What if the church isn't broken so much as being reshaped, quietly, from the inside out, into something older and truer than the buildings we've come to call home?

This week on the Igniting Imagination® podcast, Rev. Lisa Greenwood sits down with Rev. Dr. Kenda Creasy Dean, Professor at Princeton Theological Seminary, for a conversation about the tectonic shifts moving beneath the church today. An ordained United Methodist minister and a distinguished Locke Innovative Leader recognized by Wesleyan Impact Partners, Kenda has spent decades helping the Church navigate cultural change, emerging generations, and innovation. Together, Lisa and Kenda explore why the pandemic may have spared us twenty years of painful admission, and what it means to lead when everyone finally agrees that things have changed.

Rev. Dr. Kenda offers a gentle but bracing challenge: We have treated innovation as the goal rather than the tool it was meant to be. She invites listeners to recover the church's most ancient identity as "the way," to take younger generations seriously as teachers rather than exotic birds, and to reclaim the lost art of Christian formation, which happens less through programs than through people who are simply gifted at the ministry of noticing.

Listen as Lisa and Kenda reflect on cathedrals and pilgrimage, on the ecological idea of "refugia" as a picture of faith taking root, and on why one of the most innovative things a church can do is to do less, saying no to the treadmill so it can say yes to the sacred encounter of relationship.

Guest

Kenda Creasy Dean is the Mary D. Synnott Professor of Youth, Church, and Culture at Princeton Theological Seminary and an ordained United Methodist pastor in the Greater New Jersey Annual Conference. In addition to teaching in practical theology, education, and formation, Dean works closely with Princeton’s Institute for Youth Ministry and the Farminary. Dean is the author of numerous books on youth, church, and culture, the best known of which includes Almost Christian: What the Faith of Our Teenagers Is Telling the American Church.

Connect

Visit our show's website at https://ignitingimagination.org.

To view videos of podcast episodes, please go to the Igniting Imagination YouTube.

Host: Rev. Lisa Greenwood https://www.linkedin.com/in/lisa-greenwood-5419772a/

Guest: Rev. Dr. Kenda Creasy Dean, Princeton Theological Seminary https://www.linkedin.com/in/kenda-creasy-dean-2a932322/

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