After over a decade of fiscal sponsorship with Village Presbyterian Church, NEXT Church has officially become an independent 501(c)(3)! This significant step allows us to better serve the Church as led by our Board of Directors and inspired by the NEXT Church network.
Friend,
Have you ever gotten yourself caught in a loop? You know the one where the very thing you need feels exhausting just thinking about it? Please tell me I’m not alone.
I can’t count the number of times I’ve gotten caught in this loop over the past five years.
Breaking that cycle has proved me wrong time and time again. Peeling myself off the couch to see the friends with whom I so desperately needed to laugh. It was digging out those fancy clothes to become immersed with the healing power of music at the concert hall. Or gathering together with colleagues at a conference to be reminded why we devote ourselves to this thing of transformation.
This fall, you are invited to carve out some space for yourself. Maybe joining one of these groups is the very thing you need the most as we move through a critical and consequential season.
It truly is better when we go together.
A book about justice is only powerful if it is a catalyst for actual change. Jennifer Harvey’s new book “Antiracism as Daily Practice” sets the table for meaningful conversation among white folks seeking to live in a way that grows racial justice. Led by the author and NEXT Church Coaches, join other white folks from across the country to discuss the content of Dr. Harvey’s new book and engage its actionable reverberations over 6 cohort sessions.
What does it look like to build the spaces and the world we truly need – together? Participants will explore the liberatory journeys of people of color in the past and present through readings, videos, and other engaging materials. Following this grounding work, the group will consider how to navigate power dynamics and their own participation in systems and structures of harm to create revolutionary outcomes: moves toward genuine community, healthy self-and-other accountability, and embodied care and awareness that can buoy us collectively in challenging times.
In conversation with the Enneagram, we can celebrate the strengths God has given us, identify our personality challenges, and put deeper self-understanding into action. The aim of the cohort will be to identify natural gifts and reflexive tendencies, develop instinctive capacities, identify underused strengths, learn how to approach conflict with awareness, and begin to apply the concepts in participants’ leadership contexts.
On the Journey Together,
Jen James
Director of Programs and Operations
November 6, 2024 is right around the corner.
We hear about the upcoming election in newsfeeds, curricula to purchase, discussions to be had, advocating for change, and getting out to vote. This is important work. But November 6th will come. No matter the results of the election, problems in our nation and world will still linger, brokenness will still exist, and the work of repair will be ever present.
As people of faith, we are required to engage: to live our faith out loud in the midst of overwhelming odds. Each morning when the sun rises, we must give yet another “Yes!” to the antiracist work necessary to dismantle the systems and structures around us. This requires us to undo the broken systems existing even within ourselves. Knowledge of self, deeply formed and understood identities, allow us to work against the pressure to conform and “go on to get on.”
This fall NEXT Church is offering two unique coaching cohort opportunities for white folx and people of color. Dr. Jennifer Harvey, author and theologian, provides the material for white folx to unpack the daily practices to embody antiracist values. Rev. Anna Kendig Flores, Neema Cyrus-Franklin, and I seek to build a collective space for people of color to explore their identities as the focal point rather than in reaction to the systems which marginalize us.
Embodiment is both an individual and collective practice. Join us this fall!
Larissa Kwong Abazia
Executive Director
There is something really powerful that happens when leaders from across the Church gather together in community around a common purpose. Leaders dig deeper. Relationships are strengthened. Sustainable transformation begins to take shape. Healthy practices take root.
We are offering four rich offerings beginning this fall. The topics include: building collective flourishing for people of color, embodied antiracist practices designed for white people, personal health through the enneagram, and an opportunity to apply for our Preaching for Change initiative. Our coaches will accompany you through these groups to take what you are learning and support you through actionable next steps, while encouraging you all along the way.
Will you join us as we journey together?
A book about justice is only powerful if it is a catalyst for actual change. Jennifer Harvey’s new book “Antiracism as Daily Practice” sets the table for meaningful conversation among white folks seeking to live in a way that grows racial justice. Led by the author and NEXT Church Coaches, join other white folks from across the country to discuss the content of Dr. Harvey’s new book and engage its actionable reverberations over 6 cohort sessions.
What does it look like to build the spaces and the world we truly need – together? Participants will explore the liberatory journeys of people of color in the past and present through readings, videos, and other engaging materials. Following this grounding work, the group will consider how to navigate power dynamics and their own participation in systems and structures of harm to create revolutionary outcomes: moves toward genuine community, healthy self-and-other accountability, and embodied care and awareness that can buoy us collectively in challenging times.
In conversation with the Enneagram, we can celebrate the strengths God has given us, identify our personality challenges, and put deeper self-understanding into action. The aim of the cohort will be to identify natural gifts and reflexive tendencies, develop instinctive capacities, identify underused strengths, learn how to approach conflict with awareness, and begin to apply the concepts in participants’ leadership contexts.
Worship is a catalyst for congregational change, rooting people in the proclamation of God’s Holy Word and the movement of the Holy Spirit in order to embody their faith in the world. The Preaching for Change initiative creates the opportunity for transformation by developing learning environments for discernment, growth, and experimentation. You are invited to form a cohort to join this Initiative. Applications are now open for the fall cohort, with a July 31 deadline.
If you’ve engaged with NEXT Church in the last six months, you have probably heard someone say, “It’s better when we go together.” This embodies everything we believe at NEXT Church. Better doesn’t always feel good or comfortable, help us get somewhere together faster, or mean that we will get everything that we want. And going together means we get out of our own way and move toward God’s way.
I don’t mean this as a cliche. When our leadership looked to the future of NEXT Church, we bet on the importance of a network of leaders connecting, embodying and practicing their work, and impacting the Church as a collective movement. We want to disrupt transactional engagement (What will I get out of this? How will this help us?) to acknowledge that the moment something becomes a “best practice” it is commodified and universalized.
NEXT Church is committed to building collective spaces where we can make room for unique, lived experiences. We seek to flatten the organizational structure, both ours and those which we navigate, to arrive at a faith which calls us to embody who we are and what we believe so that change is possible. Programs and gatherings are merely spaces where we show up with and for one another, practicing what we believe and providing accountability for the work ahead.
I am brought back to this year’s national gathering by a repetitive chorus from worship, “We get there together or we never get there at all.” We all need one another in order to create this space and the path ahead. Otherwise, we won’t get anywhere at all.
Here are a few ways you can join other leaders in the NEXT Church network:
Celebrate our newest Vision Team members, leaders from across the church who will foster relationships, uphold the organization’s embodiment of its mission and vision, and engage with those on the ground to address the needs and support necessary today.
LEARN MORE ABOUT NEXT CHURCH LEADERSHIP
In partnership with A Sanctified Art and More Light Presbyterians, join us on May 21 at 12:30 pm EST for a Roundtable Conversation on Pride/Imago Dei Sunday. Consider how you have already and will continue to celebrate the liberation of all people.
Together with Crossroads Antiracism Training and Facilitation, we are excited to release a new resource, “Antiracism as a Way of Being.” Check your emails at the end of the month for more information and the opportunity to join an information discussion about our approach and hopes for this work.
Our NEXT Steps Coaching Team is planning several opportunities to engage in cohort learning beginning this fall. More information and registration will be sent in early June. The Preaching for Change initiative will also open up a second round of applications at this time.
With Hope and Joy —
Larissa Kwong Abazia
Executive Director
The NEXT Church National Gathering is next month and we couldn’t be more excited! Gathering with you, in the height of spring in the DC Metro area, feels like an oasis of joy on the horizon. Here are some details we’d like to highlight as you register and plan your trip to the National Gathering.
There are a lot of places you can stay in the Falls Church area. We’ve reserved two blocks of rooms at local hotels close by the church for your convenience. The room rates are available until March 18, or until the rooms are sold out. Don’t delay! Make Your Reservation
We will offer childcare at the National Gathering (for a small fee) during the Pathways and Plenary sessions to make gathering more accessible to parents of young children. Children are always welcome in worship and at meal times! If you are interested in childcare or would like to learn more, please contact Jen James by Monday, March 18.
The National Gathering is just that – a gathering. It is a place to connect with other church leaders and dream together. We are pleased to offer 1 or 2 person exhibit hall registrations at the National Gathering this year. Learn more about the Exhibit Hall
Are you trying to coordinate your travel arrangements or curious about how the days will flow? Check out the gathering schedule to orient yourself to the rhythm of the gathering. See the Schedule
“If we host a National Gathering, we aren’t doing it the old way.”
The NEXT Church Vision Team was clear when they made the decision to bring back the National Gathering – it wasn’t going to be the same old model. The Church, in so many ways, isn’t the same Church it was in March 2020, so our gathering couldn’t be the same either. This was an opportunity to get clear about why we gather and what impact we hope to have.
We know there is something special that happens when people gather together across the Church with a common passion to lead more courageously towards wholeness, justice, and transformation. We’ve invited a team of incredible leaders to accompany you during the National Gathering. These leaders will embody multiple roles throughout the week. They will lead pathways, preach and lead in worship, dialog with each other through a plenary discussion, spark ideas in ignite presentations, and sit at table with you and share in community meals.
We hope you will come be a part of this holy work, happening on the ground… together.
With Hope and Joy,
Larissa Kwong Abazia
Executive Director
We are grateful to those who attended our Town Hall Meeting on Monday, January 29, 2024. NEXT Church leadership shared some updates and then engaged in a generative activity and discussion. Check out what you missed!
Here are some highlights:
You are invited to join us on a Lenten journey.
We have been working with Crossroads Antiracism Organizing & Training for over a year to curate a brand new resource to cultivate antiracist leadership. We’ve taken the best of our previous resources, made adjustments based on your feedback, and rooted rich theoretical concepts into practice. Antiracism as a Way of Being illustrates antiracism as an embodied way of moving and being in the world. We believe this resource will be transformational for you, individually, as well as your community. It will be available for wider use in late Spring.
Over the six Thursdays in Lent, we are offering a preview opportunity to engage the series and its content. The series is designed in six video modules (approx. 30 minutes in length) and participants will watch one video each week. The group will gather for one hour facilitated discussions weekly beginning at 1 pm EST/ 10 am PST on Thursday, February 15th. Together, we will explore the posture of antiracist leadership.
Consider making this your Lenten practice in the upcoming season.
Let your voice be heard at our Town Hall Meeting this Monday, January 29 @ 8:00pm EST//5:00pm PST.
Whether you work in congregational leadership, serve in non-traditional ministry, are an active church member, however you encounter the church, we want to connect with you. Register for the Zoom link.
One the Journey Together,
Larissa Kwong Abazia
Executive Director
At NEXT Church, we are continually seeking ways to develop and equip leaders for sustained and courageous leadership. We have curated five timely and important topics for all church leaders to engage as this new year begins. Start 2024 off by investing in yourself, a team you work with, and/or the leaders around you. Check out the topics below and register!
Each workshop is 90 minutes and will include rich content provided by experts and practitioners alongside facilitated coaching by NEXT Church staff. Sessions will be recorded and available for individual use up to 90 days following the session.
Workshops begin next week and take place on Wednesdays and Thursdays @ 1:00pm EST/10:00am PST.
Register for one workshop ($29 each) or all five (only $99)!
Do you have a group of colleagues with whom you want to discern, grow, and experiment? Is there a group in your church who would benefit from accompaniment? Unlock a trove of resources and support by applying to be a part of this initiative! Applications are due January 7. Contact LeAnn Hodges with questions.