Word and World is excited to announce that we have accepted about 20 young activists in their 20’s and 30’s to participate in our mentoring program.

As we said in our invitation letter: Deep calls to deep. We heard a call from the next generation of fellow travelers looking to receive the tradition of the “church-as-movement.” So we put out a call of our own, seeking those who longed to carve out time to reflect on this road that’s made by walking. To this invitation responded farmers, artists, organizers, dancers, seekers, writers, peacemakers, allies, community builders, even a lawyer and a pastor—a band of sojourners ready to go deep, ready to “catch some big fish” (Mark 1:17).

We can’t wait to meet the crew. In fact we’ll all come together at our first retreat at the end of April in Detroit.

The curriculum committee has put together an incredible syllabus (which we’ll likely share on the website once we get a final version) so that we all might reflect upon some of the most seminal and powerful works that have shaped and continue to shape activism. (Right now in preparation for the retreat, we’re reading Ambassadors of Reconciliation Volumes 1 and 2 by Elaine Enns and Ched Myers in case you’re interested).

In between retreats, our mentees will stay in touch with a team of mentors and really work to let the ‘rubber hit the road’ in their lives and communities.

We ask you, the wider Word and World community, for your prayers as we move forward into this adventure. It is our hope that within a short period of time, our mentees will begin a new wave of Word and World activities around the country that really helps to strengthen church-as-movement. We continue to think about ways to fund this program, and if you have some ideas or wish to make a contribution, please get in touch with us at info@wordandworld.org

Please stay tuned to the website for ongoing information about this and other Word and World activities.  To this end, we have added some dynamic content to the website.  Please check out two new videos in our Multimedia page as well as a video description of the history of Word and World.

As always, we’re glad you are with us on this journey.

Blessings,

Mike Boucher, Chair

Word & World Call to Kindred Practitioners of Spirited Action.

We live in an hour of urgency.  The collapse of recent economic “bubbles” and the shift of vast financial resources from public to private control is a sign of the times.  Corporatization threatens to roll over democracy like an unstoppable train. Privatization extends to the soil, the water, the genome.  The gridlock of political oversight signals a systemic bankruptcy.  It is time for people of spirit and action to return to the roots and begin anew.  It is a time to ask, yet again, “What does it mean to be human?” “How shall we envision and build economy if there is to be a future at all?” “What now, on a globe of disappearing creatures and cultures, is sustainable?” “How do we bring faith and spirit to bear in practical struggle and rebuilding when apocalypse impends?”

The United States Social Forum

This summer, June 22-26, the United States Social Forum will convene for the second time – this time in Detroit. It is a regional expression of the World Social Forum that since 2001, has offered a people’s alternative to the yearly gathering of elites in Davos, Switzerland, at the so-called World Economic Forum. The USSF will draw 20,000 people to Detroit – grass roots-led, labor-wise, color-loving and beautiful, gender-bending, movement-experienced activists – who are pushing back against war, neo-liberal policy and predatory capital; fighting prison-growth and mountain-beheading.  People who stand fiercely against extinctions and warmings and habitat plunder, building another world from the ground up because we know another world is possible.  The purpose of the USSF is to create open space for renewed consciousness, sharpened strategy, networked struggle, enhanced energy, celebration, lament and laughter writ large to resist the powers decimating possibilities across the planet.  A week of workshops and cultural encounter that ring like a block party in an abandoned neighborhood.

Word & World Initiative

Word and World will be there. We are an ecumenical and inclusive organization, a group of socially-conscious Christians and other people of faith and we offer a particular call.  For ten years we have been providing radical popular education for activists grounded in faith and committed to the work of social transformation.  We seek to build capacity for movements of faith-based witness and to join together the seminary, the sanctuary and the street. 

Detroit as Ground Zero

Detroit is the focus of the hour.  Auto company fortunes have been depleted by the realities of peak oil, climate change, and economic collapse.  Cracked open in an impossible dream, Motown is now mirror and crucible.  Detroit is both symbol and embodiment of post-industrial demise and possibility.  “This way lies the fate of the country,” it shouts from a thousand emptied homes and shops.  But this way also lies a new humanity, schooled in hard streets, creating beauty and vitality like chicory from broken concrete or hip-hop outside the big label.  The city has become home to community urban gardening  rebirthing entire blocks, tech-savvy youth with stealth visions of free media, art growing wondrously from garbage, neighborhood peace zones crafted in sweat and straight speech from histories of gun violence and loss.  This is the deep text of Detroit!  It is rising again, from the ground up, outside big plans and players.  It citizens keep their ear to the earth, hearing revolution from green roots, knowing evolution takes time and care, even love, in the mix of radical change.

Word & World Call

Word and World will be in Detroit because we believe that the story unfolding there holds promise for the rest of our country.  We will focus on spiritual resources as a foundation for an alternative economic vision in response to the developing crisis.  Our plan is to use the ancient biblical vision of “Sabbath Economics,” as a lens through which we can read and re-imagine another world possible and see another Detroit happening. The Sabbath/Jubilee practice of rest and “release” – of slaves, of debt, of labor and land, of consolidated capital – holds out the gift of an old new way of being. An economy of grace. Communal recovery of these radical practices will be the subject of an opening celebration, a cluster of educational workshops, and a collective action interrupting foreclosures and the predatory holding of banks.

The time is ripe for faith and spirit. We invite you to join us in Detroit as we seek to reunite critical reflection, biblical literacy and social praxis. 

Another world is truly possible. Another United States is surely necessary.  Another Detroit is indeed happening. We believe and see. Please join us for all or part of this offering!

If you plan to attend, please RSVP to Lydia Wylie-Kellermann lydiaiwk@gmail.com or (313)595-1967.