Resources to Get You Started

Seven Steps to Starting Something

1. Pray

2. Walk (or wheel) around your neighborhood. Ask God: what transformation do you want for this world?

3. Center the voices and experiences of marginalized people.

4. Start gathering people to have meaningful conversations and sacred stories

5. Identify the transformation that we’re collectively starving for. Because grace comes in the form of spiritual hunger

6. Create space for leadership and ask people to invite their friends (repeat)

7. Pray!

Faith Formation Books

• The Bible

• Jesus and the Disinherited (Thurman). Rev. Dr. Howard Thurman was dean of Marsh Chapel while Martin Luther King, Jr. was getting his PhD. Rumor has it King brought this book around with him all over the place, so…it’s good.

• Rescuing Jesus: How People of Color, Women, and Queer Christians are Reclaiming Evangelicalism (Lee). Title says it all! If you’ve been burned by the evangelical strain of our tradition, give this a shot.

• The New Seeds of Contemplation (Merton). A monk writes about what it’s like to lead a life of contemplation….it’s amazing.

Starting Stuff Books

• Emergent Strategy: Shaping Change, Changing Worlds (brown). This book isn’t explicitly Christian, but dang it’s good. Written by an African-American community organizer and healer, Emergent Strategy uses nature to imagine movement building completely opposite of the ego-driven model

• Lean Impact: How to Innovate for Radically Greater Social Good (Chang). Also not necessarily from a Christian lens, Chang talks about her perspective working in global developmental. This is a great book to balance with Emergent Strategy because it is rigorous, no-nonsense, and thinking on a large (LARGE) scale.

Trainings and Facilitation