Evolving Faith Is Happening!
We thought about postponing it. We thought about canceling it. But we need hope more than ever—and so we'll gather virtually in October
The 7th Day after Coronatide
Grand Rapids, Michigan
Hey, friend.
I went to the garden with Fozzie yesterday afternoon, and so far, mixed results. My potatoes seem to be doing pretty well, and the yellow squash that was attacked by cucumber beetles is roaring back. But my spinach, chard, and kale have been lackluster. I don’t know what’s going on.
More on Fozzie and the garden soon, but this isn’t my usual weekly letter. Instead, it’s about something else that I’ve been cultivating. (Yeah, yeah, I need to be more judicious with these gardening verbs and metaphors.)
Evolving Faith 2020 is happening.
Some of you know about this gathering, which was started by the writers Sarah Bessey and Rachel Held Evans. They invited me to speak at the first one, in 2018, in North Carolina. (I talked about compost, and I cried, so it was very on-brand.) It was such a beautiful thing: two days of storytelling and song, so much laughter and so many tears (and not just mine). Many of us in that room admitted that we weren’t ready to give up on Jesus—and we were convinced that Jesus hadn’t yet given up on us, even if we didn’t know exactly how our faith was supposed to look.
A few months afterward, Rachel called me and asked if I’d join the leadership team. I became one of the co-curators—and three months later, our dear Rachel died.
Sarah and I managed to get through the 2019 event, barely, and then we thought, 2020 will be so easy by comparison. We were on top of the proverbial things. We had most of a speaker lineup done early. We had a venue. We had high hopes. We thought we were ready.
Hahahahahahahahaha.
This was an awesome and memorable moment from EF2019: a conversation with Chanequa Walker-Barnes, William Matthews, and Kaitlin Curtice
After the pandemic began, we seriously contemplated postponing or canceling the event. But I kept thinking of the title that we’d given the next-to-last session that we’d planned: evolving faith and hope for the future. We’d begun imagining that even when Rachel was still with us, knowing that we’d be meeting just weeks before the 2020 presidential election.
After Rachel died, we knew we needed hope more than ever. As these past few months and indeed weeks have unfolded, Sarah and I have become more and more convinced that we needed to gather, even if we couldn’t do it with everyone in one physical place. So we scrambled, made a lot of calls, and with our team did a ton of pivoting and reimagining, planning and begging.
Evolving Faith 2020 is happening, but it will be a live virtual gathering.
This won’t be the meeting that we originally planned, but then when do things ever go as planned? EF2020 will have the same spirit, based on the conviction that we’re not ready to give up on faith yet, the feeling that we’re still called to proclaim good news in the world, and the trust that the gorgeous diversity of God’s creation, the liberating message of Jesus, and the beautiful companionship of the Spirit still matter—perhaps more now in these difficult times than ever. We want to be together. Maybe we even need to be together.
On October 2nd and 3rd, 24 amazing people will join Sarah and me, some in person, some by the miracles of technology. These are extraordinary humans—activists and artists, writers and preachers, theologians and pastors, dreamers and doers. Look them up: Alicia Crosby, Amena Brown, Amy-Jill Levine, Audrey Assad, Barbara Brown Taylor, Carol Gallagher, Chanequa Walker-Barnes, Gail Song Bantum, Jen Hatmaker, Kate Bowler, Kelley Nikondeha, Kenji Kuramitsu, Nadia Bolz-Weber, Neichelle Guidry, Nichole Nordeman, Mihee Kim-Kort, Monica Coleman, Pádraig Ó Tuama, Propaganda, Rhina Ramos, Sherrilyn Ifill, Tanya Marlow, Terry Stokes, and Winnie Varghese.
We’re going to talk about the world as we see it now and the world as we hope it can be. We’ll tell stories. We’ll learn together. We’ll hear about faith from the rich perspectives of our diverse lineup of speakers. We’ll be candid about the struggles we have with Christianity as it’s represented today and we’ll lean into the vision we share of the welcoming, just, and good thing it might become. We hope you’ll join us.
I’m also delighted to let you know that we’re expanding our scholarship program for underrepresented minorities, so please apply! It’s just one of the ways in which we’re reaffirming our commitment to justice and our push for equity, and we’ll have more news in that department soon.
Evolving Faith 2020 is happening, and it won’t be the same without you.
It would have been Rachel’s 39th birthday today. We miss her every single day, but her fingerprints are still all over this gathering, from the speakers to the spirit. And as she reminded everyone over and over and over, there’s room at the table for you too.
I hope you’ll be a part of the gathering.
Much love,
Jeff