Six New Things – Week of December 15, 2025
This is a cold Advent as empire’s agents seize our neighbors; empire’s greed steals food and healthcare; empire’s ego tramples on dignity. Belonging, solidarity, and justice are communal antidotes that build courage as they resist empire’s fragile power. Here are tools to support your work in building up Christmas community, beautiful leaders.
ONE
Coming soon from The Ministry Lab:
From Ash to Action
The Intergenerational Palm Sunday Path & EcoFaith Summit Toolkit will include:
- organizing sermon/text reflections from Working Preacher
- embodied community organizing practices from David ‘Agape’ Scherer
- fiery creation care text reflections & guiding questions from Dn Dr. Diane Jacobson
- music suggestions from Bret Hesla
- resilience-building contemplative practices & children’s book suggestions from Rev. Emily Meyer
Preview available early January.
Learn more and register for the preview here.
TWO
ConNext Summit 2026 – October 11-13, 2026!
Beyond Belonging:
Branching Out – Bringing In – Building Together
Featuring keynote presenter Dave ‘Agape’ Scherer!
Registration opens late spring.
Watch for updates and registration info here.
THREE
Last-minute Christmas story needs?
The Just Love Story Bible (Beaming), a ‘groundbreaking, justice-oriented storybook Bible for children and families’ invites you to download their free offering of the Christmas Story to read with your children and/or share with families.
Find more last-minute resourcing in our Advent & Christmas Faith Formation and Worship lib guides.
FOUR
Ready to introduce the whole congregation to a more just, gracious, relatable God?
- Flipping the God Paradigm (Progressive Christianity), ‘provides a God update’, asserting that, ‘our religion must evolve… to align with our current understanding of the universe’.
- God on Broadway: Revealing the Sacred in the Spectacle (Fortress), ‘shows how God is revealed in the small choices of a playwright and in the flashy song-and-dance numbers of musicals’
Find more in our Emerging Theologies and Pop Culture lib guides.
FIVE
Food Theology: Nourishing Faith n Local Communities (Fortress), ‘provides readers with clear, practical, and adaptable suggestions for how to expand existing food ministries or start new ones’. As more and more neighbors struggle to meet basic needs, this may be a tragically timely read.
SIX
As we prepare for 2026 EcoFaith Summit: From Fear to Fire: Igniting Community for a Planet in Peril, Climate Justice, Climate Hope (Fortress), asserts that ‘addressing climate change in ways that build capacity, equity, and compassion may be the great moral-spiritual challenge of our time in history’ and offers an invitation ‘to face that challenge with hope and in companionship with people worldwide’.
Climate Justice, Climate Hope is the follow-up volume to last year’s Summit speaker, Dr. Cynthia Moe-Lobeda’s Building a Moral Economy. Both will be featured in our upcoming Easter Season Toolkit!!
Learn more about the 2026 EcoFaith Summit here.
Find additional Creation Care and Politics & Democracy & Moral Economy resources in our lib guides.
