Editorial Note: The post below was originally published on the Englewood Review of Books Substack, and is reposted here with permission. Sign up for The Englewood Review of Books weekly newsletter here. ~CK

A few weeks ago, some members of our team spent a few days in the D.C. metro area attending Missio Alliance’s Awakenings Gathering. Missio Alliance is a nationwide network of Christians who desire to engage in dialogue and work around the most pressing theological and cultural challenges facing the North American Church in mission amid its rapidly shifting cultural context. In addition, they are a publishing partner on our Cultivating Communities Series. It was truly a gift to be present with so many friends and colleagues.

Today, we’re sharing a few brief reflections from our team about the gathering — what resonated with us, what questions we’re asking, and how we felt connected to God over the course of the three days. Read on for more!

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Juxtaposition and Being Made New

In my work as a textile artist, I often find myself drawn to the theme of juxtaposition. Opposites. I recently sewed together scraps from a burlap bag and wedding dress. Because for me, there is something in that intersection that is mysterious and beautiful. There is something about it that feels incarnational to me. A little like Jesus.

The Missio conference, taking place in our nation’s capital, felt a little bit like this. Like opposites, together in the same city; a presidential administration whose actions are constricting our collective Body’s airways; a gathering of beautiful souls whose actions are hell-bent on breathing life into our collective Body.

For the past several months, I’ve been sensing that the contemplative work of beauty and of art has a unique opportunity to speak into our particular climate today. This continued to echo throughout the conference: breath prayers, contemplative creation spaces (like that created by artist Julius Shumpert), conversational connections with several wise-hearted artists (like Michelle Winter of Creator Spiritus), thought provoking plenary talks. At the same time, the call towards beauty felt very much like a call towards embodying justice, right where we are, moving deeper than a theoretical idea, and into the hard work of coming alongside neighbors, looking for Jesus, right here with us. Our bodies in this place, beholding brokenness, imagining what restoration and resurrection might be, and working towards that. Working with God, and with one another, to make all things new.

Katie Selby is the Associate Editor of The Englewood Review of Books and a textile artist.

Anxiety, Embodiment, and Delight

The months and weeks leading up to Awakenings were full of uncertainty — political tumult, of course (which affects my family because my husband is a research scientist whose work is grand-funded), but also lots of difficult family decision-making. That’s probably why I was drawn to workshop called, “Be Anxious for Nothing — Spiritual Attunement for Mental Health,” led by Tracy Reynolds of Attune.

Tracy led us through an exercise in which we were invited to raise our awareness of God’s presence and guidance in a specific scenario causing anxiety, fear, or pain. I chose to focus on the anxiety-ridden process of sending my oldest child to middle school. We began by naming what there was to be grateful for in the situation — such as my son’s natural curiosity and our wonderful elementary school experience — as well as some specific needs and desires we wanted to express to God. Then, we assigned a few of those items a tangible, physical object — a book to represent my son’s curiosity and a soccer ball for the hope of good friendships.

Once each thought and worry had been assigned an object, Tracy invited us to imagine taking those objects with us to a place or time in which we acutely felt God’s loving presence. Then, we invited Jesus to join us there, and we imagined handing those objects off to him. One by one, Jesus interacted with these items. I imagined him happily flipping through the book, playfully kicking the soccer ball, and inviting others to join him. Ultimately, what I was able to imagine was Jesus’s utter delight in my son and all the things that made him him (even though they might present some challenges in a middle school environment). With that new embodied and deepened understanding of God’s love toward and presence with my child, I felt such peace — that kind that, truly, surpasses understanding.

I have long-loved the idea of “praying with my imagination,” but this workshop taught me to better connect with the Spirit in that process. It was a lesson in embodiment — the value of moving the stuff of faith and life from the realm of ideas and thoughts into a more tangible space — even if only in my imagination. Like Katie alluded to above, that juxtaposition is profound, and it unlocked something important for me.

Rev. Dr. Willie James Jennings

Without fail, the best parts of any conference are the informal conversations that one has with friends old and new — after sessions, in hallways, and over meals — and the Awakenings gathering was no exception! But a conference’s sessions are not irrelevant, they provide hearty food that gives life and energy to the informal conversations. Awakenings had many helpful sessions, but the one I most anticipated (and that certainly did not disappoint!) was Rev. Dr. Willie James Jennings’s plenary talk on Friday evening.

Dr. Jennings’s talk explored a number of themes that have been central to his work since at least the release of The Christian Imagination in 2010. I had the opportunity to interview him in the summer of 2010, soon after the release of this landmark book, and we discussed many of the key ideas that would find their way into his talk at Awakenings: land, property, ownership, etc. It seems that continuing reflection over the last 15 years has helped these ideas mature and flourish. Central to the talk was the contrast between “the spirit of ownership” and the way of the Holy Spirit. Owning land, people, creatures, (that is, an ordering of life based on property), he argues, has brought humanity “to the brink of global disaster.” Property serves to divide us, but Jennings argues that the way of the Spirit serves to draw us closer together. And here we find reverberations with many facets of his work in his commentary on Acts. One key example would be the story of those gathered in Jerusalem after Pentecost, who didn’t hold tightly to their resources (i.e., hold them as property), but shared them generously as others had need. It is precisely this sharing that bore witness to the life of the Holy Spirit and drew others closer to the community of Jesus’s followers. I have a deep appreciation for the ideas Jennings offered in his talk, but many questions still exist about how they get embodied in life of God’s people — especially when these ideas are so foreign to us, because our economic and geographic imaginations are so deeply embedded in property-oriented ways of existing in the world.

One other delightful part of Jennings’s talk was that he illustrated his talk with a number of his own poems. (And he confirmed that a volume of his poetry will be published in the near future!) I recorded a couple of these poems, which we were delighted to share on Instagram this week.

C. Christopher Smith is the Founding Editor of the Englewood Review of Books and the author of Slow Church (2014), Reading for the Common Good (2016), and The Virtue of Dialogue (March 2025 and now available for pre-order).

Editorial Note: How do you recap a profoundly deep and prophetically challenging biennial gathering such as Awakenings 2025? Without saying “Check out all the clips and images already on our social channels” (Do this!), the answer is, imperfectly yet with short reflections. Thus, the next few articles will contain a short reflection and key ideas and quotes from plenary speakers during each day of Awakenings 2025.

Several hundred of us gathered in the DC Metro area in early March to seek God, and begin to make sense of this cultural moment. God met us, as God always does, and we left transformed.

We hope these simple reflections spark your own transformation journey with Jesus as you continue to pursue wholeness and beauty in the life of the church alongside our team. ~CK

P.S. Pick up the Awakenings 2025 Conference Bundle, which includes video of all Main Sessions + audio of all Workshops, today!