We enjoyed chatting with Inspired producer Kimberly Winston about innoFaith’s vision of thriving faith communities as catalysts for a thriving world and some of the inspiring innovators we’ve encountered and supported.

For the last few years, innoFaith has been an experiment to explore the people and organizations that are thinking differently or seeking to think differently about how people and communities of faith can engage and collaborate and use innovation to address the social challenges of our time. innoFaith is now at a point where we can do more to help nurture the ecosystem of people and organizations at the nexus of faith and innovation for social impact, but doing so requires more resources. We are excited to share that innoFaith is now fiscally sponsored by FJC, which enables us to raise money under FJC's 501c3 status.

Last month, I attended a gathering of “spiritual changemakers.” Participants at this event, Soularize—co-hosted by Ashoka, The Presencing Institute, and Co-Creative—came from around the world and from all layers of spirituality and religiosity. They shared a common commitment to imagining a different world in which all people thrive, and to the role that spirituality plays in creating that world.

Meet Tameeka Washington, founder of the Interfaith Coalition of Bowie, Maryland. Though she has a full-time job with the Department of Defense, Tameeka devotes her free time to building interfaith bridges in her community. We are excited to be supporting Tameeka’s organization and another partner, The Giving Square, to bring innovative programming to Tameeka’s creative Vacation Interfaith School this summer.

Meet Jon Adam Ross, Executive Director and Founding Artist of the In[HEIR]itance Project. Jon, an actor and playwright, uses his talents to build bridges in communities, linking people across faith traditions and other siloes to identify, engage with, and tell their shared stories through collaborative theater projects.

Meet Stephen Lewis, President of the Forum for Theological Exploration, co-founder of DO GOOD X, and co-author of A Way Out of No Way: An Approach to Christian Innovation, and Another Way: Living and Leading Change on Purpose. Stephen is a committed and thoughtful leader and developer of leaders, always thinking deeply about, and helping cultivate, the types of innovative, changemaking leadership that the challenges of our time require. We are grateful to have him as a friend and advisor to innoFaith.

A couple of decades ago, the United Church of Christ launched a marketing campaign with the phrase, "God is still speaking." For people of faith, some version of that idea—that even in our modern world, faith still matters, the divine is still real and present, the wisdom of our traditions has something to say about our modern predicament—keeps us believing, praying, and acting according to our faith values and principles. Of course, some of our theologies proclaim that regardless of what we do or don't do, that God will find a way. Some of our theologies also teach, though, that we are the way, co-creators with the divine. So if we listen, if we pay attention to where faith is moving today in this time and place, what might we hear?

Meet Rabbi Esther Lederman, Director of Congregational Innovation & Leadership at the Union for Reform Judaism. As a former congregational rabbi herself, Esther helps Jewish communities re-imagine their congregational life so they can adapt and thrive in an era of significant change and contribute to creating a better world.

Meet Nikhil Mandalaparthy, Deputy Executive Director of Hindus for Human Rights, and a committed advocate for pluralism and human rights. All over the world, we’ve seen how when religion and nationalism intertwine, it can drive hate, violence, and injustice. Inspired by his own faith, other traditions, and bhakti poets, Nikhil works to foster inclusive expressions of Hindu identity.

Ending homelessness is not a pie-in-the-sky aspiration for the organization Community Solutions. They are working to actually end it and have shown it’s possible. Fourteen counties across the U.S. have already reached “functional zero” homelessness—meaning it’s rare, quickly flagged when it happens, and quickly and sustainably resolved—using the Community Solutions methodology. In this Ashoka interview, founder Roseanne Haggerty talks about the approach and methodology.

Meet Nikole Lim, Founder of Freely in Hope, which works to end the cycle of sexual violence through the leadership and advocacy of survivors. Nikole is a filmmaker, storyteller, and dedicated advocate. Her innovative work centers the leadership of sexual violence survivors in Kenya and Zambia, highlighting the power of survivors to lead us to a violence-free world.

Are you a creative communications professional who wants to help inspire and engage faith communities to innovate and collaborate? We’re super excited to focus on expanding our reach and potential. Join us!

Meet Ambereen Khan, executive producer and host of Inspired, a production of Interfaith Voices, an award-winning independent public radio show that fosters interfaith understanding through exploring how faith intersects with news, politics, and culture. Ambereen is a beautiful interviewer and also a longtime interfaith advocate and innovator. Among many other things, she was co-founder of Muslim Advocates and the first Muslim to chair the Interfaith Alliance Foundation. We are honored to count her as an ally and advisor to innoFaith.

I had the pleasure of being part of Spencer Burke’s Next Sunday Summit last month. Check out my conversation with Spencer on how our purpose as faith communities matters more than our form and how we need to expand our horizons and imagination about our spiritual, community, and change power.

If you need a place to start, read We Need to Build: Fieldnotes for Diverse Democracy, a new book by Eboo Patel, Founder of Interfaith America. It is at once a rare tribute in these anti-institutional times to the importance of civic institutions, and a broad call to action relevant to an era of rapidly multiplying social movements. But unlike most calls to action these days, We Need to Build does not emotionally incite us to a particular political position or rally us behind a cause. It invites us to do the deep, sustained work of building the society we want.

Meet Sandy Hong, Assistant Director at Glean Network and Steering Committee Member of KQTx. Sandy is a wise and skilled innovator and community-builder who we’ve had the privilege to get to know through an innoFaith partnership with Glean Network.

This FREE 14-day virtual summit features interviews with 30 extraordinary leaders, spiritual teachers, healers, and changemakers, including innoFaith founder Danielle Goldstone. Together we will reimagine the next form (or forms) of church & faith.

Meet Ally McKinney Timm, passionate human rights advocate and founder of Justice Revival. As a lawyer and person of faith, Ally saw a need for Christian communities to understand their role in human rights. She started Justice Revival to engage these communities in helping safeguard human rights for all through education, advocacy, and collaboration. This work includes exciting interfaith collaboration to advance human rights goals, such as passing the Equal Rights Amendment.

For a long time—long before the recent leak of a U.S. Supreme Court draft opinion suggesting the Court is poised to overturn Roe v. Wade—I’ve wished we could have a more nuanced cultural conversation about abortion. A conversation that would fully respect the rights of women without having to deny the sanctity of life before birth, that would trust women while embracing that women have different perspectives on the topic, that would center the equity issue of discrepancies in healthcare based on wealth and race, that would have as its goal creating the best outcomes for both women and children. Such a conversation feels like a pipe dream.

Meet Rev. Dr. Amy Butler, current pastor at National City Christian Church in Washington, DC, and founder of Invested Faith. Amy helps churches give new life to their assets—especially at what can be an otherwise painful stage of winding down—by investing in faith-rooted social entrepreneurs. Amy and Invested Faith remind us that God is always at work in the world if we are open to seeing that work in new ways.