Written by Mariah Velásquez, Associate Director of the Martin Institute for Christianity and Culture at Westmont College.

My family lives in a seemingly idyllic valley in California where many people come to visit wineries and quaint downtowns. However, in January 2025 tensions began to overflow. 

People who had immigrated from other countries became afraid to go to work or the grocery store because they might be stopped or detained by immigration officials. Others became vocal about their distrust of immigrants and desire to see them removed. These tensions were deeply troubling to me, but I didn’t see any way I could be of help.

I began by asking the question, “How are you?” to those I encountered. I left space for honest responses. Just being willing to listen for a couple of minutes rather than rushing off provided an opening for people to name their fears and anxieties. This felt like one very small piece I could offer.

We were then told by my son’s afterschool program that the children would be kept inside every afternoon rather than playing on the playground. Parents had been picking up their children through an unlocked playground gate, which meant the gate needed to remain open during afterschool hours. With immigration enforcement activity causing fear throughout the community, staff did not feel they could safely allow the children to play outside while the gate was unsecured. 

The same question kept arising: What can I do to help? With my limited time and energy, I asked God to show me one small step I might be able to take. 

In conversation with a close friend, I realized that I could speak with the school administration about changing the pickup process so that the playground gates could remain secured. God was incredibly generous. As I dropped my children off at school the next day, the superintendent was on the sidewalk, seeking to be a reassuring presence. I was able to talk with her for a moment and explain the miscommunication between the school and afterschool programs. She responded immediately and said she would work with the staff to ensure that parents entered through the building and the playground gates remained secured each afternoon. 

By the time I picked my son up that day, the gates were locked and a sign with new pickup instructions had been displayed. The children were once again freely playing outside. I was grateful and amazed by the rapid response of the school and afterschool program administrators. At least this one small situation had been improved.

While discussing the anxiety and tumult present in our school community with my spiritual director, she suggested that I begin to go on prayer walks. Each morning after dropping my children off, I began to walk around the school perimeter and pray. I prayed for the administration, teachers, staff, parents, children and neighbors. I prayed for safety and reconciliation. These walks became another way to seek to join God in the work he is doing. Walking with God around the school has reminded me that we are not alone in difficulties like this. As we can see in Isaiah 43:1-4, God created each person and is with us as we “walk through the fire.” He cares deeply for every single person on the school grounds and in our community (not only people on one side or the other of political conflicts). I can trust that he is present and at work amidst the tensions.

Through this experience, I have learned that I do not need to seek to “fix” everything. I can look for one small step at a time. 

I can trust that God is real and is really involved in the conflicts and challenges of our lives. By paying attention to when he invites and gently nudges us into action, we can be faithful in the small ways that can lead to real change.

Is there a conflict in your life or community where God might be inviting you to take a small step toward reconciliation? How might literally or figuratively walking with God around the conflict lead to change?

The post Walking in prayer circles as an act of trusting God appeared first on The Colossian Forum.

This encouragement is written by Raymond Chang, Executive for Advocacy and Strategic Initiatives of the TENx10 Collaboration (part of Fuller Theological Seminary) and President of the Asian American Christian Collaborative.

Conflict has never been my preferred spiritual discipline. Yet, some of the most significant formation in my life has taken place in relationships and rooms I wanted to leave but chose to remain in. 

Relationships are a two-way street, and when people move toward one another rather than away, something meaningful is formed — something that can not have emerged without friction.

Conflict rarely feels holy in the moment. It is more often uncomfortable, awkward, and exposing. One gathering I attended made this clear. The relationship between President Donald Trump and Christianity was presented to the group. One person argued Trump was the lesser of two evils in a broken system. Another insisted he was fundamentally at odds with Christianity in his character, rhetoric, and policies, especially toward the vulnerable. The room became extremely tense. 

To hold space for conflict is to resist the impulse to reduce people to caricatures when disagreement becomes costly. This runs against a deeply individualistic culture. In much of the modern West, relationships are treated like consumer goods: when they become frustrating or demanding, the instinct is to replace them. People abandon their friendships and churches. People get excluded even after being a part of the community for years. Employers fire quickly, employees quit quickly, and communities fracture rather than repair. The issue is not only fragmentation; it is a failure of formation.

When personal peace and preference become ultimate, people are subtly reduced to the functions they serve — valued when they align with us and discarded when they do not. Conflict then feels intolerable because it exposes relationships built on preference and favoritism rather than covenant. If compatibility is the only glue, disagreement will always feel like a rupture.

By contrast, some East Asian contexts have historically fostered stronger expectations of continuity. Japan’s long-term employment model and South Korea’s stricter labor protections have often made separation slower or even non-existent at times (it is worth noting that South Korea’s adoption of a more transactional and industrialist mentality has created significant issues as well). While not perfect or conflict-free, these systems tend to encourage endurance, working through things, and repair. When dismissal or distancing is not the default option, people are forced to develop deeper relational resilience.

This insight came alive in that group conversation. While many leaned toward one perspective, the group sought to listen well to one another, to acknowledge the power dynamics in the room, and respect and honor the humanity of the person on the other side. The task was not to pretend all views were equally sound, but to practice what Ephesians 4:15 describes as speaking the truth in love — refusing both silence and cruelty. It means naming what is harmful without stripping dignity from the one who speaks it. For everyone, the challenge was not only staying present in the disagreement, but holding the relational space without letting it collapse. Fortunately, people chose to work it out through respectful dialogue, seeing that they were closer in their desired ends, but saw the means to achieving that hope as fundamentally different. This was the topic of conversation at the next gathering.

Conflict, then, can become a means of formation. Scripture calls communities to bear with one another, forgive one another, and remain bound together even under strain. Covenant is stronger than convenience. It holds relationships together not by agreement or ease, but by shared commitment before God. In a covenantal community, conflict does not have to lead to fracture; it can become a place where pride is confronted, patience grows, and love is refined.

The implication is simple but demanding: before severing ties, ask whether the impulse comes from wisdom or from a culture that has trained us to commodify one another. Remaining open and seeking connection in the face of disagreement does not mean tolerating harm or abandoning boundaries. It means recognizing that some of the most important growth happens when people remain, tell the truth, and trust that covenant can sustain what comfort cannot.

The post Choosing connection over convenience in hard relationships appeared first on The Colossian Forum.

This encouragement is written by Tanner Smith, Chief of Consulting and Culture at The Colossian Forum. 

When decisions take longer than we expect, we usually measure discernment by one question: Have we reached an answer yet? But healthy discernment is measured differently. Its clearest sign is that the people involved are growing.

My colleague Sarah recently walked through the college decision process with her daughter. As the months passed, Sarah wondered whether anything was actually happening. Then a friend helped her see what she’d missed. Her daughter had narrowed twelve schools to four, could name what mattered most, and their family was asking better questions while becoming more honest about their fears. The decision hadn’t been made, but the discernment process had already begun changing them.

Churches and leadership teams often overlook this kind of progress. 

When we’re anxious for resolution, we tend to measure progress by the calendar. How many meetings have we had? How long have we been talking about this? Why aren’t we further along? Those questions rarely tell us whether discernment is happening.

Healthy discernment changes us and our organizations. People become more honest about what they’re afraid of. Assumptions that once went unquestioned or unnamed begin to surface. The community grows clearer about what matters most, and people begin listening to one another more intently.

One image that has helped me think about this comes from biology. Healthy bodies metabolize what they receive, transforming food into energy that strengthens them. Healthy communities do something similar with conflict. Instead of recycling the same fears and disagreements, they process them until they produce greater honesty, clearer priorities, and deeper wisdom. Communities that become stuck lose that capacity. The conversation begins looping instead, returning to the same anxieties without producing new understanding.

It’s possible that your community really is stuck. If that’s where you find yourself, don’t confuse recognizing that fact with failure. Naming that stuck pattern is often the first move toward discernment. As a leader, you can help your community move out of avoidance and into action by naming the reality. Someone has to be willing to ask, “What are we missing? What’s at stake here? What makes this decision important?” Those questions can interrupt the cycle and invite the community back into curiosity, honesty, and prayer.

When a decision feels slow in coming, pay attention to the ways God is already at work among you. Notice where fear is giving way to honesty, where assumptions are being questioned, and where the community is growing in wisdom. Those moments may not feel like progress. Yet they are often the first signs that God is already at work.

The post There’s hope for decisions that take a long, long time appeared first on The Colossian Forum.

This encouragement is written by Margot Eyring, a Spiritual Director and the Spiritual Direction Coordinator at Coracle in Arlington, VA.

I have issues with my church. This came as somewhat of a surprise. I’ve been involved in leadership in various churches for over 50 years and consider myself flexible and innovative. I’ve been at this current church home for sixteen years. But here I am, finding myself calming my nervous system rather than offering something positive. Being in community is exhausting. 

I used to be proud of my church and how we welcomed difference. I remember the first time I took vegetables to the daily church breakfast for friends experiencing homelessness. It seemed like this church truly welcomed all people, and this diverse group of people felt a true sense of belonging.

Slowly, since the pandemic, we have lost the political diversity that used to be part of our DNA, many long-time members have left, and the church culture and how people participate has shifted. While our welcome statement remains — “welcoming all — no matter what” — -it seems clear (to me) from the prayers offered in public, the images displayed, how decisions are made and change is communicated, that some people are more welcomed than others. And while I understand the shifting perspective and even appreciate aspects of it, it is not mine. I have beloved family members and friends who no longer feel welcome to come worship with me.

When things started changing, I engaged. I offered perspective in community meetings, spoke with leaders, and participated in invitations for input and learning. But, after repeatedly having my perspective questioned or dismissed, I have had little energy to offer anything more than showing up for breakfast. Is this enough? And, as the old song goes… I wondered… should I stay or should I go? When I didn’t discern the freedom to leave, I started wondering if there was a reason to be here? If there is a paradox to play with or perhaps ways I can engage an alternative way of being?

As I wrestled, I processed with my spiritual director and dear friends outside the church. I was reminded there are many types of conflicts; for example, institutional and personal. I realized some of my conflicts are institutional. I have to let go of some of these critiques and breathe to remain peaceful. I also have realized that some of my issues are personal, where I may have more opportunity for influence over myself and perhaps with others, than I have directly with the institution.

Because I know our brains are wired like teflon for positive and velcro for negative, I have been intentional about trying to notice positive aspects of both the institution and the people who seem at odds with my sense of community. I seek to come from a place that appreciates aspects of the system and the people God has created — both the darkness and the light.

I have begun by praying for my church community in new ways.

Surprisingly, at a recent meeting, one I finally had openness to attend, I was invited publicly to coffee with one of the leaders about my vision for how we might see differently. This unexpected invitation felt like a tiny crack of hope in a place that had felt overwhelming. I continue to seek the courage and curiosity to respond to the invitation.

I had hoped this process of writing would reveal solutions and “answers.” I know I am not alone in my search to find pathways for conflict in the church. I have deepened my belief that God indeed loves all the people in this church and my invitation to love involves intention as well as practical action. 

Staying in the midst of conflict matters and is a challenge to live into.

The post Finding my place in a changing church  appeared first on The Colossian Forum.

In leadership, we often think the hard part is getting through the decision itself. But what happens when the decision changes the shape of the community? When people leave, relationships shift, or everyone is trying to figure out whether they still belong?

In this episode, Rev. Dr. Tanner Smith, Chase Rashad Stancle, and Sarah Johnson explore what it means to lead faithfully after a major decision has already been made. Through stories from church leadership, organizational change, COVID, and their own experiences, they unpack the grief, anxiety, ambiguity, and relational tension that often emerge after seasons of discernment, and how leaders can respond with honesty and care.

In this episode, you’ll hear:

• Why good decisions can still create grief, loss, and uncertainty in a community

• How anxiety changes before and after a major decision, and why leaders need to pay attention to both

• What it looks like to bless people, process change honestly, and lead without defensiveness when a community changes shape

Show Notes

• Who Moved My Cheese? by Spencer Johnson

• Our Iceberg Is Melting by John Kotter and Holger Rathgeber

• Colossians 3:15 — “Let the peace of Christ rule in your hearts…”

What do you think of Practicing Hope? We’re always looking for ways to make the podcast more meaningful, encouraging, and useful to listeners. Please take 5-10 minutes to fill out this feedback form.

If you’re interested in learning more about The Colossian Forum, visit our website colossianforum.org, and follow us on social media @colossianforum.

The post Leading with hope when communities change appeared first on The Colossian Forum.

In this episode, Tanner Smith, Chase Rashad Stancle, and Sarah Johnson explore what it looks like to build a “personal board of advisors” — a circle of people who help you listen well, stay grounded, and move forward with clarity.

Through stories, humor, and practical wisdom, they unpack how to recognize trustworthy voices, how to engage others without outsourcing your responsibility, and how discernment shapes who you’re becoming over time.

In this episode, you’ll hear:

• Why discernment requires both personal responsibility and shared wisdom

• The kinds of people who bring clarity to your decisions

• Practical ways to build and test a trusted circle of advisors in your life

Show Notes:

• Proverbs 15:22 (theme): “Plans fail for lack of counsel, but with many advisers they succeed

• Balcony vs. dance floor metaphor — learning to step back and see clearly

• Leadership on the Line by Ronald Heifetz & Marty Linsky

If you’re interested in learning more about The Colossian Forum, visit our website colossianforum.org, and follow us on social media @colossianforum.

The post Don’t Discern Alone: How to Build a Personal Board of Advisors appeared first on The Colossian Forum.

Making decisions on your own is hard enough. But in leadership, decisions often have consequences for an entire community. The challenge is building a process people can trust, even when they don’t get their way.

In this episode, Tanner Smith, Chase Rashad Stancle, and Sarah Johnson explore the real tension of communal discernment: how leaders can navigate complex decisions with clarity, honesty, and care. Through stories from church leadership, organizational life, and their own experiences, they unpack practical ways to involve people, reduce anxiety, and build trust that lasts beyond the decision itself.

In this episode, you’ll hear:

• Why clarity about roles and decision-making authority builds trust — even when people disagree

• How practices like “if-then thinking” and separating data gathering from decision-making reduce anxiety

• What it looks like to care for people after a decision — especially those who feel like they lost

Show Notes

• Fair Process framework — honesty, transparency, and respect in decision-making

• “If-Then” practice — naming fears and planning responses to reduce catastrophizing

• Colossians 3:15 — “Let the peace of Christ rule in your hearts…”

If you’re interested in learning more about The Colossian Forum, visit our website colossianforum.org, and follow us on social media @colossianforum.

The post How to Lead Communal Discernment Without Losing Trust appeared first on The Colossian Forum.

This encouragement is written by Colin Hoogerwerf, the Podcast Producer at BioLogos. BioLogos empowers people to explore, embody, and delight in the harmony of faith and science.

I’m not reading any news right now. The decision has brought a kind of relief — most days I feel less anxious, and I don’t feel removed from what matters around me. But it’s also made me more aware of some tensions I can’t ignore.

The first is that stepping back from the news has shown me how easily it can pull me into patterns of judgment or distance from others, especially those I don’t understand. The news headlines seem to be built around the sowing of division. Each story draws us deeper into our tribe and more incredulous of those outside our tribe. Even telling people that I’m avoiding the news can create tension or conflict. “How can you be informed and take action if you don’t know what’s going on?!” they say with a tone of judgement.  

But the more curious tension to me is about the pull of protecting myself from what unsettles me and the cost of turning away from it.

It’s not the first time I’ve had this kind of choice. Even though my education and career are rooted in science communication, especially about climate and environmental science, a few years ago, I found myself in a place where I was just sick of consuming any new information about the environmental crisis. New books, articles and documentaries on climate were coming out at the same pace as ever, and I just couldn’t stomach them. I figured I pretty much knew what it was going to say, and I had a pretty good sense of how that would make me feel. 

It would be easy enough for me to describe that time of avoiding new information as a “fast.” But that puts theological language on something that was more psychological. A fast redirects attention. What I was doing didn’t. I was avoiding it for the relief it gave. There was no learning that came from my avoidance. 

I can’t remember a moment that anything changed, but it did. It’s not that I just decided to start slowly engaging again either. I looked it straight in the eye. I made it a project. The result was a four-part podcast series I put together as a part of my work with BioLogos called “Creation Groans.” In this series, we ask and wrestle with the question: How should we respond to a problem that seems unsolvable?  

When I finally did re-engage, it turned out that I was mostly right about how it would make me feel. The darkness is real. But engaging with it changed my relationship to the darkness. It wasn’t something I was turning my back from. It became less powerful, something I could share with others, rather than having to carry on my own. And more importantly it became formational rather than only looming in the background. 

Through that work, I came to a new appreciation of Psalm 126. 

4 Restore our fortunes, Lord, 

like streams in the Negev.

5 Those who sow with tears

will reap with songs of joy.

6 Those who go out weeping,

carrying seed to sow,

will return with songs of joy,

carrying sheaves with them.

Since the time of the psalmist, and even long before that, people have dealt with suffering, disagreement, and the anxiety of the looming crisis. The wisdom of the psalmist was not to ask for the suffering to be erased (though those pleas surely have a place too) but to work through the suffering. Re-engaging felt like sowing with tears, choosing to carry something heavy instead of turning away from it… and trusting that it might grow into something life-giving. 

Where does that bring me now? I haven’t decided to start reading the news. I’m not sure it is the same as my avoidance of climate related information. But what my news avoidance has done for me is to refocus my attention on the world directly in front of me, the people in front of me, within arms reach. But it also has me curious. If that earlier season taught me anything, it’s that some things can only be carried, not avoided. And I’m still learning when that’s true.

The post Taking a break from the news (and what it’s showing me) appeared first on The Colossian Forum.

In this episode, Tanner Smith, Chase Rashad Stancle, and Sarah Johnson explore the challenge of naming hard truths with both courage and care. From “pointing to elephants” in the room to learning how to avoid dropping “verbal bombs,” they reflect on the practices that help us discern when to speak, how to prepare our hearts, and how to stay connected even in difficult conversations.

In this episode, you’ll hear:

• Why naming hard truths requires both courage and emotional maturity
• How to discern your motivation before speaking, and why it matters
• Practical ways to enter hard conversations with clarity, curiosity, and care

Show Notes:

• Colossians 4:6 — “Let your conversation be always full of grace, seasoned with salt…”

If you’re interested in learning more about The Colossian Forum, visit our website colossianforum.org, and follow us on social media @colossianforum.

The post Should I Say Something? Discerning When to Speak Hard Truth appeared first on The Colossian Forum.

This encouragement is written by Dr. Rebecca Konyndyk DeYoung, Professor of Philosophy at Calvin University in Grand Rapids, Michigan.

“Sovereign Lord,” they said, “you made the heavens and the earth and the sea, and everything in them… Indeed, Herod and Pontius Pilate met together with the Gentiles and the people of Israel in this city to conspire against your holy servant Jesus, whom you anointed… Now, Lord, consider their threats and enable your servants to speak your word with great boldness. Stretch out your hand to heal and perform signs and wonders through the name of your holy servant Jesus.”

-Acts 4:24-30, NIV

When was the last time you felt threatened?

You might feel physically threatened — like Peter and John in this passage, who might reasonably conclude that their arrest would follow this confrontation, along with beatings and death. That’s what happened to Jesus, after all. And they were championing his cause.

You might feel like your job is under threat (from A.I., a corporate take-over, an economic downturn). You might feel like your reputation is under threat (it doesn’t take long on social media to feel attacked for saying almost anything). You might feel like a relationship that has been strained to the breaking point is under threat — and ready to break.

Fear is real. Sometimes it feels overwhelming.

Our fears reveal what we love. If we didn’t care deeply about anything, we wouldn’t be afraid to lose it.

What good thing are you afraid to lose?

Our fears track the goods that have priority in our lives. If you seek wisdom, you will fear missing out on the truth you might gain from not admitting you’re wrong, or not being willing to look deeper, listen longer, and consider another angle. If you seek to triumph in an argument, on the other hand, you will fear the humiliation that comes with being shown wrong and defensively refuse to yield any ground. Those different fears tap into different roots and reveal diametrically opposite ways of engaging others.

Throughout the history of the Christian church, thinkers have mapped these different kinds of fear.

• Worldly fear names the fear caused when we have made this life — and success and happiness in it — our highest priority. Our lives lean into making our projects and possessions here and now paramount.
• Servile fear names the fear caused when we care most about our own self-protection and self-preservation. It moves us to bow to whatever those in power tell us to do. Our life leans into pleasing and placating those with authority to reward or punish us.
• Filial fear follows this pattern but also transforms it. It’s named for the bond between a parent and child. It’s not about the good of me, but the good of we. Filial fear shuns whatever might break a relationship. What we love isn’t primarily our stuff, or even ourselves—although these are real goods. What is loved most in filial fear is the shared good we have in a friendship with someone we deeply care about.

In the case of our relationship with God, this kind of fear is holy. The more we love God, the more we fear to do anything to weaken or break our relationship with him. We long to please God because we find life with God to be our greatest good and the source of our greatest joy. Of course, being in this kind of relationship with God also re-orders our relationship with others (whom God loves and calls us into fellowship with) and the world (a created but still limited good that we can appreciate but not make ultimate). To love God is to love what God loves. And that kind of love changes everything.

Likely you are painfully familiar with worldly fear and servile fear and the losses those emotions are responding to. Those losses are not trivial. They are worth grieving. The gift of holy, filial fear anchors those losses in a deeper love. It calls us to trust God for everything else. This kind of trust is what we’re made for.

We haven’t fully reached it yet, undoubtedly. It remains a call to grow in Christlikeness. Christ, God’s Son (filius), fully reveals what a life guided by this love looks like.

Our greatest human good is life in communion — a life lived in relationships of love. What if THAT love drove our deepest fears? What if fears of broken communion were foremost in our hearts and practices? How would our greatest conflicts be transformed?

When I watch the apostles Peter and John, along with the believers, respond to the threats of the religious leaders in Jerusalem, I see holy fear. Their deepest love and ultimate loyalty to Jesus Christ rises above their concern for their own physical wellbeing, their claims to political power or protection, their reputation or status or wealth. Their first words are “Sovereign Lord” and their final prayer is for the healing of the world that Jesus brings.

Lord, may our fears proclaim our love for you, too.

The post Rebecca DeYoung Newsletter Piece — 4/6/26 appeared first on The Colossian Forum.