Pivot Podcast29 Mai 2025

Being Church During Community Crisis

When devastating wildfires swept through Pasadena in early 2025, La Fuente Ministries faced a test of what it means to be church in community crisis. Pastor Marcos Canales and Nina Lau Branson join us to share how their bilingual, intergenerational congregation discovered that being church in community crisis isn't about having perfect emergency plans—it's about cultivating spiritual practices and community connections that help people encounter God even in the midst of catastrophe. From grief stations during the pandemic to emotional vocabulary work and neighborhood-based "casitas" groups, their intentional approach to formation created a foundation that served them well when members lost homes and their entire community faced displacement and trauma.

This conversation reveals what authentic church in community crisis looks like beyond typical disaster response protocols. Marcos and Nina demonstrate how embracing the full spectrum of human emotions, creating liturgies that externalize trauma, and fostering distributed leadership can transform crisis from something that destroys community into a pathway for deeper discipleship. Whether your congregation is currently navigating challenges or you want to understand how to be church in community crisis when difficulties arise, their witness offers hope and concrete tools for any church leader committed to shepherding with authenticity and care.

Denne episoden er hentet fra en åpen RSS-feed og er ikke publisert av Podme. Den kan derfor inneholde annonser.

Episoder(191)

A Solo Reflection on Prayer, Longing, and an Australian Movie from the 90s

This week's episode breaks from the usual format. Pivot producer Joey Goodall steps in for a solo reflection on what prayer practices are actually for, and what happens when we lose sight of that. He ...

3 Sep 7min

Leadership for a Diverse Church

Eastminster Church has been in Pittsburgh's East Liberty neighborhood since 1856, and for most of that history it worshiped and looked like a fairly typical Presbyterian congregation. Aaron Teter, the...

27 Aug 43min

What Sunday Morning Teaches People About Monday

Katie Roelofs has spent years thinking about the space between Sunday morning and the rest of the week. A pastor in the Reformed Church in America and managing director of the Worship for Workers Proj...

20 Aug 28min

Ministry That Doesn't Rush Toward Results

For twenty years, Johnny Sertin has practiced a kind of place-based ministry built on staying put. He and four other families started the Earlsfield Friary in southwest London, committing to live with...

13 Aug 39min

Augustine Was a Pastor First

For most of his afterlife in the Christian imagination, Augustine has been a theologian first, a philosopher second, and everything else a distant third. What tends to get lost is that he spent nearly...

6 Aug 33min

A Different Kind of Strength

Second Corinthians is one of the strangest letters in the New Testament: a leader defending himself, a community in open doubt, and in the middle of it, some of Paul's clearest writing on power in wea...

29 Jul 43min

The People in Your Church Don't Belong to You

"The church as we know it is calibrated for a world that no longer exists." That's how Dr. Scott Cormode opens his book, and it's the starting point for this conversation about Christian leadership wi...

23 Jul 37min

The Church With No Budget, No Staff, and No Sunday Service

Ten years ago, JR and Amy Rozko planted a two-hundred-year-old congregation in Canton, Ohio, only to discover that what their city needed wasn't another program but a rule of life: a shared rhythm of ...

16 Jul 36min