In this episode we share our conversation with Stephen Bouman, Director for Domestic Mission in the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America (ELCA). Stephen shares stories about a variety of experiences in his years as a pastor, church leader, and now with the ELCA, and encourages us to trust in the value of relationship and community to bring change to our neighborhoods.

In this episode we talked with Ruthie Kolb, owner of Kindling Communication, about how to have healthy conversations around human sexuality and our sexual identities.Using researched-based best practices in sexual health education, Ruthie facilitates strengths-based, interactive, age-appropriate, and inclusive conversations about sexuality that are adaptable to diverse settings: from schools to church groups and community organizations.Learn more about Ruthie and Kindling Communication at www.kindlingcommunication.com.

In today’s episode, we’ll hear from two women who represented the Women and Justice social statement at the National Youth Gathering in Houston, Texas last summer. We had the chance to sit down with them and learn a lot about the process of creating a social statement and why this one is especially important. As you’ll hear in the episode, in the ELCA, the Lutheran church organization that hosted this gathering, a social statement is a document that explains how Lutherans live out their understandings of God in relationships to one another. And while these particulars are very Lutheran and ELCA-centric, the process and the topic are much more broad - how are we addressing patriarchy and the role of women in all of our social concerns, no matter our religious background, and how can we discuss this with the people around us who may agree or disagree?

Many of our conversations over the last several months came from our trip down to Houston last summer.One of those conversations was with an organization called Water to Thrive, a faith-based American nonprofit that funds the building of wells in eastern Africa and spreads awareness about the African water crisis. We had the opportunity to meet with Jazzy Schwolert and Lindsay Pease, who work for Water to Thrive, and learn about their work to bring clean water to all.Learn more at WaterToThrive.org.

In our world we see a lot of perfection, end result, and final product, but not a lot of the process of the people and things that inspire us. That might lead us to think our own work isn’t good enough if it doesn’t match someone else’s standard of success. But maybe something is worth doing just because of the joy it brings - even at our own level and pace.

Have you ever thought: “You know what somebody should do…? Somebody should…” Could it be that the “somebody” you are talking about is you?Last summer we had the opportunity to meet with Brad Otto, the founder and president of Acts of Wisdom, a non profit organization dedicated to assisting people in rural Africa in their quest to obtain quality, relevant education. We had a great conversation with Brad, and we’re excited to introduce him and his work. Visit ActsOfWisdom.com for more information.

In the final episode of our immigration series, we connected again with our friends from St. Michael’s in Albuquerque, New Mexico to see what they have learned over the last 9 months or so since we had our initial conversation. With new developments on the southern border, St. Michael’s has expanded their work in immigration to meet the need, and once again they inspired us with their compassionate work, and the new things they are doing.

As we continue our series on immigration, we’ll share our conversation with Marian Bock. We had the opportunity to connect with Marian through David and Joe, who shared about their community, St. Michael’s, in our last episode. Marian is a member of the Albuquerque Friends Meeting House, a quaker community in Albuquerque providing sanctuary for a woman named Emma. We had a great conversation, and learned so much about our immigration system, the joys and struggles of sanctuary, and the place that each of us can have in alleviating this crisis that so many face.

The conversation on immigration is incredibly heated in our culture. But we believe the conversation can change when we begin with the dignity and value of all people - and our guests today showed us just that. As we continue our series on immigration, we’ll introduce you to the community at St. Michael Episcopal Church in Albuquerque. We felt an instant connection with them, and they had so much to share and teach us - not only about immigration - but about openness.

We are about to enter into yet another election cycle, and once again immigration issues are at the forefront of it all. We are no experts on the matter, but we wondered - what does the conversation look like if we start with the worth, value, and dignity of all people?In future weeks these episodes will include conversations we had in New Mexico last summer, but we want to begin this topic by replaying a conversation we had in Episode 12. A few years ago the Syrian refugee crisis was all over the news. Pictures were showing up everywhere of people fleeing the violence in their home country. And of course, fear and a heated conversation on immigration were at the center of our political discourse. In the middle of all that, we had a conversation with Scott Hicks, a lawyer in Ohio whose practice centers in immigration law, to dispel some of the fears and misconceptions around this process. (You can read the Scott’s post that prompted this conversation here).