Faith Development

How do we learn to live, as people and as congregations, like we are worthy of love? How do we live into compassion for ourselves and others?

How do we as people and as congregations meet the intensity of this moment with curiosity instead of defensiveness?

Many of our congregations can sometimes get stuck in polarized, either/or thinking. Are you an atheist or a theist? Are you racist or woke? The deeper spiritual truth is such divisions are an illusion.

In our striving to do our best and be our best, we as people and we as congregations can sometimes gravitate toward perfectionism--a force that cuts us, and others, down. How can we learn to honor the good about who we are and what we're accomplishing, knowing that it's incomplete, knowing that it's imperfect?

How do we learn to live into our hopes, both in our personal lives and in our shared lives as congregations? We explore the shift from despair to hope.

What would our communities and our lives be like if we lived from our faith more than from our fear?

Shifting from the hyperindividualistic thinking embedded in so much of American culture to an interdependent collective way of being.

A series of reflections and resources for the seven theological and organizational shifts the Pacific Western Region staff promote in our work.