Hope Exchange: An intro, a job opportunity

Plus a fascinating slide deck about the changing state of play on the internet

Hi friends, I hope this newsletter edition finds you well! If you're like me, you've maybe been having a hard time navigating the emotional complexities of our very challenging societal moment. Every era is full of apocalyptic pronouncements, moral panics, and "kids these days!" bellyaching. But this time does feel different, right?

Before I dive in, can I recommend dialing down your political news consumption a bit if you haven't already? I recently realized I hadn't rebalanced mine after the 2024 election, and I was mainlining doom yakking in a way that was not at all good for me. It's been a much more manageable few weeks since I did so. Not escapism, just sound spiritual stewardship.

Anyway, I've got a couple quick things for you to enjoy and ponder over the holiday weekend. Enjoy!

Podcast Appearance

First, I had the chance to talk to my colleague Lorenzo Lebrija about Hope Exchange, the storytelling initiative I'm directing for Virginia Theological Seminary. It's a collaboration between ELCA, the PC(USA), and the Episcopal Church, in partnership with the brilliant and inspiring folks at Future of Faith.

We're still building infrastructure on this project, including our online presence, so this is really the first chance I've had since the press release to share something substantive about the work we're doing. I hope you'll check it out.

If you'd like me to add you to our mailing list—which will get up and running this fall and include loads of practical tools for bringing storytelling experiences to your parish or other faith community—please use this link to let me know.

Job Opportunity

If Hope Exchange sounds intriguing to you, then I'd also like to invite you to consider joining our team! Future of Faith is hiring a Digital Media & Content Associate to support our project. You'd be working closely with me and especially with my fabulous counterpart Nikki Collins, who before joining our project led the Presbyterian Mission Agency's inspiring 1001 New Worshiping Communities initiative. Here's an excerpt from the job description:

💡 What if the future of the church is found in the stories we have yet to tell? As the landscape of faith shifts, people are discovering profound hope and true belonging in new expressions of ministry. We are looking for a storyteller who can capture these sacred moments of renewal and translate them into compelling digital media. 📸

📹Future of Faith is hiring a Digital Media and Content Associate to lead production for the Hope Exchange. As a core part of our team, you will spend your days building this national storytelling initiative and elevating stories of people finding spiritual connection across the country.

We need a producer and project manager to bring these narratives to life. You will coordinate freelance media teams at live events, manage a growing pipeline of media assets, and adapt raw capture into engaging digital content. The role requires a strong mix of logistics, light production editing, and platform strategy.

Read more and apply here. Drop me a line if you'd like to hear more about the project.

A Very Thoughtful Slide Deck

In the stray links section of Monday's Garbage Day newsletter, there was an enigmatic little item called "After the Feed: Trust, connection, and the next era of social technology." Turns out it was a 70+ slide presentation by a group called New_ Public.

If you're into techno-social analysis, strategic thinking about the future of media and community, etc., I think you'll enjoy checking it out.

In the words of the authors,

There will be forces that just want to extract money and attention.

Those of us who care about building a public-friendly Internet where people and communities thrive need to get in the game too.

To get you oriented, I'll just say that a more faith-specific version of this is kind of argument is what we were up to at eFormation before the feed. It continues to wow me that a whole coherent era of media history has come and gone since I started doing ... whatever this is fourteen years go.