🤫 Just because I love ya

Your early access for Evolving Faith tickets and a sneak peek at the line-up

Hi friends,

I’ve got good news today! As you may have heard, Evolving Faith 2023 tickets go on sale for the general public this week, BUT as a Field Notes subscriber, you have been granted early access. 🥳 I’m so grateful to you for your support of Field Notes (and me!), this is a small way of saying thank you!

Ted Lasso GIFS might be our theme this year, who knows. Either way, this is how I feel right now.

We’re all looking for belonging. Some of us have deconstructed our beliefs, endured trauma and pain, stood bewildered before a community that once felt so much like family. Perhaps what you used to call home isn’t really home anymore for one big reason or a thousand reasons. Maybe you’ve landed somewhere completely different. Maybe you’re still landing.

Many of us have found our way to Evolving Faith because we’re looking for healing spaces, longing for fellow sojourners, and needing room to exhale all of our questions and doubts. We yearn to be more connected and less alone, and we’re reaching out for others who feel the same. To know that it’s not just us out here. To know that it’s possible to resurrect, to reimagine, to rebuild.

Kenji and Osheta lead spiritual formation opportunities including prayer at Evolving Faith; Alicia will be speaking this year but she’s also the community cultivator and curator in our online space! (Photo by Allison Sherrifs) The whole team is so brilliant and good.

This is why Evolving Faith exists: to cultivate hope and love in the wilderness. We know we’re not alone, and neither are you—and we’re ready to welcome you to our little outpost so that you can rest, laugh, grieve, create, hope, and know that you are loved, through and through.

You’re invited to join us, a bunch of folks from all over the world who are making our own beautiful, diverse, and messy table in the wilderness.

If you just want to buy your ticket now, I won’t stand in your way. It’s an exciting day! Go get ’em!

If you need a bit more info though, keep scrolling…

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Here’s the details

Date: October 13-14, 2023

Where: Online from wherever you are and/or in-person in Minneapolis, MN at the Minneapolis Convention Centre

Who: (This is the TOP SECRET part. The line-up won’t be announced until tomorrow so this is your sneak peek!) You're invited to the table with an incredible line-up of leaders invited just for this moment:

• Rev. Nadia Bolz-Weber she/her | Lutheran pastor, founder of House for All Sinners & Saints, NYT bestselling author

• The Rev. Dr. Randy Woodley he/him | Author, speaker, activist, farmer

• Barbara Brown Taylor she/her | Writer, speaker, spiritual contrarian

• Krista Tippett she/her | Founder, executive producer, & host of On Being

• Danté Stewart he/him | Writer, author, speaker

• The Rev. Dr. Wil Gafney she/her | Womanist, Hebrew biblical scholar, activist, Episcopal priest

• Dr. Joyce del Rosario she/her | Writer, speaker, community gatherer

• The Rt. Rev. Dr. Carmen Lansdowne she/her | Moderator of the United Church of Canada

• Amena Brown she/her | Poet, author, comedic storyteller

• Dr. Amy Kenny she/her | Disabled scholar and author

• Paula Stone Williams she/her | Author, speaker, pastoral counselor

• Brandi Miller she/her | Podcast host, storyteller

• The Rev. Dr. Marilyn Pagán-Banks she/they | Womanist minister, healer, circle keeper, speaker, entrepreneur

• The Rev. Mihee Kim-Kort she/they | Writer, scholar, co-pastor of First Presbyterian Church of Annapolis

• The Rev. Alicia Crosby Mack she/her | Justice educator, minister, writer, Community Cultivation Curator at Evolving Faith

• The Many A creative collective of musicians, writers, & artists

• and of course, yours truly 🥸, bless my own heart.

Can you believe all the goodness of that line-up? I’m getting my hankie READY for some high-level waving and hollering. Plus there will be a virtual and/or literal room full of kindred spirits, too.

2022 gathering benediction. Photo by Allison Sherrifs.

Cost: There are two ticket options this year.

• Digital Access (online only) is $129 USD + taxes. This provides access to Evolving Faith 2023 online in its entirety—live events, community groups, the October gathering—all without leaving home. We highly value our online conference so this isn’t an endless Zoom call: it’s high-quality production with lots of the connection opportunities, too.

OR

• The In-Person Ticket for Minneapolis + Digital Access is $239 USD + taxes. In addition to your spot in Minneapolis, you’ll also receive 2023 Digital Access in order to participate in live events, community groups, and other conference activities. We have a limited number of seats available so grab that ticket sooner rather than later

Naomi Washington-Leapheart, Camille Hernandez, and Christine Yi Suh in 2022. Photo by Allison Sherrifs.

Scholarships: We’re offering partial and full scholarships to help make participation as accessible as possible. If you’d like to learn more about our scholarships, visit evolvingfaith.com/conference/scholarships.

(We’ll have a full FAQ ready for everyone in a few days with info about hotels, accessibility, pandemic-related protocols, and other details. Stay tuned!)

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Wait, what is Evolving Faith?

Evolving Faith is a year-round online community and this yearly gathering. We also have a couple seasons of a podcast available, too. We envision a community where the thirsty become water-bearers, the hungry become bread-makers, the wounded are our healers, the misfits become friends, and the wanderers find a home.

For the uninitiated, I’m one of the co-founders of Evolving Faith along with my beloved friend, the late Rachel Held Evans as well as Jim Chaffee. We started off in 2018. Jeff Chu served as an integral part of that leadership team for a number of years, too. Now I lead that community alongside an incredible team of hard-working and compassionate folks.

So many of us are engaged in this good work of reimagining and reckoning with our faith, our histories, our global moment, and more. In many ways, it feels like we need Evolving Faith more than ever. I genuinely believe this reckoning moment is an invitation from the Spirit. Right now, we deeply need the liberation, justice, beauty, and goodness of God. We also need one another.

Rabbi Danya Ruttenberg and I in 2022 (Photo by Allison Sherrifs)

Listen, we’re not perfect. We’re a diverse and sometimes messy bunch. We come from all over the world, from all different cultures and different religious backgrounds, all with our respective baggage.

If you’re looking for perfect, this won’t be it.

But I’ll tell you this: it will be real.

“More and more, I crave being part of a congregation, a group of people with whom I can gather to reflect and contemplate, to hear the ways that others have solved this puzzling problem of existence,” writes Katherine May.

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“Most of all, I want them to hold me to account, to keep me on track, to urge me towards doing good. Holding spiritual beliefs on my own is lonely. I want to be part of a group that makes me return to ideas that bewilder and challenge me.” Those lines rang like a bell when I read them this past weekend because I think that’s some of what we are *trying * to do with Evolving Faith.

I would absolutely love to see you in Minneapolis or online for that sacred weekend - and I hope that you’ll find belonging in this motley crew too. Bring a friend or ten. Come by yourself and make a new friend there (it's easier than you think in that room, promise). Tell everyone you know. Forward this email to your folks with an all-caps message of your choice,

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whatever. I’m so looking forward to this oasis with you.

Oh, and don’t forget to follow Evolving Faith on social media! You can find us on Instagram, Facebook, and Twitter. We would dearly appreciate any sharing of our posts, too - there are so many lonely folks out here in the wilderness and we want to make sure they can find us, too. And of course, come join the free online Evolving Faith community, too.

Tickets will be announced for the general public in a day or two and it’s going to be such a busy week on this side of the computer, but I’m utterly buoyed knowing that this generous and thoughtful community will be with us, too.

See you in October?,

S.

P.S. If you have any questions or run into any issues, email info@evolvingfaith.com

We’re trying, Ted.

And in case you missed these recent Field Notes:

• I Needed to See Her: On black-out poetry and needing to see something better (for everyone)

• Out and About on the Internet: Or, a mostly good way to spend some time (for subscribers)

• I guess that was it: On letting yourself notice when the story is changing (for subscribers)

• I've known revival: Or, This is probably not actually about Asbury (for everyone; audio version for paid subscribers)

• The questions I haven’t been answering; Or, Pulling Levers (for subscribers)

1. This is from her latest (lovely) book, Enchantment: Awakening Wonder in An Anxious Age.

2. My fave is when people accidentally hit “reply” instead of “forward” and I get to see what you say to your friends about this - or me, LOL