





































Ecclesial Futures
2024 – Volume 5 – Issue 1

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Ecclesial Futures – DOI: 10.54195/ef18541

A R T I C L E

DOI: 10.54195/ef18541

Reflections on Faithful Innovation in the City 
of Saint Francis: ICEF Conference Report

Scott J. Hagley, Dorte Kappelgaard, Dustin Benac and Scot Sherman

Abstract
The annual meeting of the International Consultation on Ecclesial Futures (ICEF) took 
place in July 2023 in the San Francisco Bay Area of the United States. Participants from 
the United States, Europe, South Africa and Australia gathered to share research around 
the theme “faithful innovation” and to reflect together on the challenges and possibili-
ties for cultivating innovative missional ministries. This paper reflects upon two signif-
icant themes from the consultation: (1) clarifying the tensions between innovation and 
Christian faith, and (2) reflecting upon the ecological conditions that cultivate room for 
innovation that is faithful, and expressions of the faith that are innovative.

Keywords: International Consultation on Ecclesial Futures, Faithful innovation, Creativity, 
San Francisco Bay Area

Above a stairway overlooking Frida Kahlo Avenue in San Francisco, a statue of 
Saint Francis stands, arms outstretched to welcome the city, body shaped like a 
cross, beatific eyes peeking out under a monk’s hood. The statue was made by the 
renowned artist Benito Bufano from over a thousand firearms willingly surrendered 
after spate of violence in the late 1960s. On the cloak of St Francis, a mosaic of assas-
sinated public leaders – John F. Kennedy, Robert Kennedy, Martin Luther King, Jr, and 
Abraham Lincoln – witness to the possibilities and impossibilities of peace in violent 
culture. Each figure offered hope, and each figure was tragically gunned down. But as 
Bufano knew, weapons meant to take life can be refashioned into something beau-
tiful. And now St Francis, he of “all creatures of our God and king”, whose gentle care 
for the vulnerable and life of intentional poverty inspired the faithful across medi-
eval Europe, is now perched on the lawn of the City College of San Francisco, offering 
a sign of peace.
Known for its social, technological and economic innovations, San Francisco is 
not thought of as particularly religious. But it has been the site of a peculiar kind 



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of  American religious innovation, often generating new activity that migrates else-
where, such as the Jesus People of the 1970s or the adventurous ecumenism of the 
Consultation on Church Union in the 1960s or the interreligious cooperation of the 
2000s. But these religious movements seem to float above the deep undercurrents 
of privatized spirituality and fierce independence that have come to characterize 
the Bay Area. For these reasons, San Francisco focuses the various challenges of 
missional ministry in a post-Christian context into the question of faithful innova-
tion. In a context known for innovation, the modifier faithful does significant work. 
How might Christian communities innovate in ways that are faithful to the gospel? 
How might such innovations be plausible within the cultural soil from which they 
emerge, and thus be faithful to a particular place and a time? How, in other words, 
can congregations in a Post-Christian context bear witness like “St Francis of the 
Guns”, by reshaping cultural materials of time and place to be a sign (and, in the 
words of Newbigin, instrument and foretaste) of God’s Reign?
The International Consultation on Ecclesial Futures (ICEF) gathered scholars, pastors 
and judicatory leaders from the United States, Europe, South Africa and Australia in 
the Bay Area during a week in July 2023 to consider the theoretical, theological and 
practical dimensions of faithful innovation for post-Christian and post- Christendom 
contexts. The ICEF is an invitation-only theological learning community from four 
different continents who meet annually to work together on questions of Chris-
tian faith and practice in post-Christendom and post-Christian contexts. Seeking 
to share wisdom across cultural contexts, each consultation offers opportunity for 
members to share research around the given topic. Seeking to ground the conver-
sation in the soil where the consultation is taking place, each gathering has an “open 
day” where local pastors and judicatory leaders join in the proceedings. And finally, 
because God’s mission is always located in a place and attentive to the particularities 
of people and culture, each gathering situates the conversation within the missional 
questions of the context where the consultation meets.
In San Francisco in 2023, the consultation focused on the question of faithful innova-
tion, working with, and learning from, the Episcopal Diocese of San Francisco during 
the “open day” and sharing research focused on that theme the other days. Serving 
as both muse and case study, the Bay Area guided and grounded our conversation, 
causing us to interrogate the two terms and see them in new light. What follows is 
a brief account of faithful innovation, drawn from the soil of Menlo Park and viewed 
from American, European, South African and Australian vantage points.

Finding the Faith in “Faithful Innovation”?
In some ways, we remain puzzled thirty years after Lesslie Newbigin inquired about 
the conditions of possibility for a renewed missionary encounter with the West. 



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On the one hand, “the West” is too broad to include the different manifestations of 
post-Christendom in different regions of the United States, or between European 
state-churches, or in post-apartheid South Africa and rapidly secularizing Australia. 
On the other hand, the rapid pace of social and cultural change makes the question 
a moving target in each of our contexts. As Newbigin suggested many years ago in 
The Gospel in a Pluralist Society, a gospel-encounter in the modern/post-modern West 
is not simply a challenge of rhetoric or theological imagination, but an invitation for 
Christian communities to witness to the gospel in public and plausible ways (1989).
In many judicatories, this task falls to new faith communities and experimental minis-
tries in hope that a mixed ecology of new and traditional ministries might engage 
both emerging and legacy generations. But rather than a mixed ecology, we too 
often end up with a division of labour, where new faith communities are expected 
to innovate, and legacy congregations seek to protect the tradition. Innovation and 
faithfulness are treated like competitors that must be managed rather than a neces-
sary feature of gospel ministry. Because, as Andrew Walls says, there never has been 
nor will there be a society which can “absorb the word of Christ painlessly into its 
system”, faithfulness to the gospel necessarily makes us pilgrims, makes us odd and 
at times uncomfortable in our cultural setting (1996: 8). If we are faithful to the word 
of Christ among us, even our legacy congregations will innovate with elements of its 
traditional inheritance as a matter of attention to this gospel-culture dynamic. Simi-
larly, the gospel constrains and redirects our quest for innovation, giving plausible 
Christian witness a bifocal lens. We seek faithfulness to the gospel itself and also the 
socio-cultural locale.
Faithful innovation, we suggest, is the gospel-work of the whole church. There is 
neither a status we can hold onto that says “faithful” nor an end we can claim that 
says “innovation”, there is only the invitation to join with the uncertain and messy 
work of cultivating Christian community at this time and place, faithful to both God 
and neighbour, to tradition and God’s future. Two papers from our gathering instan-
tiate this approach, showing how church systems might faithfully innovate as part of 
missional discernment.
Nelus Niemandt, in his role at Hugenote College in South Africa, has recognized 
the need to create institutional spaces for creativity, innovation and experimenta-
tion. Such institutional spaces need to be mission-aligned and integrative, so that 
groups can work across disciplines on an issue or question related to the mission 
and context of the institution. In the case of Hugenote College, Niemandt has created 
a School for Social Innovation, which sits between its theological and social work 
faculties, creating room for theologically-informed projects in community-building 
for the improvement of society. While a new and innovative structure for the school, 
it emerges from a contextual assessment of its tradition and history. An innovation 
itself, the School of Social Innovation exists to help others do the same by helping 



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students and social entrepreneurs to consider their faith, values and theology in 
relationship to pressing social issues and structural inequalities. Improvising with 
existing materials and deeply attentive to the challenges of one’s locale, faithful 
innovation opens itself to a future in God, to God’s future. As such, it is faithful inno-
vation and also faithful innovation.
We need more than institutional space for innovation, however. Popular discourse 
regarding missional innovation tends to put a term like “creativity” on a pedestal, 
making innovation an end in itself. As Andrew Root (2022) shows, innovation and 
creativity make poor ends for the church. In a paper presented at the consultation, 
Dorte Kappelgaard reflected upon her work with congregations in Denmark and 
Norway, exploring how a theology of creation and a Christian aesthetics can reframe 
the pursuit of innovation from a never-ending quest to forge “the new” to an act of 
surrender to the mission of God.
Creativity, Kappelgaard argues, should be understood in relationship to a theology 
of creation, rooted in the biblical narrative of God as creator and human beings as 
created in God’s image. In the book of Genesis, the Spirit of God soars above the dark 
void, seeing and imagining possibility and bringing order out of chaos. God speaks 
“let there be light”, and there is light. God creates the universe, the earth, nature, 
animals and human beings, and God blesses them all and sees them as good. Several 
voices in the early church tradition stress the creative movement of love between the 
Father, Son and Holy Spirit: God is one who sends energies of love toward creation 
and who invites us into the Triune God’s own creative dance of love and being (Fuhr-
mann 2011: 56–9). Human creativity participates in this movement of God, poten-
tially taking part in the creative, life-giving movement of God’s Spirit through the 
world. In this perspective, creativity is fundamentally about being human. Creativity 
reflects God’s energies of love, moving from person to person, participating in God’s 
creation and giving shape to one’s local context. It should be a question of love, joy, 
even playfulness, taking the shape of church, searching to reach out towards the 
other in fresh, responsive ways.
In a Christian worldview, participating in God’s creativity will always be flawed. It 
carries, as Winner notes, “characteristic damage” (2018). Even our most creative 
and hopeful acts will reflect selfish motives, fear, worry and/or pride. The church 
thus faces a choice regarding its own understanding of the human creature. In one 
approach, being human and being church can be envisioned as competing goods, 
turning the other into an object for use, consumption, or success. But within another 
approach, the other person is understood to be a living mystery, a potential co-cre-
ator in Christ for the sake of something much more beautiful and interesting than 
the story of one church.
In this second perspective, the world is full of possibility and longing, waiting to be 
released and for life to spring forth, partly in this time and age, partly in the world to 



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come. Understood in relationship to creativity, innovation is a form of self-forgetting, 
a people caught up in the creative dance of God and God’s world. Like listening to 
music or viewing art, innovation as creativity reconfigures subjectivity, enabling one 
to be moved and transformed as an actor. This is what the German Hartmut Rosa 
describes as resonance between the subject and the world (2016: 298).
Kappelgaard argues that there is a close relationship between such theological 
approaches to creativity and theological aesthetics. Among many philosophical defi-
nitions of beauty, one is that which holds a value in itself (Scruton 2009: 26). In the 
Genesis narrative, the goodness of God’s creation is not related to its instrumental 
value, but rather to its value in itself, a creature of God. In the light of the above, 
creation holds an inner beauty that God recognizes. The theologian Hans Urs von 
Balthasar argues that without sensitivity towards beauty, we lose our ability to love 
(1982, 1: 18). The world was created out of love, just as it is the beauty of God’s crea-
tion that makes us love it. Creativity – understood as participation in the creative love 
of God – cultivates spaces, communities, programs, art and music which hold a sense 
of beauty, of value in themselves, and call for us to love.
In her work with congregations, Kappelgaard draws from such theories of crea-
tivity and beauty to help congregations envision innovation as an open-ended act of 
communal creativity and exploration in the hope for beauty to appear, without being 
able to evoke or control it. In listening to God, to each other and to the local context, 
the church is on a constant, dynamic journey of looking for the deeper beauty, which 
calls for us to love the other. Asking God to help us see the world with God’s eyes, it 
is the beauty of a potential, a deep dark void in the local neighborhood that calls for 
us to get up and engage in a journey of creative exploration with the Spirit and the 
stranger.
This is not to say that tradition is set aside for the sake of the beautiful. Beauty is not 
in itself related to “the new”. Tradition, both understood as that which we hold dear 
and as the meaning of Christian tradition, is connected to beauty in some form. It is 
through seeing the beauty of the faithfulness of those who have gathered, Sunday 
after Sunday over several decades, that we come to love tradition as beautiful. When 
listening to people’s emotions and narratives connected to the church community 
or its rituals, we may sense a glimpse of this depth of richness and experience. This 
is often where the conversation begins, in celebrating the beauty of what is, as well 
as mourning the beauty of what is now only in the past. Recognizing the beauty of 
the present can help communities to explore new ways in which this beauty might 
spill over and bless the context in new forms. Being given a space and time to mourn 
the beauty of what used to be can set people on a journey towards travelling with a 
lighter rucksack, becoming open to that which may be coming toward them as poten-
tial new life. This is the eschatological aspect of creativity.



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Innovation, so understood, calls us to repent of our tendency to objectify the other, 
turning them into a tool for our success or survival, either through sustaining the 
well-known or inventing the new. And, like Jesus calling out “repent and believe”, 
innovation also requires a posture of surrender to God, coupled with an openness 
to the community, the stranger, and that which might be surprising or unexpected. 
There might even be a call to look for the beauty in the process, approaching each 
formal meeting or each spontaneous conversation with a stranger as a place where 
the beauty of God is reflected in all its brokenness.
One could argue that this calls for a movement of surrender to God when we realize 
we have fallen short in imagination and hopefulness, in sensitivity to the beauty of 
the existing, in welcoming the stranger in courage, or in responding to the movement 
of the Spirit. But what types of places are people free for creativity and the embrace 
of beauty? What types of contexts are more likely to cultivate such practices?

Faithful Innovation as an Ecological Challenge
As mentioned above, the proceedings of ICEF developed a view toward faithful inno-
vation deeply connected to the locale in which the church or denomination oper-
ates. Faithful innovation exercises fidelity to the Christian gospel as well as those 
to whom God sends the Church. Such a dynamic cultivates creativity and the possi-
bility of beauty, if the congregation can remain open to the new, the surprising, the 
unexpected, the possibility of guns melting into a sign of peace. Faithful innovation, 
then, considers the local wisdom of a place and seeks to support the people of faith. 
Faithful innovation requires and helps sustain a particular kind of social ecology, as 
demonstrated in the work of Hagley, Rohrer and Gehrling (2020), James (2017) and 
Benac (2020). It perhaps goes without saying, but it is within the thick web of connec-
tions shaped over time by individual relationships and institutional partnerships that 
new possibilities emerge. Faithful innovation both reflects an ecology of attentive 
discernment to the movement of God in our midst and also cultivates a social space 
within which such discernment can take place.
Given the fact that neither new experiments in missional church nor existing estab-
lishment congregations have a monopoly on either term – neither faithful nor 
innovation – we must imagine faithful innovation as an ecological orientation. We 
describe this as an orientation or capacity for drawing attention to the contempo-
rary challenges that are present in existing ecclesial ecologies in ways that help the 
organization learn how the reordering and renegotiation of relationships creates 
opportunities for new possibilities. It is not up to heroic and visionary missionaries 
or social entrepreneurs to show the way for our congregations, but rather the task of 
the whole Church to create hospitable space for theological discernment and social 
innovation. To this end, we explored during the consultation three aspects of this 



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ecological orientation: the conditions for faithful innovation in an ecclesial ecology, 
the challenges before faithful innovation in an ecclesial ecology, and the cultivation 
of faithful innovation in an ecclesial ecology. This section will briefly detail each of 
these aspects.  

Conditions 
Throughout the ICEF gathering, we observe five different conditions for an innova-
tive ecosystem: connection, context, creativity, convening and contrast. Connection 
describes the need for thick bonds and healthy communication between individuals 
within faithful communities, existing and emerging experiments in the community 
or the larger denominational system, those who interpret and interrogate the tradi-
tion (the theological and practical resources from the past), and the Triune God. The 
relational properties of connection are equally important. For example, connection 
requires trust and often takes time. In so far as connection is condition for faithful 
innovation, it cannot always be measured on fixed timelines and predetermined 
outputs.
Second, context is an essential condition for faithful innovation. While the people of 
God have always been rooted in particular contexts, many of the most hopeful signs 
of faithful innovation are (re)turning to place and a more local faith. This is reflected 
in studies like Chris James’s (2017) exploration of new faith communities in Seattle, 
where “neighbourhood incarnation” communities offered vital and timely reimag-
ining of church life and ministry. So also, Doret Niemandt, in a paper presented at the 
consultation, studied online church ministries in South Africa during the COVID lock-
downs. She offers a rich description of multi-layered contextual ministry, where both 
online worlds and embodied practices cultivate intertwined and contingent contexts 
within which innovative experiments in Christian community must take place.
Third, faithful innovation requires a culture that cultivates and gives permission for 
creativity. Creative ecosystems are not only restless with the status quo, but open to 
surprise and expectant of beauty in their life together. As mentioned in the previous 
section, the form of creativity that nourishes faithful innovation within an ecclesial 
ecology is sustained by hope; amid the many contemporary challenges that confront 
faith communities and faith leaders, hope stirs a form of  creativity that innovates 
not from fear or anxiety, but from an orientation of offering. Ecosystems that inno-
vate are characterized by this restlessness, hope, and openness to beauty, such that 
the work of faithful innovation simply bears witness to God’s ongoing generosity by 
seeking to offer creative and compelling work, words, and wonder into the world.
Fourth, innovative ecosystems convene individuals and community for the sake of 
reflection, worship, and collective discernment. Representing more than a practice 
of gathering, convening is a form of individual and collective inquiry that orients 



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a collective in worship of God. To this end, the gathering of the ICEF purposefully 
convened scholars, practitioners and judicatory leaders through worship and across 
the silos and geographic divisions that can inhibit faithful innovation. Too often 
church systems fail to convene groups across difference for the sort of reflection, 
worship and discernment that deepens connection and fosters creativity.
Fifth, innovative ecosystems tolerate and learn from unexpected and contrasting 
experiences. Too often, innovation is sacrificed at the altar of assimilation and same-
ness. We sacrifice innovation for a narrow understanding of faithful. As a condition 
for an innovative ecosystem, contrast – understood as space for difference – names 
the need for a holding environment in which various forms of contrast can become 
generative for faithful innovation rather than inhibiting it. In many contexts present 
at this the ICEF gathering, the seeds of faithful innovation emerged from the exist-
ence or experience of contrasting realities in some way. Scholars of leadership and 
innovation have described this phenomena in various ways (e.g., “liminality” [Carson, 
Fairhurst and Rooms 2021]; or “boundary zones” [Gunderson 2004]). Our descrip-
tion here draws attention to how polarized realities or experience have the capacity 
to draw into sharper contrast the particular work faithful innovation requires. For 
example, faithful innovation may require discerning how to curate new expressions 
while also discerning the role and legacy of what is inherited. Faithful innovation may 
require navigating the contexts between the need for organizational structure and 
the forms of transcendence that draws this work forward. It requires tending to the 
need for boundary-crossing connection as well as the forms of belonging that often 
emerge from separate communities. And faithful innovation requires cultivating a 
dynamic of sharing learning through the contrast of “Ressourcement” and “Aggior-
namento” in the spirit of Vatican II. While the precise combination of conditions may 
vary, our work together drew attention to these five conditions for faithful innova-
tion.  

Challenges
Nevertheless, barriers to faithful innovation exist. Even as an ecological orientation 
for faithful innovation draws attention to the abundance of resources and oppor-
tunities that exist, it also requires a somber assessment of the living system that 
surrounds existing and emerging experiments. Our work together drew attention to 
a constellation of related challenges. First, there is a need for space where existing 
ecclesial expression and new churches invite individuals and communities to explore 
faithful innovation. Amid the contemporary demands on religious leaders’ time, 
there may be a desire to explore faithful innovation, but there is a limited amount 
of time and creative energy. Moreover, existing educational pipelines do not always 
equip religious leaders with the skills and imagination to consider the process of 



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faithful innovation beyond a pragmatic calculus of survival. Second, faithful inno-
vation requires a risk and willingness to step into the unknown, and many contem-
porary institutions, churches, governing bodies, and Christian communities simply 
lack what they need to take the first step. For participants drawn from the United 
States, competition leads to loneliness for pastors as well as congregations. Further, 
amid the generational transitions in wealth and giving practice, some communities 
may face financial challenges that can make the possibility of trying (and funding) 
something new a risk that is too much to take. In Europe, the parish structures 
suffers in its own way. While it helpfully indexes religious life to a particular locality, 
parishes are not always resourced with the personnel and capital faithful innovation 
requires. Third, relational, structural and institutional barriers can inhibit gathering 
and exploring across traditional and new expressions. While an ecological orienta-
tion toward faithful innovation invites individuals and communities to see the possi-
bility that comes from these forms of encounters, seen and unseen barriers persist 
that discourage the process and can leave innovators isolated and working against 
formidable challenges.  

Cultivation
Finally, we want to conclude by exploring ways we may cultivate an ecological 
orientation for faithful innovation. Just as living ecologies require care in order 
to flourish, faithful innovation in and for the flourishing of our ecclesial ecologies 
requires purposeful cultivation. We identified three areas of work. First, there is a 
need for new meeting spaces that center the wisdom of local congregations and 
provide opportunities to collaborate and foster the resources (financial as well as 
relational) that nourish an orientation for faithful innovation. In so far as the work of 
the ICEF provides a test case, the work of this group over two decades has served as 
an incubator for experiments, a space to form new connections, and meeting place 
for friendships that span geographies. Second, the inevitable tensions and contrasts 
evoked by innovation are both vital to the ecclesial ecology but also require manage-
ment. Without pressing the ecological metaphor too far, we will simply note that the 
flourishing environmental ecology includes members who do not always get along. 
While our work together wants to envision and anticipate the “kin-dom of God”, as 
Isasi-Diaz notes (2004), we also do not want to heedlessly diminish polarization. 
Rather, when differences are affirmed and connections strong, polarities can move 
groups toward discernment and offer surprising forms of community. Finally, there 
is a need for processes where insights, best practices, and learnings from one part of 
an ecclesial ecology can find their way back to members in other parts of the eccle-
sial community. As one participant noted, this can be represented by a figure eight 
movement that gives space for the best insights from two “poles” to migrate toward 



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common ground in a way that minimizes the contrasts that might come from two 
approaches. When cultivated and maintained over time, this cycle of information 
sharing creates an environment where we think faithful innovation can continue to 
form and flourish.  

An Invitation
Finally, in the spirit of our work together, we want to extend a humble invitation. 
The kind of imagination that resources and nourishes faithful innovation in and 
for an ecclesial ecology is carried forth by stories. Story is and has been one of the 
dominant genres of Christian faith and practice, and we anticipate that the work of 
faithful innovation – in so far as it seeks to retain connection to patterns of Christian 
thought – will be nourished by stories of the living people and communities or are 
labouring to do this holy-yet-ordinary work well. And even when the work is unfin-
ished or it doesn’t fulfil conventional models of success, telling the story has the 
power to give witness to God’s ongoing work in and through our creaturely creations. 
We offer these words in a similar spirit and hope, giving our creaturely testimony to a 
broader ecclesial ecology where we hope faithful innovation will find a home.

About the Authors
Scott J. Hagley is the W. Don McClure Associate Professor of World Mission and Evan-
gelism at Pittsburgh Theological Seminary in the United States. He is the author of Eat 
What is Set Before You: A Missiology of the Congregation in Context. Contact: shagley@
pts.edu

Dorte Kappelgaard, sociologist and PhD in practical theology, is Associate Professor 
of Practical Theology at MF School of Theology, Religion and Society in Norway. She 
also publishes poetry in Danish. Contact: dorte.kappelgaard@mf.no

Dustin D. Benac is an educator, practical theologian and organizational futurist. He 
teaches at Baylor University’s George W. Truett Theological Seminary (US), where 
he serves as Director and co-founder for the Program for the Future Church. He 
is the author of Adaptive Church: Collaboration and Community in a Changing World, 
 co-   editor of Crisis and Care: Meditations on Faith and Philanthropy and editor of Prac-
tical Theology. Contact: Dustin_Benac@baylor.edu

Scot Sherman is an Episcopal priest and Executive Director of the Center for Church 
Innovation in San Francisco. Contact: scot@churchinnovation.org

mailto:shagley@pts.edu
mailto:shagley@pts.edu
mailto:dorte.kappelgaard@mf.no
mailto:Dustin_Benac@baylor.edu
mailto:scot@churchinnovation.org


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