City As Playground

Can You Imagine a Playground? - A Just City

Can you imagine a city that is just? A city where everyone - regardless of background, birth family, race, or creed - receives what they need to fully thrive as human beings...

Justin Beene, President of the Leadership Foundation of Grand Rapids, Center for Community Transformation (GRCCT), joins us to explore the shape of God's justice in his city.  Dr. Beene describes how GRCCT is seeking to extend opportunity in a city ranked amongst the worst economically for African-Americans. 

• • Statistic cited from Forbes Magazine, 2015. 
  • Grand Rapids Center for Community Transformation

Can You Imagine A Playground?

In this year-end series of 2021, we're returning to our roots, letting our imagination guide us as we explore more deeply the animating metaphor of Leadership Foundations: our world's cities as playgrounds.

Join us as we hear from LF leaders from various cities as they imagine their own city as a playground, a place where vulnerable and marginalized people are able to fully flourish and thrive.

 

Guests:

• Nahshon Nicks, First Coast Leadership Foundation
• Anthony Branch, Memphis Leadership Foundation
• Courtney Dugstad, Next Chapter Ministries, Leadership Foundation of Rochester, MN
• Carlos Huerta, Center for Community Transformation, Leadership Foundation of Fresno, CA

City as Playground Recommendation:

The Moral Imagination: the Art and Soul of Peacebuilding by John Paul Lederach

Traditioned Innovation: An Invitation into Brave Space

What if instead of seeking safe spaces, we worked to create brave spaces, spaces where we could bring our deepest selves, our deepest vulnerabilities to the table in a way that might make real transformation possible? Rev. Jen Bailey, founder of the Faith Matters Network joins us to explore the possibility of building trust across our deepest and most intractable lines of difference, recognizing that all social change happens at the speed of trust.

Leadership and the Challenge of Racial Injustice

Cornelius Williams- president of the Resurgence Leadership Foundation based in Atlanta, Georgia - joins host Rick Enloe and LF President Dave Hillis to reflect on the current racial turmoil throughout the US. Cornelius reflects on his own leadership journey, the enduring work that's needed to bring about racial equity, and how the film, Black Panther, might lend us some hints.

 

Read this reflection from Cornelius for background information.