BALM (By James from PASTORIA)

Minister Diane Ujiiye is a Co-director of API RISE (www.api-rise.org) - Her background includes over twenty years of working in the fields of substance abuse, mental health, HIV/AIDS, gang prevention intervention, and re-entry in multi-ethnic LA County. She has conducted civil rights and public policy advocacy for Asians, Native Hawaiians, and Pacific Islanders in California, resulting in the successful passage of state legislation. She serves as board president for Healing Urban Barrios, a gang intervention and re-entry program in East Los Angeles. Diane served as an appointee to the California Highway Patrol (CHP) Citizens Oversight Committee after the 1992 uprising and as chair of the California Commission on Asian Pacific Islander American Affairs. She has facilitated an array of group processes designed to address the causes and symptoms of division. Diane is currently building solidarity with the Black community in Los Angeles with mostly formerly incarcerated API’s and Blacks. She holds a Master of Divinity (Mdiv’) degree from Fuller Theological Seminary.

Eugene is the Founder of New Wine Collective (newwinecollective.org). Eugene has been in church ministry for over 25 years. After spending 17 years helping to build a church from a young start up into a large established church with multiple locations, he discerned it was time to step outside the familiar in order to reimagine church and spirituality from the ground up.

How can ministry start multi-ethnic? What kind of attitude does it take, in addition to the skills? Church planter Paul Park explains the way he does it at Free Life Community Church in Orange County, CA.

David Jaimes, a United Methodist Pastor from Santa Ana, CA, talks about the Hispanic / Latino / Indigenous immigrant context of ministry - about community and what the local church means to certain groups of people.

Besides my calling, your calling, or whatever, is a more poignant and relevant starting point for religious leadership for today and tomorrow: The calling of humanity itself...

Recently, a meditation app announced plans to merge with an on-demand mental health services company. It makes total sense. But, much like mental health, discipleship also has levels. Most churches often sit at the highest level of both benefit as well as requirement. This makes it unaffordable for many people.

Another seven-minute ministry consultation on why a pastor of the future is a student of culture and not a convene of an event nor a curator of a community. This consultation is for ministry leaders wondering what their role is in a rapidly changing community.

Here's the best thing to do if you are a ministry leader feeling trapped or burned out in ministry. It seems simple, but it is actually kinda tough.

With the story of Jonah as our text, Part Two of this audio clergy retreat asks if this year's retreat is an escape or an engagement? Biblically speaking, what makes a "retreat" something that is actually spiritual, particularly for ministry leaders? These questions we answer hermeneutically and James shares a personal thought about his own situation.

Invite us into your time off as a clergy person and share this time with us in a short-form audio retreat. In this first part, our invitation to you is to disconnect... through fire. #clergy #pastor #retreat #care

Stained glass, organ music, and preaching on social justice are preferences typical of a mainline protestant member. But, they are choices the Church has made as media that defines religiosity, spirituality, and discipleship. Were the Church to start over today, what would it be like?

Today, we have many theologians. But, for tomorrow, there is an even greater need for theolog-ists. John Wesley and the story of how field preaching came to be provides us with a great example.

There is a reason why it does not say that Jesus gathered the same people, in the same way, on the same day of the week, over and over again, until it became thousands and thousands of people. It's the same reason or insight that tells is where ministry growth will come from in the digital-first era and Coronavirus Age.

Almost every clergy leadership development and continuing education program can be summarized into one principle: Do 100 things right, in the right way, at the right time, with the right people and you will succeed. And, this is an incomplete picture of what clergy need in order to succeed.

During these pandemic time, keeping these things going is important. It is what we were called, educated, and ordained to do. But, what will keep us alive is our dreams that upend our present order to bring about new realities.

Recorded on the day a group of people forced themselves into the United States Capitol building, it seems clear that the pastor must at minimum help people have a common language to describe their life, how they feel, and what they believe, not necessarily the same life, feelings, or beliefs. #OWNYOURSHIFT

The typical pastor's bookshelf likely has few authors that are a carpenter as Jesus was. But, in 2021, will we continue to learn exclusively from a certain elite group of experts or all people? Will our ideas be so refined or can we allow them to be challenging?

Often, the problem with talented, competent people is that they stick to what they have gotten good at and so not like to expand to what is newly needed in the changing ministry environment. So, how can you grow? You have to break your own cycle of affirmation. #OWNYOURSHIFT

A little guidance for pastors in their downtime or reflection time of how to lead even better in 2021. #OWNYOURSHIFT

What are the undeniable advantages of a "multi-Asian" church? Why multi- anything instead of one dominant something? And, what are the concerns and opportunities now with where Church as a whole is headed?

What does anti-racist faith formation look like from the local church and family perspective? How can we all participate in doing the right thing and making things right?

How can you plant a church for those who are exploring faith on their own terms? Learn this and more with Rob Rynders.

Why try multi-ethnic church planting when the alternative is so much easier? Learn this and more with Paul Park.

How can bi-vocational church planting actually help you reach those mainline protestant churches often forget about? Learn this and more with Sean Benesh.

How is community organizing the way a life of faith gains the power for social change? Kelly Marciales shares this with us and more.

This is not just a crisis; this is a transition. What we need is pastoral leadership that will get a leadership team to a turning point - to the realization that either we change or we do not make it.

What spiritual practices look like in the Coronavirus Age may seem bizarre at first, but will ultimately make perfect sense. We present one such framework and two examples for discipleship here.

We are now missionaries in a foreign reality, no longer able to prioritize gathering and instead needing to nurture our being a sent people. How?

Here is where and how you start if you find yourself realizing that you have not ever prepared for this type of ministry situation, context, and scenario: learn as you go.

In these turbulent times, the Church will want to comfort people and affirm their membership in the Church. But, is membership the goal of a life of faith in Jesus Christ? Is gathering the end or to go? The Church must learn to catalyze change and to see it as the aim of our commission.

Christian denominations are responding to the pandemic to help their local churches and constituencies. But, such efforts will ultimately lead to failure as they do not address the root problem at hand.

This is not a temporary change. It is permanent and we will be in a new normal. The church must not understate the extent of the transformation and question it's own strategy given the circumstances and the foreseeable future.