Annual Report 2022

Annual Report 2022

Experimenting with innovative paths of spiritual growth for all, discovering the Church's future and the future of faith practice.

WELCOME You have felt it. We have felt it. TCL has felt it.

Coming out of lockdown, for many of us, there is an appearance of a "back to normal." Traffic is back. Routines are stretched again. Calendars are full. Travel is in full, or even overly full, force.

But we are not the same internally. Our world has undergone universal trauma on top of our individual struggles and joys.

The one certainty in this post-lockdown chapter is uncertainty.

We are defining, or being defined by, emerging norms and trends that will slowly but surely rise out of this transitional season for the world over.

The Church Lab was built for this moment because it is built to take joy and curiosity in experimentation, in risk-taking for bold and creative faithfulness, in learning from failure, and in walking with others to help them do so.

Where neighbors are less sure about the way forward, about how to get spiritually anchored, about how to bridge divides, about how to act in bold faithfulness even within faith communities, we stand in the gap and celebrate worthwhile risk-taking and learning that leads to bold faithfulness, to the future of faith practice!

It is terribly exciting.

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THERE IS NO FEAR IN LOVE. BUT PERFECT LOVE DRIVES OUT FEAR 1 JOHN 4:18 Every effort we make, in the dialogue room all the way to church leadership strategy meetings, is helping people spiritually grow in this moment by acknowledging, embracing and seeking spiritual growth in our shared uncertainty.

We are committed to continuing to take joy in throwing strategic, creative spaghetti at the wall and learning more and more about how to follow God's lead even when we feel disoriented, and then to offer those lessons to any around us who would like our help.

HOW HAVE WE BEEN DOING THIS IN 2022?

The Baugh Foundation graciously granted us funds for Carrie to write 2 projects to help people we haven't reached before. She is writing about how to dialogue across difference as well as how to pursue non-traditional ministry in this era of change.

We are experimenting with how to elevate dialogue, and accompanying spiritual growth, when anti-dialogical sentiments are on the rise nationally.

We are testing the waters of digital, hybrid and in-person spaces for ongoing dialogue community, inviting new people into it and pursuing the most indepth topics possible within the dialogue community.

We are walking with faith leaders and lay leaders to understand the context in which we find ourselves. Then we accompany them in a creative, sustainable pursuit of faithful questions that will form their new norms as faith communities.

We are trying out a "theology nerd night" as a new angle on Christian discipleship we haven't tried before, which also nurtures interfaith and potentially even non-religious welcome within the same space and time.

We are testing interest and engagement with social events, movie+discussion nights, Navigating Divisive Conversations workshops, Facilitators' Training and interactive worship experiments that were offered pre-pandemic, considering what renewed or distinct forms they could meaningfully take now, and/or if they should continue...and much more!

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Please read on to learn more about all that we have been up to this year, and our prayerful hopes for going forward. We hope you will seriously consider participating and giving generously to our mission. This time next year, we will be celebrating our 10-year anniversary! We are excited to celebrate with you, and would be able to do so because of you!

With immense gratitude to God for y'all, Pastor Carrie

how we work The Church Lab experiments with meeting spiritual needs in effective, meaningful ways.

As we learn from our experiments, we walk with other leaders, helping them take meaningful experimental risks in line with their call to service.

In all we do, we most highly value depth and nuance in one’s spiritual life.

Our central experiment to pursue this is through sustained, small group interfaith dialogue facilitated by a pastoral facilitator.

We meet biweekly for interfaith dialogue. Beyond this, we share opportunities for local and global service/mission, creative worship experiments, and discipleship for participating Christians.

Pastoral care is offered to anyone, no matter what one’s beliefs are, with no strings attached.

There are folks who identify with many faiths, or no faith at all, or who are not sure what they believe, that find this informal, small community process as a beautiful way to ask questions and explore one’s evolving convictions in a safe, encouraging dialogical space.

Then we take all our leaps of faith, our failing up and our learning's lessons, and we share them with others who want to try experiments with good lab partners. We do this by pastorally facilitating pastors' cohorts, lay leaders' cohorts, community discernment retreats, trainings, workshops, and specialized consulting projects.

We need you to keep up this vital work!

Together, we are finding the future of faith practice for any who seek it.

Amen.

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WE ARE POWERED BY GENEROSITY While our affordable consulting work helps us do ministry full-time, our operational budget is powered by your generosity exclusively. It is run entirely off donations! You can ALWAYS give online at thechurchlab.org.

OUR MOST IMPACTFUL GIVING IS THROUGH MONTHLY PLEDGING. To become a monthly or annual partner, visit thechurchlab.org and scroll to the giving section. It is easy to give online, and you can set up recurring donations there!

We ask for 3-year pledge commitments where possible, as this helps us minimize ministry time used for continuous fundraising tasks. We are thrilled for 1-year commitments, if donors are more comfortable with this or any other donor-chosen timeframe. Please email carrie@thechurchlab.org to let us know the timeframe of your commitment.

HOW TO CONNECT WITH US Give: thechurchlab.org/give Website: thechurchlab.org *Learn more from our community at thechurchlab.org/blog *Sign up for weekly mailchimp updates and calls for dialogue RSVP’s by signing up at the bottom of our homepage: thechurchlab.org Facebook: facebook.com/thechurchlab Instagram or twitter: @thechurchlab Email: Rev. Carrie Graham, founding pastor: carrie@thechurchlab.org Andrea Carroll, pastoral assistant: help@thechurchlab.org :

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9TH YEAR MILESTONES This October, we celebrated our 9TH birthday of tinkering in the lab for the greater good! We have much to share and celebrate with you, because of you!

Over the last 9 years, TCL has celebrated learning from failure and successes both in ministry content and exploring operational structures that will sustain it. We have intentionally gleaned lessons in hopes of walking with others with effective support as they engage their own experiments in this age of religious change.

From our Backward Bible Study and Dog Church to “Chortle” Discipleship + Karaoke, from our Family Portraits for Harvey victims who lost all their photos all the way to Pandemic Pen Pal community care, complete with surprise packages at community members' doors, our experiments have offered lessons, evolutions and layers of “aha!” moments in how we can serve God and God’s people. We are excited to continue discovering ways that speak to changing dispositions - and growing needs - around connecting to God and to each other more deeply and securely.

In 2018, we began our 1st offered consulting project to help share gleanings from our experiments with other leaders. We want to help others who wish to take risks in bold faith for the future of spiritual growth. In 2019, we had over 20 requests for consultations, trainings and workshops!

In 2020, we took the leap to try to be full-time. When the pandemic hit, we wondered about our timing! Then God provided a path for us to help our dialoguers and many faith communities to creatively navigate the pandemic, and help their wider communities in so doing. We were honored to get to do so.

In 2021, we worked with 11 church cohorts across the entire state of Texas. We provided Facilitators' Training. We developed a team of TCL Pastoral Facilitators.

We have spent a weekend in Logan, Utah, helping university students and members of First Presbyterian Church of Logan to level up in their abilities to navigate divisive conversations.

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HAPPY BIRTHDAY, TCL! In 2022, it has been a time for joyful spaghetti throwing for any organizations like ours that are built to be laboratories.

This is an era of transition not only for faith practice, but for the world coming out of lockdown, deciding new norms around how we engage and what we have energy to engage. This era tests our DNA as being built for risk, as in a chapter with no set norms, we must have space to fail and learn enough to define -rather than be defined by - rising new practices and rhythms for our lives and faith practices. We are here to surf the wave of uncertainty coming out of lockdown, and to invite others into a space to learn, too.

launched our Empowering Experiments mini-grant program, in which we grant other spiritual innovators resources and supportive partnership in worship experiments they wish to try. working with churches as they emerge from the pandemic, whether through day retreats, long-term contracts, helping a discernment process on closing or staying open, etc. working on 2 book projects, thanks to the Baugh Foundation's grant!

All along the way, we have prayed and rooted on our Chortle discipleship crew through unforeseen lows and evolving, grounded joys.

In this spirit, in 2022, we have committed to focusing on core ministries, testing and learning what expressions remain meaningful and how. feeling out what IRL, hybrid and Zoom options work in meaningful ways for our mission. re-introducing events that went on hold during lock down, such as social events, worship experiments, movie nights, and observing what energy exists for them. trying a new experiment like Theology Nerd Night! brought on the wonderful Andrea Carroll as our new pastoral assistant!

As for our core spiritual growth ministry, a.k.a. our interfaith dialogue community: With about 184 dialogues under our belt, we cannot wait to get back in the Lab for more.

We are meeting our mission by living up to our laboratory name, taking bold risks for the sake of discovering how God is leading the Church and the future of faith practice in the United States!

TCL’s 9 years and counting:

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DIALOGUES I love TCL because I believe that we are called by God to be in relationship with people, even our enemies. Dialogue is a place where my “others” become friends, where my walls are broken down.

- Sarah Shannon-Wildt Every two weeks, a group of 6-10 people gather from the 4 corners. Among us may be mainline Protestant, Evangelical Christian, Catholic, Pagan, Ahmadiyya Muslim, Baha’i, Jewish, spiritual-but-not-religious, nonidentifying/seekers and humanist perspectives.

We acknowledge one another’s dignity of experience, we laugh together, even as we approach issues where disagreement is inevitable. We are challenged in our own spiritual lives to reckon with the mutually exclusive angles of our friends’ beliefs with our own. Our prayer life may change, our perspectives may shift, our ability increases to hold neighbors in love who approach life so differently than us. We inevitably discover a more nuanced faith, and a capacity to extend love in a deeply meaningful way in our current political, cultural and social climate.

Thanks to video chat, even preceding the pandemic, we have become a hybrid local and national community! We have TCL dialoguers, participants and supporters all over the US! This year, we’ve had digital dialoguers in Virginia, Pennsylvania, Washington, D.C., California and Puebla, Mexico.

It is vital for us to have conservative and liberal viewpoints in the room together. At first, dialogues are about education and awareness. As participants see each other again and again, and sincere community becomes possible, our time grows us in rich ways.

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DIALOGUES This year we’ve engaged the following topics and more:

Prayer Coming of Age: Dash facilitates Addiction Forgiveness & Grace, Callout & Consequence Evangelism Children & Policy, Church & State with guest CPS caseworker Amanda Whisenhunt Ancestors (Part II) Rejection Peacemaking in a Multi-Reality World Superstition

The Loneliness Epidemic Spotlight: Resilience with guest Jarred Vandiver Pilgrimage with special guests Qamar and Bushra Zafar Symbols & Faith Mental Health & My Faith Idols Social Media & My Faith Textual Interpretation & My Faith Favorite Figure From a Sacred Text STUFF, Our Faith & The American Dream

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SPECIAL EVENTS AND COMMUNITY CARE The inevitable result of spiritual groundedness?

Of exploring faith intentionally?

Love-in-action.

Our 2022 special events have included: Twice volunteering at Austin's own Casa Marianella, a shelter which provides services to displaced immigrants.

An IRL social event at Batch, as an entry into reconnecting offline.

Pastoral assistant Andrea Carroll has been curating content for our Doing Good block throughout 2022, helping people of any -or even no- faith tradition to unify in a common passion toward making the world a better place.

The board may soon be entertaining potential updates on our mission fund policies, such that folks can freely ask for aid, regardless of involvement with TCL.

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WALKING WITH LEADERS When we are not doing experiments in our own lab, we adore taking what we’ve gleaned from experimental ministry and walking with other leaders as they try their own. We emphasize taking bold, faithful risks which perpetuate our mission and uphold integrity.

The consulting arm of our ministry is self-sustaining through affordable contracts and grants.

Here are our 2022 highlights from doing so: Lab Partner Pastors: We worked with one long-time TCL partner pastor this year, along with their church family. Through this program, we do ongoing leadership support and development with for the future of Church in the contexts of a leader and their church's gifts and calling.

We met: 4 times throughout the year held optional check-ins between meetings 1 all-day retreat for the pastor 1 opt-in all-day retreat for the pastor and leadership team The Ministry Collaborative Continuity Cohort: After Pastor Carrie had facilitated a cohort for 3 years through The Ministry Collaborative (TMC), a portion of this group partnered with TCL and TMC both to participate in a continuity cohort. This cohort was an extension of their original 3-year timeline, providing them opportunity to reconnect in-person after so much unexpected time online. It gave them a way to move into a new chapter of connection, support, care and development with Carrie and fellow cohort members. It has been a blast of a year! Instead of meeting at church campuses, we began meeting at each other's homes. Seeing a major need for recuperative play, we created "add-ons" to cohort days where the host picked an opt-in, fun activity to add on to our meeting time. We shared a weekend retreat in the fall. We have worshiped, prayed, played, conversed about major leadership challenges; we have celebrated one another's leadership strengths and milestones. It has been a wonderful year, walking with this cohort that has become more like family to one another.

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WALKING WITH LEADERS

We also worked with faith leaders by providing pastoral care for pastors by request. This occurred on an ongoing basis, in this season of navigating layers of unknowns, as we have continued to emerge from pandemic lockdown.

Are you a faith leader interested in working with us?

We offer a menu of possibilities. Some examples are below.

Learn more at thechurchlab.org/leadership-development Secret Shopping Insights

Discernment Process: Who Will We Be Next?

Financial Consulting and Coaching for Systems and Individuals: Match your Theology to Your Budget

Contextualized Projects to Your Curiosities!

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EMPOWERING LEADERS' EXPERIMENTS TCL's 1st annual mini-grant program launch!

We understand there are many non-traditional ministers, of all shapes and sizes out there, who don't have funding or meaningful support to answer their calling and try the experiments that could define the future of faith practice. Too often we experiment in silos.

As both an experimental organization and a community built to support experimentation for the future of faith practice, this year we harnessed part of our own tithing funds to launch TCL's inaugural Empowering Experiments mini-grant program! We are thrilled to build connections, support and provide modest funding to kindred spirits who are devoted to meaningful experimentation with spiritual growth.

We had a number of strong applicants whose calling, ideas and pursuits gave us reason to celebrate the great work in service of the future of faith practice.

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EMPOWERING LEADERS' EXPERIMENTS The following are the 2 projects receiving this year's awards. We are excited to partner with them, connect them meaningfully with TCL's community, and lift up the great work they are doing!

Roll for Spirituality: Spiritual Growth, Exploration, and Healing through Tabletop Role-playing Games Grant Recipient: Ryan Cagle Roll for Spirituality is an experiment that seeks to cultivate a space for self discovery and spiritual exploration outside the bounds of normative religious institutions and dogma. In this space individuals can safely explore new worlds, beliefs, ideas, face challenges, learn to solve problems, and explore deep truths about themselves, the world, and God through the medium of tabletop role playing games.

Lane 8 Yoga Grant Recipient: Rev. Amy Meyer, Pastor of First Presbyterian Church in Elgin, Texas Lane 8 Yoga combines yoga and swimming in a fun, team-like atmosphere. Participants will experience a mind-body-spirit approach to health and wellness as well as a creative mixture of cardiovascular exercise, deep stretching, mindfulness, and meditation.

To learn more, visit our blog at thechurchlab.org/blog and scroll to our entry for Oct 7, 2022.

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PASTORAL CARE AND DISCIPLESHIP PASTORAL CARE

DISCIPLESHIP

Because The Church lab runs off donations, rather than members that pay fees, those donations free us up to offer care to all. The Church Lab then becomes a community-invested system, more and more deeply over time. We offer care to anyone that needs a listening ear, or has big questions about spiritual life, no matter their background or beliefs. This is a vital experiment that keeps pastoral care from being restricted in any capacity, since increasingly those that need care do not have a spiritual home/institution.

For Christians in TCL's community, we offer a small monthly gathering for Christian discipleship. We get together and talk about how we're doing, and let that set the scene for how we are growing into a deeper relationship with God, with a Christian perspective. We reflect on how our reflections intersect with daily decisions and behaviors. Our one consistent question for each other is "...and where is God in all this?!"

Many folks who participate in TCL's community have their own worshiping communities, whether Christian or not. Some claim TCL as their primary church family. Discipleship is a particularly great place to be if TCL is both your primary interfaith and Christian family.

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REACH The Church Lab community is anchored in Austin, though we have beloved participants and supporters from other regions in Texas, as well as from Washington, D.C., Virginia, Pennsylvania, Utah, Georgia, California, Washington, Puebla City in Mexico, and more!

2022 ONGOING PROJECTS

We continue to share our neighbors’ voices through our blog, which can be found at thechurchlab.org/blog. Last year, we expanded this to include a youtube channel!

We continue to regularly offer our Navigating Divisive Conversations and Facilitators' Training workshops.

We continue to keep an eye on opportunities to help in-person around our communities as we emerge from pandemic lockdown times.

We continue to keep an eye out for worship experiment opportunities in pandemicemerging times as well.

We continue to explore ways to strengthen our ability to raise money for operations and to differentiate our funding sources for specific dreams to evolve our mission's effectiveness, primarily including grant applications.

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2023 PREVIEW As we prepare for 2023, we are excited to nurture core ministries of dialogue, discipleship, worship and mission, and to further equip and empower in-house TCL community participants to keep growing in their ownership, leadership and even in their own experiments. develop and execute a strategy for bridge-building for an increasingly antidialogue chapter in US history. This may be through a panel event and/or informal discussions surrounding our dialogue sessions. open up more intentional, organic avenues for spiritual growth for people who are uncomfortable with religion as an institution. Some of this may involve increasing the no-strings attached pastoral care we offer nonprogrammatically. This may also occur through new experiments, such as applying our new Theology Nerd Night to a non-religious audience who has questions both about spirituality and understanding religious communities. develop and begin executing a strategy for how to help current and future faith leaders to experiment and be equipped for 21st Century ministry. This may be done through a new pastors' cohort, through new contracted projects with faith communities, classes, or even with new efforts in equipping others though curriculum paired with live facilitation.

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OPERATIONAL HIGHLIGHTS FINANCES

In 2021, we raised $60,209. That's nearly $7,500 more than we've ever raised for operations before. We stewarded this carefully to meaningfully serve our mission! We are so grateful to our generous financial partners. Every penny goes a long way. As a financial partner, your vote of confidence through your support is the road that rises to meet us in our work.

FOUNDING PASTOR CARRIE GRAHAM

After a year laced with personal grief in 2021, the board graciously approved Carrie's 6-week Sabbatical in early 2022. After 13 years of ministry, this was Carrie's first full-time Sabbatical ever. She was immensely grateful. She took on a spiritual director to help her use her time off intentionally. Other than getting a bit stuck in Mexico with covid, she had a wonderful time traveling part of the time, resting the other, and reflecting and praying throughout.

We received a GRANT from the Baugh Foundation!!! This allowed Carrie to write her heart out on 2 projects. One writing project is dedicated to helping others learn to dialogue across difference. The other is a memoir-esque reflection intent on helping those doing non-traditional work to be provided with a blueprint, which is rare to come by in this line of work.

Carrie welcomed Andrea Carroll as our new pastoral assistant, focusing on training and welcoming her onto Team TCL! This was part of our operational work this year: to streamline our teeny parttime positions into one cohesive part-time position.

Carrie participated in Leadership Austin's Essential cohort, where she has met incredible new colleagues and friends alike, some of whom are already directly supporting TCL's mission in various ways!

Carrie continued to serve on the board of Fellowship Southwest, a fellow non-traditional ministry organization which pursues work of justice TCL itself so often seeks to support. In this process, she got to visit Texas-Mexico border ministries as well as learn from Native American pastors in Oklahoma about how to support their vital work.

Carrie focused on a) nurturing our core ministries, and b) experimenting with renewed or emerging sensibilities for meeting and spiritual growth in general, as we emerge from pandemic lockdown times. She walked with various churches throughout the year to sort out what bold faithfulness looks like in this season.

Carrie was honored to guest lecture at the University of Texas at Austin School of Social Work about power dynamics in US Protestant history and broad principles of dialogue practice.

PASTORAL ASSISTANT ANDREA CARROLL Andrea began 2022 by immediately holding down the fort for TCL while Carrie was on Sabbatical! She did a fantastic job.

When Carrie returned, she began the onboarding process as pastoral assistant. She has been taking on bookkeeping, donor relations, the mailchimp, the blog, the Doing Good block, all social media, various other projects, not to mention being a sounding board for strategic visioning! To say TCL is elevated by Andrea is an understatement.

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OPERATIONAL HIGHLIGHTS OUTGOING / INTERIM BOOKKEEPER NATALIE TRAYLOR Natalie has graciously served as our outgoing bookkeeper, making herself available to train and assist Andrea as she passed the baton over to her. In 2021, she served as our interim bookkeeper and evolved our processes significantly! She and Andrea have both worked to make sure the transition process is smooth, and that TCL's records and donors benefit from the always-improving practices we engage as an organization who so highly prizes careful stewardship.

BOARD OF DIRECTORS It has been a big year for our board, and we are better for it!

We have new officer roles all around! Wendy Cooper is our new chair! Dash Kees is our incoming treasurer! Jenna Pontious is our incoming fundraising chair! Andrea Carroll -also a board member! - is chairing a special seat this year: coordinating our 10th anniversary celebration!

We are particularly grateful to outgoing board member Julie Hagen, who stepped up into our first active board chair role ever. She instantly leveled up board culture, and kept that evolution going throughout her tenure. Her leadership leaves a strong legacy for TCL, and we are so grateful for her advocacy, past, present and future.

We had our first IRL retreat in 3 years! We had a GREAT time connecting, many for the first time in-person. We had many substantive discussions and moved mountains in terms of our productivity and goals.

We updated our mission statement, which is to experiment with innovative paths of spiritual growth for all, discovering the Church's future and the future of faith practice.

It was no small feat; we passed our first strategic plan!!!

We passed a handful of new-and-improved budgetary policies!

We held fundraising training and messaging practice!

We worked hard on recruiting new board members.

We, of course, had many big picture conversations related to our mission and its strong future.

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FINANCIAL REPORT AND NEEDS

We are trying to raise $91,255 for our growing 2023 operations!

This includes all operations and no-strings attached ministry experiments. It does not include the consulting arm of our ministry, which is self-sustaining.

Last year we raised $60,209, which was more than we'd ever raised before.

As of Oct 24, we have raised 29% of our goal. Our deadline is Dec 31!

Please consider financial partnership with us!

2023 HEALTHY ORG / FUNDRAISING GOAL BUDGET Mission 10% of whatever is raised

$9,160.00

Pastor

$32,784.36

Half-time Assistant - at $30/hour for 80 hours/month (currently $21/hour for 40 hours/month)

$21,000.00

Squarespace

$200.00

Domain Name LGL monthly purchase (donation tracking) Taxes Misc Fees (tax & LGL indiv) Google Suite Zoom Subscription General Liability Insurance Errors and Omissions Insurance General Supplies Mission Capital membership Misc / inflation

$20.00 $600.00 $700.00 $200.00 $156.00 $165.00 $700.00 $700.00 $1,000.00 $250.00

Discretionary

$1,000.00 $2,820.00

BOD Retreat (space, travel help as needed, food)

$1,500.00

Marketing:

$5,000.00

Grant writing:

$5,000.00

Fundraising officer:

$5,000.00

Annual report, graphics

$500.00

Continuing ed (certificates, conferences, etc)

$3,500.00

TOTAL

$91,255.36

TCL PROUDLY ANNOUNCES OUR AMBASSADOR PROGRAM! What is TCL's Ambassador Crew?

This is a group of folks who believe in TCL's mission, and who do fun things to lift up who we are and what we do!

How? By doing TCL activities with other people they care about (especially when it is suspected that these cared-about people would care about TCL)!

Learn more below!

If interested, please email help@thechurchlab.org to become a part of TCL's Ambassador Crew!

What does being a TCL Ambassador involve?

It's pretty simple. There are 4 factors to being an Ambassador: 1) When you sign up, we will send you some TCL swag to show off! Let's face it. This is basically being the same as a runway model.

2) We ask you to pick 3 (or more) TCL events to attend and bring 1 or more friends to throughout 1 given year (operating on an annual basis from the time you sign up). Events that would usually cost money are free for you and your guest. You can pick from events like: dialogue-and-dinner night (online guests will be sent $10 food delivery cards per person to contribute to their din, and we will do this for online guests for up to 10 people).

"The Future of Church and You" chat: a new 2-hour TCL consulting workshop (IRL or online).

Free for Ambassadors and guest!

"Navigating Divisive Conversations" 2-hour workshop (IRL or online). Free for Ambassadors and guest!

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AMBASSADOR PROGRAM! Lunch-and-Learn about TCL: This is a straightforward event to learn about the overall mission of TCL and our several experiments which perpetue our mission. (Online guests will be sent $10 food delivery cards per person to contribute to their lunch, and we wil do this for online guests for up to 10 people.)

Theology Nerd Night: This is a new core ministry experiment in which TCL participants get together to go deeper into the theology behind a recent or upcoming dialogue topic. Perspectives will begin with the Christian belief system, and if parts of the dialogue community participate, perspectives of varying belief systems will be welcomed into the crux of the conversation. This event is a 2-hour event which occurs IRL or online periodically on a weeknight.

Worship Experiment: TCL offers online and/or IRL worship experiments throughout the year, with either a Christian-specific focus point with room for inter-religious dialogue afterward, or a multi-faith friendly ritual, practice and reflection. You are welcome to join in on any of these, of course!

3) We encourage you to forward, share or re-post one or all of our mailchimp, blog or social media each quarter with a brief personal note to someone you know that you think might care about material we are presenting.

4) Finally, if you are on track with your Ambassador goals, we will celebrate you at our annual Advent Conspiracy celebration in December! We will acknowledge your contributions with glee and gratitude, and we will invite you -as an option, with no pressure- to contribute brief words via writing or video to share about your experience as an ambassador, as you wish.

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SHOUT OUTS AND PLEDGE INFO The Church Lab is a cooperative endeavor! There are stellar people to thank for making this ministry not just possible, but thriving!

Mega thanks to the following: Our donating partners directly make TCL possible, and we are thankful for the ways God weaves our friends’ generosity together to make this endeavor a reality. Thanks be to God for you!

Our beloved dialogue community, who is the heartbeat of The Church Lab. Anyone who participated in the Lab this year, whether in a worship experiment or a training or workshop! We are lucky to get to cross paths with the coolest people on the planet. We are so glad you joined us in the Lab this year.

Our amazingly fun Lab Partner Pastor Rev. Amos Meyer and First Presbyterian Church of Elgin.

Our fantastic continuity cohort through The Ministry Collaborative, and to The Ministry Collaborative, who made it possible!

Andrea Carroll, our pastoral assistant: We are deeply grateful for her passion and competence, her devotion to and participation in our TCL community. We are lucky to have her evolving our mission on so many levels!

TCL partners and friends with whom we've gotten to work at what we knew as Servant Church, as well as Shepherd of the Hills Presbyterian Church, Madison Square Presbyterian Church, and a special thanks to University Presbyterian Church, with whom we were honored to walk through much of the year.

Our wonderful board members: Chair Wendy Cooper, 10-year Celebration Chair Andrea Carroll, Treasurer Dash Kees and Fundraising Chair Jenna Pontious!

Natalie Traylor, who overhauled our bookkeeping system in spectacular fashion and then diligently trained Andrea Carroll on how to take the baton!

Our original board members from 2013 have officially all rotated off and moved forward in the ways they express TCL support. They are deeply valued and their contributions' legacy will be felt for years to come: Aaron Karr, Rev. Sabrina Chan, Jenelle D'Alessandro, Stacey Schwenker, Dr. Jen Rosner, Rev. Justin Fung, Rev. Trey Haddon, Sara Burback Lim, Kelly Dunlap and Julie Hagen!

Our third year of Advisory Council: Rev. Matt Gaventa, Rev. Elizabeth Mclean, Dr. Jen Rosner. Your questions, insights, confidence in our capacity and enthusiastic support for our mission means the world.

Spiritual director Lucinda Clark, who has been an indispensable source of insight and encouragement throughout this year for Pastor Carrie!

Pastor Carrie has a support system that makes her experimental work possible from behind the scenes, whether by mentors, friends, folks that help her process leadership decisions or simply help her get some rest or play in. She is immensely grateful for those that help her become a better pastor by making sure she is a whole human. Thanks be to God for y’all.

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PLEASE CONSIDER PLEDGING! We absolutely need your generosity to be able to keep up this good work!

If you’d like to give a one time donation, we would be so grateful! You may do so right now, with great ease, at THECHURCHLAB.ORG/GIVE. Monthly pledgers are our most impactful donating partners. To become a pledger, you can also set it up online at THECHURCHLAB.ORG/GIVE. Please email carrie@thechurchlab.org to let us know if you’re able to commit to a 3-year recurring donation, or another timeframe of your choosing.

We are immensely grateful for your generosity, both in resources, prayers and participation.

We look forward to seeing you in the Lab soon!

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