Six New Things – Week of January 05, 2026

Blessed Epiphany and welcome to 2026. After 2025’s extraordinary challenges, I hope you found time for rest and renewal following your Christmas observances and enter this new year with renewed hope and courage.

Six New Things is making some changes in the coming weeks as we explore new tiers of membership and create new avenues for accessing Ministry Lab resources.

Here’s a first attempt at a sleeker Six New Things. Send me an email with your feedback here!

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This Epiphany – and ‘Unwanted Anniversary‘ (as Diana Butler Bass writes), congregations across the US are invited to play key roles in strengthening relationships, bridging divides, and creating Gospel-centered cohesion around compassion for our neighbors.

Heal the sick.

Feed the hungry.

Welcome the stranger.

This is ISAIAH’s 2026 platform. Every individual and congregation that can help create an ethos of neighbor-love – throughout our communities and across divides of age, identity, culture, and political party – will strengthen individual and collective hopes of moving into a more just and peaceful future; into God’s preferred future.

This will be a central theme in our 6NT resources these next several months.

Here we go!!

ONE

If you’re not already familiar, I hope you’ll acquaint yourself with ISAIAH’s Palm Sunday Power Path – and organize with others, then join the march, Sunday, March 29, 2026.

 

TWO

If you’re not already interested, I hope you’ll discover 2026 EcoFaith Summit: From Fear to Fire: Igniting Community for a Planet in Peril – and join a network of congregations across the Upper Midwest in caring for, repairing, and restoring God’s beloved creation, Saturday, April 18, 2026.

Two separate events.

Two unique approaches.

One shared goal: organize community for a more just and sustainable world.

THREE

We’re creating three seasonal toolkits to support congregations along the journey toward God’s preferred future.

Our brand-new Epiphany Toolkit: From Hate to Hearth: Home by Another Way is a six-week intergenerational faith formation series based on the writings of Diana Butler Bass and Rev. Cameron Trimble. A brief outline, quick links to their short reads, engaging discussion and spiritual practices, collaborative creativity, and a children’s book suggestion make for a quick and easy approach to Epiphany faith formation for all ages.

Discover From Hate to Hearth here.

The Toolkit encourages imagination and wonder. Faithful Imagination: Developing Ministries That Thrive, from our partners at Ministry Leadership Center, is a self-paced workshop for ministry leaders that introduces MLC’s Theological Innovation Process ‘as a pathway for developing thriving ministries’.

FOUR

From Ash to Action: Even the Stones Cry Out is our Lenten Toolkit in preparation for ISAIAH’s Palm Sunday Power Path and/or the 2026 EcoFaith Summit of the Upper Midwest: From Fear to Fire: Igniting Community for a Planet in Peril.

This Toolkit moves participants from the ashes of lament, through repentance, into skills for organizing community with a shared vision for a more just and sustainable future.

This Lent, we walk this path building our capacity for co-creating our communities anew. This ecumenical Toolkit offers prompts and invitations for worship and preaching, spiritual practices and discussion, asset mapping and embodied organizing skill-building; and will include liturgical, song, and children’s book suggestions and media posts.

Available to preview early January.

Learn more here.

Pre-register to receive preview access here.

FIVE

Develop leader and congregational awareness and resilience with Hope Is Here! Spiritual Practices for Pursuing Justice and Beloved Community (Westminster Press),

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‘Activists and social change agents, restorative justice practitioners, faith leaders, and anybody engaged in social progress and shifting society will find Healing Resistance: A Radically Different Response to Harm (Parallax Press) – a mindful approach to nonviolent action –  indispensable’.

Find more like these in our Contemplative Activism lib guide.

Please note: Lib guides will soon be accessible by members only! Please consider membership to maintain access to these curated lists of resources for every area of congregational life.

SIX

Because the world is heavier every day, here’s a little something I only can attribute to Rumi – please correct me if this attribution is in error!

‘You are not here
to save the world.
You are here to discover
that you Are the world.
You are compassion.
You are perfect healing.
In you the mountains
are lighter than the sky.
Don’t try to understand this.
Just fall in love with
yourself in every
pair of eyes.
And however you may worship
take a blessed breath
of this newborn light
that is never even one
moment old.’ – attributed to Rumi