Most of us were taught that good relationships are the ones without conflict. But long-term love and community can't survive on avoidance, so this series is about how to stay in the heat, together, and let it make us closer.  Conflict isn't a sign that something's gone wrong; it's what any relationship that lasts has to make room for.

It can be helpful to zoom out a bit, and name that too often in church spaces, people get preferences and purposes all jumbled up, and end up either fighting or feeling resentful about questions like, “does that even count as church?” Let’s say this out loud: it all counts, if we’re able to take fear head-on. In this episode, we welcome back pastor Natalia Terfa to Fabric to talk about what really “counts.” In fact, she wrote the book on it: It All Counts: Finding God Everywhere They Told You Not to Look was just released this summer! Find it at a local bookshop near you!

Keeping the institution alive was never the point, even though most organizations seem to behave like it is. This week, let’s name the scarcity mindset that convinces orgs to protect themselves instead of staying relevant, honest, and worth showing up for. Belonging before belief. Always.

Twenty years ago, a small group of people decided church could be different. Greg Meyer looks back at what that decision made possible, not as nostalgia, but as proof that change is possible, and ought to be explored.

…the more they stay the same. The landscape Fabric emerged out of in 2006 has only gotten more clear now. More people burned & bored. More people rightfully skeptical of Church, wondering if it has anything left to offer them. As we celebrate 20 years of Fabric, let’s also affirm why spaces like this one are needed more than ever.

Ian has a conversation with Christian Ledesma, principal at Minneapolis' Roosevelt High School that wonders about humanity in the era of AI, robotics, and automation while taking stock of where we are with leadership, community, and education after living through COVID, school shootings, and the recent ICE occupation of Minneapolis.

Katie Eckeberger (@MrsOberger on Instagram) is a queer Christian singer-songwriter and a voice from Singing Resistance MN, who sang her way through “Operation Metro Surge” with courage. Ian McConnell starts a conversation with Katie about music, faith, and showing up when it's hardest.

Ian McConnell interviews Tabitha Montgomery

The Loose Threads podcast is a series of interviews recorded in front of a live audience in Minneapolis, MN.  Our guests are people doing real, high-impact work in our community.  In this episode, it’s Joe Davis and Dave Scherer, who have been walking and working together for years with overlapping passions for music, justice, teaching, and spirituality. Listen as Chris Tripolino pulls on the threads of their passion and play to see what inspires you and maybe connects us all!

Loneliness isn't just about being alone, it's about being unseen, unwoven, unplaced. This week we name the deep human ache to belong to something larger than ourselves, and ask what it would take to become a community that tends that fire in each other.   LINKS: Keepers of the Fire |  Connect  |  YouTube  |  Coming Up TRANSCRIPT: The Ache This Week I want to describe a feeling and see if you know what I’m talking about: You're surrounded by people— at work, online, maybe even in a room full of friends— and you still feel somehow... unplaced. Like you're present but not quite part of something. Like everyone else knows how to belong and you missed the orientation. Literally happened to me.  That's not just loneliness in the ordinary sense. It's something deeper. The ache to be woven in. To matter to a specific group of people who also matter to you. To not just be known, but needed. Do you know this feeling? Yeah! Today, on this final week of Keepers of the Fire, I want to name that ache directly. Because I think it might be the one underneath all the others we've explored this summer. One thing; this is actually an ache, a yearning that has gotten a lot of attention.  The Epidemic Three years ago, in 2023, the United States Surgeon General Vivek Murthy did something unusual; he issued a formal public health advisory declaring loneliness an epidemic. A crisis. The statistic he cited was that about one in two American adults reported experiencing loneliness— and social isolation increases the risk of premature death by 29 PERCENT. That’s comparable to the health impact of smoking fifteen cigarettes a day. We have entire cultural infrastructures built around discouraging smoking. We have almost nothing built around discouraging isolation. And then to make it worse, the money-grabbing internet “manosphere” has very carefully and intentionally targeted young boys and young adult men to believe that they have no agency, and that their feelings of loneliness are the fault of others, like women or the feminist movement! I want to say outright: that’s a lie. Loneliness isn’t just an issue for boys and men, they’ve just been most successfully convinced they’re especially isolated, and then that false premise has been weaponized against others.  To be clear: loneliness is a problem, but it isn’t isolated to a particular group of American adults. Some demographic groups seem to have more access to emotional and relational skills than others… catch my drift? In an interview with Kate Bowler, Surgeon General Vivek Murthy said loneliness is like HUNGER or THIRST— a signal the body sends when something we need for survival is missing. This is biology. We were created— literally, neurologically— for each other. Matthew Lieberman, a neuroscientist at UCLA, found that the brain processes social pain— rejection, exclusion, being cut off— in the same regions it processes physical pain. Being unplaced from community doesn't just hurt emotionally. It hurts, the way a broken bone hurts. So when you feel the ache for belonging— that persistent, restless sense that you're APART FROM something you were made to be A PART OF— your nervous system is telling you the truth. Pay attention to it. Belonging vs. fitting in Just a quick tangent here to say that belonging is not the same as fitting in. Fitting in is when you adjust yourself to be ACCEPTABLE. You figure out what the group rewards, what gets you included, and you perform accordingly. It's exhausting. And it doesn't actually satisfy the ache— because the version of you that got accepted isn't really you. Belonging is different. Belonging is when you show up as you ACTUALLY ARE — complicated, unfinished, uncertain — and find that there's a place for that person anyway. That you don't have to earn your way in or maintain a performance to stay. Loneliness isn't just about being alone. It's about being unseen. Unwoven. You can be lonely in a crowd, in a marriage, even in a congregation— if t