From What Is to What If: Micro-Grants Awarded!

From What Is to What If

Micro-Grants Awarded!

The mission of The BTS Center is “to catalyze spiritual imagination with enduring wisdom for transformative faith leadership.”

To that end, we offered a multi-session online program last spring, “From What Is to What If: Practicing Imagination.” Participants (who were encouraged to create “teams” from their organization or congregation) constituted a co-learning community of practice to engage imagination, drawing on the work of writer, environmental activist, and founder of the Transition movement, Rob Hopkins, who inspires moral and ecological imagination.

Through shared readings and materials, conversation in group sessions, and a series of practices designed to inspire thinking and stretch imagination, participants were led to ask different questions relevant to their own contexts. And, during the course of the program, participants had the opportunity to apply for a generous micro-grant from The BTS Center that would support the manifestation of their idea for unlocking imagination in their congregations or communities.

We were delighted to receive several deeply thoughtful and experimental proposals, and were ultimately able to fund six projects, each of them not only to be an imaginative endeavor, but also designed to inspire others’ imaginations as well.

In addition to sketching a new vision for some aspect of a congregation’s work, each application referenced the intention of the program, posing the “what if …” question behind the project. We were intrigued and encouraged by the responses, and celebrate and affirm each proposal, giving thanks for the spirit of innovation and creativity present all around us.

With great joy, we are announcing the six recipients of From What Is to What If Micro-Grants. Each of these grants (up to $5,000) will help a community of faith try something new, lay the groundwork for further innovation, and help to fire the imaginations of others. We are excited about the array of projects described below, and we are grateful to partner with these faith communities by providing just a little bit of funding to help support and encourage their steps forward.

After careful review and much deliberation, we have awarded grants to each of the following faith communities:

From What Is to What If Micro-Grant Recipients

Bismarck United Church of Christ, Bismarck, North Dakota

Experimenting with outdoor worship during COVID, the members and leaders of Bismarck UCC discovered something: late morning worship on the parking lot was hot, but the small lawn and part of the parking lot is shaded and perfect for outdoor services! They also discovered neighbors would sit in their garages or open windows during worship to join in, and they also became more aware that neighborhood kids would stop to play in the parking lot. This started them wondering “what if our parking lot is sacred ground?” Read more...

First Parish Congregational Church, Gorham, Maine

First Parish Church is highly visible in the downtown area of Gorham, Maine. Historically, Gorham Village has not been perceived as a true community center because of the traffic created by the two main roads. First Parish is seeking to use both its interior and exterior spaces in new and exciting ways and be a part of the connecting efforts to create a true “downtown” space in Gorham. As the Gorham team says, “Art is imagination made visible,” and so the congregation posed these questions: “What if all the publicly accessible spaces — interior and exterior — in Gorham Village became art spaces?" Read more...

St. John’s Episcopal Church, Bangor, Maine

Started in 1834, St. John’s Episcopal Church is known especially for its beautifully formal Anglican liturgy and strong choral tradition. The Gothic Revival church building has a powerful presence in its neighborhood, adjacent to downtown Bangor. Though the church has experienced significant changes and challenges recently, including the shortening of its soaring tower, St. John’s has begun using more online tools during the pandemic, and is now discerning new ways to think about community. The “What If” question the church was inspired to ask is: “What if the churchyard (and the pathway through it) were seen as a ‘thin place’ between parish and neighborhood that helps us imagine God’s mission for St. John’s?” Read more...

United Church of Christ, Boxborough, Massachusetts

UCC Boxborough has long been aware of the tendency of individuals to connect primarily with people that mirror their own culture, economic status, age group and beliefs. Over the last year or two, the town has had multiple incidents of overt racism that have made conversations about race more urgent, and COVID has revealed a lot of loneliness and economic need in the area. The Faith in Action team, pastor and the wider church have been active in responding to community needs during COVID, and a new “Nurturing Racial Justice” team has fostered conversations about race and bias within the church. All this led the congregational team to ask: “What if we created a community space that naturally brought different town groups (diverse in culture, economic status, age and beliefs) together for conversation, play and food?" Read more...

Newman Congregational Church, Rumford, Rhode Island

Through all its programs, Newman Congregational Church strives to be a more inclusive and welcoming community that expresses an extravagant welcome both physically in person or online. The congregational team wrote, “We hope to step more deeply into the phrase, ‘No matter who you are or where you are from, you are welcome here,’” by asking the “what if” question: “What if we used creativity to explore how to become a community of equity and inclusivity?” Read more...

Trinity Episcopal Church, Lewiston, Maine

Trinity is a small urban congregation in a racially, ethnically, religious diverse area with a poverty rate of over 40%. Their mission statement is “A doorway to compassion and courage: empowering members, serving neighbors.” A number of years ago, they felt called to create a memorial garden in their tiny, neglected church yard. The area is now also a peace garden; after a murder in the park next door, they added a peace pole to the space, with the word “peace” in a dozen languages spoken in the neighborhood. It is an inviting, restful pocket park aside a busy city street. Working with Maine Audubon, the church created a plan to landscape the area with native plants that are bird and pollinator friendly. The church has been asking a big “what if” question for the last year: “What if Trinity were to partner with others to transform our worship space so that in addition to worship, it could become a universally welcoming, accessible, well ventilated, up-to-code space for use in and by the neighborhood?” Read more...

What Is to What If Resources

Our From What Is to What If Micro-Grants emerged from our study of the work of Rob Hopkins. We highly recommend his book From What Is to What If: Unleashing the Power of Imagination to Create the Future We Want for congregations to read as a group in order to inspire experimental, playful, and workable change such as what these congregations have undertaken.