Last month, we gathered from around the country to experience a sneak peek of the Goldenwood Institute. The day was filled with enlivening community and stimulating conversation, setting forth a bold and expansive vision for how the gospel can transform the future of work.
The Goldenwood Institute envisions a world where work is not just a means of earning a living, but a creative and fulfilling expression of our humanity. A place where ongoing formation is integrative, holistic, and life-long. Guided by a robust theology of creation, work, and renewal, we believe that imagination, nature, and justice are critical and often missing elements that expand our vision of what is possible in our world.
Initially confronted upon arrival by the stunning brilliance of new work by visual artist Whitney Wood Bailey and lively conversations over coffee, attendees were then invited into silence and guided up a stairwell lined with greenery, enveloped by the scents of cedar and fir. Upon entering a dark, green-lit room, they were met by the sounds of rushing water and bird song, and the sights of forests, mountains, and waterways (as designed by Mason Ingram, Slowave) to complete the sensory experience.
The morning began in immersive imaginative prayer guided by Goldenwood CEO and Co-Founder David Kim centering the community around Isaiah 61 and laying the biblical foundation of God’s call to bring renewal to broken places. Andrew Nemr’s sound-making via innovative choreography and Elizabeth Davis Richard’s fiddle wove in and out of the Scripture and silence, punctuating the tension between injustice and healing that motivates the collective calling of humanity. This slow meditation on the ancient prophetic text highlighted our perception of the current groaning of our world and the immense need for newness to emerge.
Following the time of communal listening, Goldenwood COO and Co-Founder Amilee Watkins introduced the Founding Deans and facilitated a conversation around the distinct yet integrative areas that each will lead for the Institute: David Kim focused on theology and spiritual formation, emphasizing how an increasing discernment of God’s dynamic, boundary-breaking voice can fuel transformed work. Sandra McCracken emphasized imagination and creativity’s role in co-creating with God toward a future beyond our current limitations. Makoto Fujimura highlighted how attentiveness to nature’s patterns and abundance can redirect our work, transforming anxiety and worry to flourishing and fullness. Finally, Haejin Shim Fujimura expanded on our calling to embody love and justice, exhorting us to view work through relationships of deep, transformative love for God and neighbor in and across all vocational spheres.
Common threads emerged around viewing work not just as a job but as a sacred calling to participate in God’s redemptive purposes, the importance of expanding our imagination for what work could be in multi-disciplinary relationship, and the need for communal Spirit-led discernment to reveal an integrated vision of future flourishing that instills hope to guide our work in the here and now.
The day continued in smaller conversations over food and interactive workshops led by Mako and Sandra, providing opportunities for intentional listening in community in ways that strengthened and deepened trusted relationships. There was so much love in the room! The group lingered and lounged, attentive to each other in small and big ways, and time itself seemed to expand and slow down.
Following an afternoon break, the community returned to a bountiful feast prepared by PixieScout and gorgeously imagined by the talented Nicole Ingram. Figs and cheese, greens and breads adorned an enormous central table as attendees meandered and delighted in the beauty of food and friendship.
The community gathered for a powerful closing session, initiated by spirit-stimulating poetry readings from Shann Ray, continuing with a stirring original song written and performed by Elizabeth Davis from her new project The Apple Tree (accompanied by the marvelous Tim Nicholson), and capped off by a provocative panel conversation featuring four Dreamers from the Goldenwood community. [For those unfamiliar with Goldenwood’s annual Dream Forum, be sure to explore this further.]
The practitioners began by reflecting on the brokenness and pain points that defined the genesis of their dreams and motivated the work of their hands. Jason Brooks detailed the enormous impact of language to both build up and tear down, yet a lack of accessible linguistics training for cultivating healthy communication skills, leading to his creation of Relativ.ai. Jamison Galt described the disillusionment and depression he experienced over the course of his time pastoring in New York City, and the ways he found solace in nature, ultimately leading him to guide others on transformative journeys to shalom through the work of TAU. Brook Laurent spoke of the immense healthcare challenges and social determinants of health impacting the Mississippi Delta region where she currently works leading the Delta Population Health Institute toward innovative and collaborative solutions for change. And Liliia Chernytska shared how growing up in violence and trauma-stricken Ukraine inspired her passion for bringing healing and restoration to her people and their land.
Drawing connections between their experiences, the panelists explored bigger themes. They saw God continually bringing renewal out of brokenness through dreams and visions. While the challenges they responded to felt deeply entrenched, prophetic texts like Isaiah 61 assured them that God remains actively working to redeem all things. They affirmed the importance of starting any redemptive work from a place of humility, not strength. Only by listening deeply in weakness can one discern the quiet whisper of God’s voice directing true transformation.
Inspired attendees left challenged to radically reimagine their callings as broken people in broken places, offering the work of their hands to God as His instrument for remaking and renewing all things, on earth as it is in heaven.
By welcoming vulnerability and expansively linking diverse vocational spheres, Goldenwood is cultivating a thick community of practitioners driven by a lofty generational vision: to see work revived by love, ushering wholeness and vitality into every place of brokenness as a foretaste of God’s new creation.
Partner with us to fund this bold and audacious endeavor!
Stay tuned for unfolding details about the Institute as it develops. Do you have connections to foundations or grantmakers who would be interested in funding the Institute? Email us to collaborate in this way.
Special Thanks to our Corporate Sponsors:
Grace Kim, Grace Orthodontics
James Sutherland, Hi-Lume Corporation
Amber Gentry and Chika Okoli, Rewell
Jonathan Dickson, Chick-fil-A Franchise Owner
James Vanreusel, Vanreusel Ventures
Rob Bundy, Bundy Architecture
Cindy and Matt Mahlberg, Colorado Center for Dermatology & Skin Surgery
This is amazing!
What a beautifully orchestrated day, focusing on redemption in work and transformation of work itself.
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