Six New Things – Week of August 04, 2025

Historical perspective helps us see how we got where we are. Love – experienced through community, conversation, belonging – will lead us to where we yet might go.

ONE

For The Bakery Dragon (Random House Children’s) a hoard of gold is the ultimate prize – ‘until a chance encounter with a baker causes his fortunes to turn’ and he discovers that, ‘the gold you make is way better than the gold you steal’ – and gold shared is ‘the best of all.’

Would that humans could learn this lesson. A tumultuous road of greed has brought us to where we are, as articulated in:

Coming Up Short: A Memoir of My America (Knopf) – Robert Reich’s ‘compelling memoir’ about ‘growing up in a baby-boom America that made progress in certain areas, fell short in so many important ways, and still has lots of work to do’.
When the Clock Broke: Con Men, Conspiracists, and How America Cracked Up in the Early 1990s (Picador) – ‘a revelatory look back at the convulsions at the end of the Reagan era – and their dark legacy today’.
Minority Rule: The Right-Wing Attack on the Will of the People. and the Fight to Resist It (Farrar, Straus and Giroux) – ‘a riveting account of the decades-long effort by reactionary white conservatives to undermine democracy and entrench their power – and the movement to stop them.’

Find more in our Social Justice Engagement: Politics & Social Structure and Stewardship & Giving: Talking with Children & Youth lib guides.

TWO

Rebecca Solnit, ‘asks us to heed the stories we tell or have been told, and the ways those stories can be, or should be changed’ in, No Straight Road Takes You There: Essays for Uneven Terrain (Haymarket).

The watch-anytime webinar series, Where Do We Go from Here?: Conversations about Community, Creativity, and Resistance (Beaming), asserts that, ‘Community has never been more important’ even as it acknowledges that, ‘more and more of us are wondering how we can get involved in making our world a place for all to thrive’.

The Ministry Lab is preparing a four-part panel series: Church. Organize. Neighbor. Love. Join all four sessions to receive Christ’s Call to love our neighbors – then get Equipped, Inspired, and Empowered to answer that call.

Tuesdays, October 7, 14, 21, & 28 at 2:00 PM CT. Learn more here.

THREE

From the grand scope of history to the immediate realities of our communities, public discourse and private conversation are essential to living into God’s kindom – and both are rife with complications:

The Summer of Our Discontent: The Age of Certainty and the Demise of Discourse (Penguin Random) – while ‘sure to be highly controversial’ – offers ‘incisive, culturally observant analysis of the evolving mores, manners and taboos of social justice (“anti-racist”) orthodoxy’ and admits to their ‘complexity and paradoxical consequences’.
Algospeak: How Social Media Is Transforming the Future of Language (Knopf), ‘illuminates how communication is changing in both familiar and unexpected ways’, as it illustrates how ‘we are in a brand-new world, one shaped by algorithms and technology.’
The AI Con: How to Fight Big Tech’s Hype and Create the Future We Want (Harper), a look at AI tech and its pitfalls and ‘why it’s crucial to recognize the many ways in which AI hype covers for a small set of power-hungry actors’.

Find more in our Anti-Racism: Current Events & Movements; Faith Formation: Pop Culture and Digital/Hybrid Ministry; and Social Justice Engagement: Technology & AI lib guides.

FOUR

The antidote to unhealthy public discourse is healthy dialogue. This is us, Church!

No One Left Alone: A Story of How Community Helps Us Heal (Broadleaf) – invites us to:
- ‘Face the disparity of grief that comes from racism and systemic inequality…
- learn to confront legacies of harm…
- Discover the healing power of listening…
- Develop the art and skills of accompanying someone in pain…
- Grasp how [wounded] caregivers, pastors, counselors, and other healers can benefit from soft spaces…’
More Than Words: How Talking Sharpens the Mind and Shapes Our World (Penguin Random) – promises to be transformational for education policy, parenting, psychology, and the church.
When Angels Speak (Washington Square) – we all get to listen – through this ‘inspiring’ collection of bell hooks love poetry, with a new introduction by Cole Arthur Riley.

Recognizing connection beyond human relationships is essential, too:

Kinship Medicine: Cultivating Interdependence to Heal the Earth and Ourselves (North Atlantic) asserts that, ‘The antidotes to many of the causal factors of poor health—loneliness, industrial diets, systemic inequality, fear of death, profit-based healthcare—are relational, with each other and with the living earth.’
Discovering the Spiritual Wisdom of Trees (Broadleaf) – from Leah Rampy with whom we spoke last year! – reminds us, ‘There is great wisdom to learn from trees, and when we connect intimately with them, we can deepen our spiritual lives and grow in the understanding that all beings are part of the fabric of the holy.’
And the animated movie, Flow – which speaks more fluently of connection, belonging, and love than words can convey.

Find more in our Organizing Congregations; Faith Formation: Soft Landing and Youth Ministry; and Spiritual Practices: Celtic & Creation-Oriented, Intentionality: Intentional Community, Compassion & Love lib guides.

FIVE

Living into Christ’s call to love our neighbor – and shaping church to live into that call – is as complicated as ever. Here’s an at-a-glance tip sheet for jump-starting lots of areas of ministry this program year:

Adults and youth: engage the short read, The Bible Says So… or Does It? (Mother Jones/Reveal: More to the Story Podcast), which acknowledges the truth that, ‘The way scholars and experts talk about the Bible and think about the Bible is very, very different from the way the folks in the street or in the pew think and talk about the Bible. There’s a very big gap between those two.’ – and the challenges this creates.
Living Faith: Online Confirmation is geared toward UCC and adjacent congregations. The course focuses on, ‘Christianity’s history, creeds, doctrines, and more [and] developing deeper spiritual practices’ through one monthly Zoom class, on-site church involvement and asynchronous readings, reflection questions, videos, and more.
Discover your best options for Sunday school, etc., with Building Faith’s Children’s Ministry Curricula Top Picks for 2025.
Empower yourself to find, invite, and equip mentors and other leaders with Recruiting Ministry Volunteers: 4 Best Practices (Ministry Leadership Center).
Expand and deepen belonging with The Hybrid Congregation: A Practical Theology of Worship for an Online Era (IVP), which ‘explores how technology has become an integral part of our daily lives and how it is impacting religious practices [by redefining] the concept of a physical church space… [and] blurring the lines between what is considered “real” and what is not.’

Find more in our Social Justice Engagement: Christian Nationalism; Faith Formation: Affirmation of Baptism/Confirmation, Sunday School Curricula; Mentors & Volunteers; and Worship: Technology & Copyright lib guides.

SIX

I wish I had time to turn all of these into Toolkits – every one of them speaks to resilience, perseverance, and deep love. Barring that, I commend them as resources to fold in throughout the year – or base an entire series on: