Where leaders navigate complex change together and take hopeful steps forward
The Future Communities Lab (FCL) unites congregations and community leaders navigating rapid change through collaborative convening, practical curriculum, and contextual research that help them take their next faithful step with confidence and renewed hope for what is possible.
The Future Communities Lab supports the thriving of congregation and community leaders by piloting solutions to some of the complex challenges that confront our communities today.
The work of the Future Communities Lab is grounded by the question, "What does it mean to be a people who are called together by God in and through community?"
Issues of belonging, collaborative leadership, mental health and burnout, and innovation are at the center of our churches and communities and the FCL seeks to co-create solutions to these challenges.
- Churches and other Christian organizations can be unprepared for new challenges for a myriad of reasons. One is that leaders are busy, and another is that they do not have space for imagining and designing experiments to address challenges.
- Professors do not have enough opportunities to listen to church and community leaders, so their research and teaching do not always equip leaders to address pressing and emerging challenges.
- Students want to know that their work is making a real difference, even when they are learning in a classroom environment. They long for learning that feels connected to real communities, grounded in practice, and shaped by meaningful engagement rather than abstraction.
In response to these felt needs and structural problems, the FCL is a collaborative community that pilots solutions for the emerging and pressing changes facing churches and communities. Without ignoring the complexity and gravity of these challenges, we view this moment as an opportunity to come alongside local communities and their leaders.
Our work brings together church and community leaders, thought leaders, professors, researchers, and students (undergrad and graduate) to understand and constructively engage these complex challenges.
Guided by a shared vision to create transformative spaces for belonging, we are fundamentally hopeful about the future.