What We Do
Congregation and community leaders are constantly navigating rapid change.
Most are doing so while carrying full calendars, caring deeply for their people, and responding to immediate needs. What they rarely have is the time, space, or support to step back, reflect, and discern what faithfulness looks like in changing conditions.
Too often, this leads churches and community organizations to react rather than prepare. Important decisions get made in the moments of urgency instead of through shared wisdom, thoughtful experimentation, and grounded hope. At the same time, scholars and students are asking meaningful questions about the future of the church and community life, but their work does not always stay connected to the lived realities of leaders and congregations.
The Future Communities Lab (FCL) exists to meet leaders and students in this moment. We unite congregation and community leaders navigating rapid change, and we engage students in practices of collaborative, rooted, and embodied learning. Together, we create spaces where scholarship, ministry, and community experience inform one another. Our work helps leaders and students take their next faithful step with confidence and renewed hope for what is possible.
How We Do This
Our work is organized around four interconnected practices that bring people together, generate insight, equip leaders for faithful action, and form students through engaged learning.
- Collaborative Convening (Collaboratories)
- We gather small groups of congregation and community leaders alongside trusted thinkers for intentional, relational convening. These Collaboratories create space for soul care, honest conversation, and shared discernment. Together, participants name emerging challenges, learn from one another, and design small, faithful experiments they can carry back to their own contexts.
- Contextual Research (Research Hubs)
- We help create teams of faculty, graduate students, lay leaders from local congregations, and members from the local community who will address a challenge of the future church (often challenges that have been described in Collaboratories).
- Students work within these hubs as collaborators rather than observers. They learn how to design research with communities, not simply about them. They gain experience in ethical listening, shared inquiry, and translating research into practical action.
- Curriculum
- Out of the work of Collaboratories and Research Hubs, our team develops new innovative curriculum that equips leaders and their communities to discern their next faithfulness steps in their ministries in response to change. Through both credit-bearing and non-credit curricular offerings, we provide pathways for students, leaders, and researchers. At the heart of our curricular offerings is the Future Church Leadership Certificate. This online certificate program equips leaders with the tools and imagination needed to take their next step in navigating a shifting ministry landscape.
- Community Resources
- We share what we learn through writing, digital storytelling, and other forms of media. These resources equip congregation and community leaders to respond to emerging and immediate challenges with wisdom and imagination.
- Students contribute to creating resources—writing, editing, producing media, or curating insights from FCL gatherings. This helps them practice communicating hope-filled, accessible, and contextually grounded knowledge for wider audiences.
Together, these practices help congregation and community leaders move from feeling overwhelmed by change toward taking their next faithfulness steps with confidence and renewed hope for what is possible.