prayer and Dinner gatherings on the first Sunday of every month that were the anchor of our faith community’s spiritual and social life, with a rotation of other gatherings throughout the month for service, yoga, theology on tap, etc. One major problem we faced was that to create opportunities for invitation, connection to newcomers, and a habitual pattern for participants we needed to have our primary worship gatherings more frequently and make them easily accessible. ​​​​​​​

A worship service at Tree of Life

Meeting more frequently posed serious resource problems including a lack of staff time for planning and a lack of funds for worship space rental and food (dinner was always provided). Our worship space also posed several accessibility problems: it was at the back of a building down a hall and had extremely limited parking. Additionally, spreading an average attendance of 15 people over multiple Sunday’s posed a potential risk.

While being intentional about our commitments to worship, prayer, music and rich interaction, we began to plan ways to strip down Sunday gatherings to be group facilitated and easily navigable for visitors. We also decided to try stretching our resources to add another gathering on the third Sunday of every month.

Now: The Experiment

​​​​​​​On Saturday, March 14th, the night before what was to be our first third Sunday together, word of community spread of Covid-19 led Tree of Life to abruptly shift plans to go online the following day. We realized immediately we needed to do two things: first, create high quality and highly interactive online worship that could help provide a communal and spiritual safety net during extreme stress, and second, offer it weekly as members and friends lives began to change by the hour. We chose Zoom as a platform because it was highly interactive, easy to use and easy to share. The first service went ahead with what we had planned for worship that day which was Holden Evening Prayer. Everyone who was planning to attend that Sunday successfully made the last-minute switch to Zoom and we found we could easily converse in a group our size. However, Worship did not go well. We learned very quickly that communal singing was impossible due to lag, and that following along on a PDF bulletin without much interaction or explanation led to people quickly giving up on participating.

Recognizing these problems, we spent the next several weeks building a format for gatherings that worked with, rather than against, Zoom. We flipped our social and check-in time to be before worship rather than after it so that everyone would know who was in the “room.” We adjusted singing to be either call and response that could be done between two different computers, or easy to sing melodies that everyone except the musician would sing along with on mute. We added a lay-led Bible Study component, continued our tradition of volunteering for first readings but with a wider variety of poetry, and asked everyone to show up with cups and candles. This meant we had some common physical objects to work with: cups to talk about how full our spiritual “cup” was that week and candles to light together at the beginning of Evening Prayer and extinguish together at the end. ​​​​​​​

Then we started inviting people and realized that our new location and format was more accessible to visitors. We could send a link to someone anywhere, it was easy for them to find us, low risk to show up, and interaction over Zoom made it easy for people to participate to their comfort level. We also found that worshipping digitally solved the problem of limited resources. We no longer needed to budget for rent or food or budget time for space set up, and even if our numbers were small there were enough of us every week to make a Zoom call feel full where a physical space might have felt empty.

Into the Future: Learnings

Worshipping weekly and worshipping digitally have become part of our DNA as a faith community. As we anticipated, gathering weekly has made us a stronger and more mature community while also providing more opportunities to invite guests and integrate them. We have found that simple but frequent gatherings work better for us than occasional elaborate ones and being digital gives us the resources to support those. The convenience and untethered nature of digital gatherings also mean that we often have worshippers from a much larger geographical area than we would have before and that our core group shows up more frequently than they would in-person. Finally, we have found that being an online community gives us new options (and new challenges) for outreach and getting to know people.​​​​​​​

There are also many things we lost in moving online: communal singing, regular communion practice, eating dinner together, and passing the peace in-person. We miss those things and still look forward to resuming in-person worship when it is safe. At the same time, we don’t want to lose our new out of town community members, the ease of accessibility and the sacred space we’ve found in our online format, or our ability to stretch our resources. When Covid-19 is no longer such a present danger we plan to shift again and become a hybrid community, worshipping both online and in-person. We don’t know exactly what that will look like yet but have clarified our priorities around weekly worship and broad access. Having pivoted so completely once we know we can do it again to bring together the most important components of our community’s online and in-person life.

The ELCA Innovation Lab Blog is new! We’d love to hear what you think. If you’ve got a few minutes, complete this short survey. If you have any additional questions or comments let us know at lab@elca.org.