The Ministry Collaborative

New podcast episode! 🎙️

“Still Here All Along: The One God Has Placed in Our Way”

Beth Daniel, Adam Mixon, and Adam Borneman continue their conversation with the Rev. Katie Nakamura Rengers (St. Elizabeth’s Episcopal Church, Honolulu about her recent blog post for TMC, the importance of welcoming questions, and why we need to be able to recognize when Jesus is in our midst.

Episode Transcript. (https://mministry.org/wp-content/uploads/2026/10/10-07-26.pdf)

“I am with you. You are mine. A litany.” - Adam Borneman

https://mministry.org/i-am-with-you-you-are-mine-a-litany/

Throughout the scriptures, God does not promise that nothing bad is coming. Quite the opposite. For example, the word of the Lord through the prophet Isaiah assumes there will be overwhelming waters and consuming fire. The promise isn’t that these things won’t happen. It’s: “When you pass through danger, suffering, and the hardest of times, I will be with you.” Maybe that’s the word we need: Neither that our fears are groundless or irrational, nor that things will eventually work out the way we want, but that fear doesn’t get the last word on who we are, who’s with us, or what the future holds.

Based on Isaiah 43:1–3

One:
But now, thus says the Lord,
the One who created you,
the One who formed you,
the One who calls you by name:

All:
Do not fear, for I have redeemed you.
I have called you by name; you are mine.

One:
When you pass through the waters, I will be with you;
and through the rivers, they shall not overwhelm you;
when you walk through fire, you shall not be burned,
and the flame shall not consume you.

All:
God is with us.

One:
When we fear that we are alone,
when hardship comes and we wonder who will notice,
who will come when we call,
who will help bear what we cannot carry alone:

All:
God is with us.

One:
When we fear that the bonds of common life are coming apart,
when neighbors feel like strangers,
when suspicion replaces welcome,
when we cannot imagine how we will hold together:

All:
God is with us.

One:
When we fear that there is no one we can trust,
when leaders fail us,
when institutions meant to serve and protect us do harm,
when truth itself feels difficult to recognize:

All:
God is with us.

One:
When we are overwhelmed by the weight of distrust,
when we feel that we must watch every danger,
verify every claim,
and protect ourselves from every possible failure:

All:
God is with us.

One:
When we fear that our shared life is disintegrating,
when public life feels cruel and divided,
when common purpose gives way to private survival,
when the future feels less like something we shape together
and more like something that happens to us:

All:
God is with us.

One:
When we are tempted to make fear our guide,
when we withdraw from one another,
when we seek someone to blame,
when we mistake suspicion for wisdom
and self-protection for safety:

All:
God is with us.

One:
When we stand in the wilderness of uncertainty,
when familiar practices change and communities diminish,
when the old ways no longer sustain us,
when the future of our homes, congregations, and neighborhoods feels uncertain,
when the road ahead is hidden:

All:
God is with us.

One:
When we face the limits of our own strength,
when we cannot repair every wound,
restore every trust,
or carry every burden:

All:
God is with us.

Closing

One:
For I am the Lord your God,
the Holy One of Israel, your Savior.

All:
God is with us.

All:
Holy One of Israel, our Savior,
make a way in the wilderness
and rivers in the desert.
Teach us to trust your presence.
Make us a people of courage, compassion,
and shared hope;
through Jesus Christ, our Lord. Amen.

New podcast episode! 🎙️

https://mministry.org/podcast/here-all-along-a-story-about-the-spirit-in-our-backyard/

Adam Mixon, Adam Borneman, and Beth Daniel speak with the Rev. Katie Nakamura Rengers (St. Elizabeth’s Episcopal Church, Honolulu about her recent blog post for TMC, the Spirit’s disrupting and surprising presence, and how she is finding God at work both inside and outside the Church.

Episode Transcript. (https://mministry.org/wp-content/uploads/2026/09/09-30-26.pdf)

“The Wall and the Doorway” - Adam Borneman

https://mministry.org/the-wall-and-the-doorway/

Turn out the light

Blow out the candle too

Don’t fear the night coming

I’m right beside you

Turn out the light

Close your tired eyes

Don’t fear the night coming

I’m right here by your side…

… Diamonds in the mine got plenty to shine about

I keep my diamonds down in the mine

– Cass McCombs

Against the backdrop of the ongoing vulnerability of Black life in America, Howard Thurman in 1949 famously described fear as “one of the persistent hounds of hell that dog the footsteps of the poor, the dispossessed, the disinherited.” He understood fear as a kind of “safety device” for those living under threat but also warned that what protects us can eventually imprison us, until “the power that saves turns executioner.”

Less than a decade later in 1957, reflecting on personal fear and the fear-driven logic of Cold War militarization, Thurman’s mentee, Martin Luther King Jr., insisted, “First we must face our fears without flinching. We must honestly ask ourselves why we are afraid.”

For both Thurman and King, the work cannot stop with naming the dangers around us and what to do about it. It must also reach the deeper places where fear shapes our sense of worth and belonging. King’s exhorting us to ask “why” – this self-examination, both individually and communally – is crucial because the fear most visible in public life is not always the fear that runs deepest in our souls. Beneath anxiety about change, anger at institutional failure, or dread about the future may lie fears of abandonment, betrayal, and powerlessness.

Social psychologists have known for quite some time that what appears on the surface as fear about the economy, institutions, or cultural change may also reveal a deeper crisis of belonging, trust, and agency: uncertainty about whether anyone will be there, whether those responsible for telling the truth can be trusted, and whether we have any meaningful capacity to shape what happens next.

Take for example growing fears about AI. Our collective fear isn’t solely about what AI can do or might do (though such fears are perfectly rational), it’s often about the uncertainty of inhabiting a world moving faster than our minds and abilities can handle. Fears about the economy understandably center on prices, jobs, wages, debt, retirement, the next recession, and essential material needs. But perhaps underneath is the deeper existential fear of precarity, that hard work may no longer be enough, that one unexpected loss could become catastrophic, and that no one will be there to help when the margin disappears. Fear or cynicism about an institution might point to a failed leader, system dysfunction, financial crisis, or an organization that prioritized its own sustainability above the people it was meant to serve. But these fears, somewhat ironically, often stem from a more fundamental dread that there may be no institutions left to rely upon. And then there’s political despair, which we typically describe vis-à-vis policy, legislation, and the need for competent leaders. Yet there is also the underlying, lurking sense that whatever happens next will simply happen to us, that ordinary people have less and less say in shaping the future, that we have no voice.

I’m certain we could all add to the list.

In our preaching, teaching, and disciple-making, do we treat those immediate fears merely as a wall to be torn down and left behind, or as a doorway into the deeper longings of the soul and the freedom God desires for us?

When scripture exhorts or reminds people not to be afraid, it rarely stops there, instead allowing fear to be a doorway into deeper questions: Who am I? Who is with me? Can God be trusted? Does this source of anxiety or dread have the power to determine who I am or what my life means?

When Jesus addresses concerns about the provision of food, drink, clothing, and the future in Matthew 6, he does not mock those anxieties as trivial but tunnels underneath them by asking the disciples what they believe about the Father’s care of them. The presenting fear is scarcity; the deeper fear is that perhaps no one is ultimately attending to us.

And when Jesus says, “Do not fear those who kill the body” (Matthew 10:28), he is speaking to people facing genuine danger. He does not claim the danger is imaginary, but simply relocates it within a broader, eternal horizon. Yes, human threats are real, but they do not possess ultimate authority over a person’s identity, worth, or future before God.

To be clear, it makes perfect sense for congregations to engage in justice for the oppressed and address the daily fears so many face. But don’t stop there, because unless we are simultaneously promoting deep belonging, healing, courage, and collective witness to the gospel, we lose our fundamental identity. It’s that deeper work of remembering, reminding, and practicing what it means to be children of God, because “the awareness of being a child of God,” Thurman wrote, can give rise to “a new courage, fearlessness, and power.”

What happens when wonder begins to disappear from the life of a church board?

Duty and responsibility matter. But when they’re no longer accompanied by astonishment at the presence of the Living God — by passion, joy, and praise — our leadership can slowly become something merely functional.

In today’s Digging a Deeper Well, Elizabeth Lynn and Mark Ramsey invite church boards to recover something deeper: a sense of wonder that shapes not only how we lead, but how we notice God at work among us.

Read “The Wonder Years”: https://mministry.org/the-wonder-years/

New podcast episode! 🎙️

“We Have to Learn to Listen Differently: Further Conversation on Storytelling”

https://mministry.org/podcast/we-have-to-learn-to-listen-differently-further-conversation-on-storytelling/

Adam Borneman, Ryan Bonfiglio, and Jennifer Watley Maxell continue their conversation with Heather Brown about creating spaces of trust, cultivating good listening practices, and the balance between artfulness and authenticity.

Episode Transcript. (https://mministry.org/wp-content/uploads/2026/09/09-23-26.pdf)

Listen now! 🎧

Fear can narrow our vision and pull us away from the life God calls us to inhabit. Yet the Christian tradition offers practices that return us to trust, community, and the steady presence of God.

In today’s Up & Out, Beth Daniel reflects on how faith can sustain us in fearful times—and help us remember who and whose we are.

Read “On Fear”: https://mministry.org/on-fear/

New podcast episode! 🎙️

“Don’t Nobody Bring Me No Bad News: A Round Table Conversation on Storytelling”

https://mministry.org/podcast/dont-nobody-bring-me-no-bad-news-a-round-table-conversation-on-storytelling/

Jennifer Watley Maxell, Ryan Bonfiglio, and Adam Borneman speak with Heather Brown about crafting spaces for storytelling, the importance and challenge of connecting our stories of faith with Jesus, and why genuine can be better than slick.

Episode Transcript. (https://mministry.org/wp-content/uploads/2026/09/09-16-26.pdf)

Listen now! 🎧

4’33” - Elizabeth Lynn & Mark Ramsey

https://mministry.org/433-2/

American composer John Cage (1912-1992) wrote pieces of music to be played on a variety of objects, including flowerpots, scrapped hoods of old cars, and other pieces of junk. Then he began tinkering with a piano, shoving objects under the strings, including screws, bolts, spoons, clothespins, even a doll’s arm. “Just as you go along the beach and pick up pretty shells that please you,” he once said, “I go into the piano and find sounds I like.”

Cage kept finding and adding new sounds to his compositions. Water Music (1952) required a piano, a radio, whistles, water containers, and a deck of cards. He finally decided he wanted to explore silence and so, as an experiment, he entered a completely soundproof chamber at Harvard University. Instead of hearing nothing, he heard the sound of his own circulation and his nervous system. Afterward, he said, “No silence exists that is not pregnant with sound.”

That experience inspired John Cage to write his most famous piece, also in 1952, titled 4’ 33”. Anyone performing it was instructed to sit silently at a piano for 4 minutes and 33 seconds, to draw attention to all the sounds being made by the audience members and the world around them.

Silence is just about the last thing church boards can imagine in September. Everywhere, engines are starting. Opportunities for all ages are being amplified on every platform a church can find. Calendars are crowded with offers and activities. And all this noise, we’re sure, spills into and out of your board meetings.

In response to which, thinking of John Cage’s approach, we recommend silence. Could your church board spend 4 minutes and 33 seconds in silence? What would each of you hear? What would you overhear? What would you become aware of that an agenda-driven meeting drowns out?

Early in each of the gospels of Matthew, Mark, and Luke, Jesus begins his ministry in the wilderness, with forty days of silence and fasting, no audience, before the first sermon is preached. Formation here comes before the work, not as a break from it.

Part of sitting in silence with one another for almost five minutes is that you may begin to perceive those around you differently. Silence can serve to pull us out of ourselves and help us begin, as Paul wrote, to “perceive the body.” If this leads to greater appreciation of those with you in the silence… if it offers an opportunity to think about life, faith, and your common work from more than just your own perspective…if it begins, even for a moment, to nurture empathy in the room…that 4 minutes, 33 seconds will be the most precious time your board spends together all year.

Wendell Berry died last week at the age of 92. In his 2001 poem, “How to Be a Poet,” Berry urged us (and himself) to “accept what comes from silence.”

He might just as well have been writing “How to Be a Church Board Member.”



How to Be a Poet

By Wendell Berry



(to remind myself)

i

Make a place to sit down.

Sit down. Be quiet.

You must depend upon

affection, reading, knowledge,

skill—more of each

than you have—inspiration,

work, growing older, patience,

for patience joins time

to eternity. Any readers

who like your poems,

doubt their judgment.

ii

Breathe with unconditional breath

the unconditioned air.

Shun electric wire.

Communicate slowly. Live

a three-dimensioned life;

stay away from screens.

Stay away from anything

that obscures the place it is in.

There are no unsacred places;

there are only sacred places

and desecrated places.

iii

Accept what comes from silence.

Make the best you can of it.

Of the little words that come

out of the silence, like prayers

prayed back to the one who prays,

make a poem that does not disturb

the silence from which it came.


****


Which of Berry’s instructions might matter most to being a poet?

Which of Berry’s instructions would not matter in being a church board member?

Why does Berry tell us to “accept what comes from silence?”

How could it change your church board’s ministry this year if you spend 4 minutes and 33 seconds in silence at your next meeting … and then accept what comes from silence?

New podcast episode!

"I’ve Seen This, I Believe This, I Wonder This: A Round Table Conversation on Story"

https://mministry.org/podcast/ive-seen-this-i-believe-this-i-wonder-this-a-round-table-conversation-on-story/

Mark Ramsey, Adam Mixon, and Beth Daniel continue their conversation on certainty, delving into the connections between my story, the story of the community, and God’s story.

Episode Transcript. (https://mministry.org/wp-content/uploads/2026/09/09-09-26.pdf)