Leadership Foundations: City As Playground

In this episode, Dan Cardinali, President/CEO of Independent Sector, joins us to explore how a posture of contemplation and action can meaningfully contribute to human flourishing in our urban world.

Cities, by their very nature, point us to the contradictions and paradoxes that are an inseparable aspect of our world. To love cities - as the Leadership Foundations global network seeks to embody - is to embrace these contradictions. Join us in this episode where we explore the contradiction and tension between two sources of authority - the Street and the Academy - and how both have something to teach us about our urban world.

How do we navigate today's urban world - holding the bible in one hand and the newspaper in the other? How do we navigate the tension of contemplation and action, street and the academy in our active engagement in the city? Join us for this new City as Playground series as we'll be exploring these tensions by engaging thought leaders and practitioners from across the world and throughout the Leadership Foundations' global network.

G.K. Chesterton once wrote, “The reason we fly from the city is not in reality that it is not poetical; it is that its poetry is too fierce, too fascinating and too practical in its demands.”* In this 2021 finale podcast episode, we welcome back Fr. Steve Lantry, SJ for a special Advent/Christmas "Praying with Poetry" episode. Fr. Lantry explores with us how we can use poetry as a tool to enrich and deepen our prayer life. He guides us through three groups of poems (listed below) on the themes of Relationality, Paradox, and Challenge & Hope.   Poems cited: The Hidden Singer by Wendell Berry from A Part, 1980, or, Collected Poems, pp.207-8 Love is the way messengers… by Rumi 1207-1273, from The Soul of Rumi, p. 33, translated by Coleman Barks & John Moyne When school and mosque and minaret... by Rumi, 1207-1273, from A Year with Rumi, p.233 Those who think the heart is only in the chest... by Rumi, 1207-1274, from Rumi: Hidden Music, p. 54, translated by Azima Melita Kolin & Maryam Mafi everywhere, everywhere by Charles Bukowski, from What Matters Most Is How Well You Walk Through the Fire, p. 94 One song by Rumi, 1207-1273,from A Year with Rumi, p. 214,rendered by Coleman Barks When We See God by Edward Hirsch Hope by Lisel Mueller, from Good Poems, p. 224, ed. by Garrison Keillor       Sometimes  by Sheenagh Pugh, from Good Poems, p. 215, ed. by Garrison Keillor We have fished all night… by Sr. Annette Moran, CSJ, from A Woman at the Well, p. 55, Sisters of St. Joseph of Carondolet, St. Louis Province, 2009 *Lunacy and Letters by G.K. Chesterton, p. 60  

Can you see a playground amidst the countless smells, sights, and sounds of New York City?  Jeremy Del Rio, Executive Director of Thrive Collective, Leadership Foundation of NYC, joins us to describe how this vision of the City as a Playground is coming to life in the City that Never Sleeps. He discusses the many ways in which Thrive Collective is uncovering and unleashing the beauty and creativity that already resides in the city through mural painting, education, mentoring, and nurturing collaborative spaces amongst the least likely of partners.

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

At the center of transformation in our world's cities is leadership - women and men who deeply love their city and are committed to it becoming more like a playground. Join us as Melody Rodriguez and Alma Vargas from Proyecto Mole in Tacoma, Washington talk about developing young people as leaders who are equipped to love and transform their communities.

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

Can you imagine God's economy of abundance even in places where resources appear so scarce? Can you see it? Join us as we wrap up this City as Playground podcast series, Imagining Abundance, recapping our conversations of seeing abundance throughout the Leadership Foundations network in Bloemfontein, South Africa; Fresno, California; and Philippi, West Virginia.

The story of West Virginia is one often told only describing its entrenched poverty, widespread opioid use, and coal -dependent economy.   Ruston Seaman, president of New Vision, Leadership Foundation of Phillipi, West Virginia tells us a different story.   Join us as Ruston describes his community through the lens of God's abundance, seeing it filled with human ingenuity, resources, and built-in assets capable of providing hopeful futures for all its residents.

In Fresno, the Center for Community Transformation Leadership Foundation is reimagining the local economy of God's abundance. An economy where the city is full of practicing and prospective entrepreneurs starting and sustaining small businesses of every shape... A local economy nourished by a vision of God's economy - one where there is enough for everyone, particularly those most vulnerable and marginalized.

Homelessness, prostitution, government corruption. Amidst some of these dire circumstances in South Africa, only exacerbated by COVID-19, the Towers of Hope Leadership Foundation is living into God's economy of Abundance.  Learn how they are imagining abundance in their city - where the most impoverished receive all that they need to lead flourishing lives of promise.

Can you imagine our world's cities as places of abundance? Places where God's excessive love for God's children is on full display? Where everyone, including the most vulnerable, receive all that they need to lead lives full of promise? Join us this series as we explore what God's invitation of moving from scarcity to abundance might look like in our own lives, and the kind of promise that such a movement holds for our urban spaces.  

Cohost Rick Enloe and Leadership Foundations President Dave Hillis review the territory of this seven episode series on Traditioned Innovation.   How can people of faith and good will work together to innovate in our cities by drawing from our rich faith traditions? What might it look like to come alongside God's creative spirit already at work in our world's cities?

The Nairobi Leadership Foundation is transforming one of the world's largest informal settlements, Kibra, through the power of relationships.  In this podcast episode of the Traditioned Innovation series, Executive Director Gideon Ochieng describes how they're using basketball courts to bring people together in Nairobi - and empower young people as future leaders!

Is prayer still relevant today, in our post-modern 21st century urban world?  Does our 2,000+ year-old faith tradition have anything to teach us about praying today? Join us as acclaimed author and public figure Fr. James Martin, SJ discusses Ignatius of Loyola, our bustling cities, and his recently published book, Learning to Pray: A Guide For Everyone.

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.

How does reform really happen? We continue our conversation from last episode with Dr. Richard Beck, exploring the prison ministry and reform work of three Local Leadership Foundations - Next Chapter: The LF of Rochester, MN, the Memphis Leadership Foundation, and the Dallas Leadership Foundation. What emerges, is the incredibly surprising way in which God's invitation of hospitality emerges.

Dr. Richard Beck - Author, blogger, and professor of psychology at Abilene Christian University - joins us to discuss the psychology of why we get so stuck in our tribal ruts. He suggests that an often overlooked Saint, Therese of Lisieux, offers a simple, yet profound way of finding ourselves swept up in a God of hospitality, who turns all our expectations on their heads.  

Is leadership about making important decisions? Or is it more about a way of going about making decisions? To borrow a phrase from the Jesuits, what is a "way of proceeding" that allows us to move forward together in these uncertain times?We are join by Lisa Slayton, Leadership Foundations board member, organizational consultant and founder of Tamim Partners to explore the shape of discernment in pursuit of a more just and equitable urban future. 

With the beginning of the new year, 2021 brings plenty of uncertainty along with it. How do we approach this new and uncertain future? How do we seek long-term change in our world's cities, when we don't even know what will happen tomorrow? Could it be that the deepest resources of our traditions hold the key to some of most promising current-day innovations?  In this series, Traditioned Innovation, Leadership Foundations explores how we bring to light and make use of the wisdom of our traditions in our new and innovative ways to meet the most urgent challenges of our modern urban world. 

As a special Advent gift, Jesuit priest, Fr. Steve Lantry, SJ is our guest to describe how how poetry can serve as a means and method to pray.  Join us as Fr. Steve shares a few of his favorite poems and demonstrates how poetry can aid us in our encounter with God and to enter more deeply into in the life of prayer.

How do the deep resources of our faith help us to more deeply engage the Public Square? Can a Public Theology help us find a way through these divided and polarized times to work together toward the Common Good?Anne Snyder, the Editor-in-Chief of Comment Magazine and the host of Breaking Ground, a collaborative web commons, joins us to explore these topics as we seek a public theology for the common good.     

In this rebroadcast episode, host Rick Enloe and Leadership Foundations president Dave Hillis explore the Eucharistic shape of life and leadership - what it means to be taken, blessed, broken and given. 

A Conversation with Rachel McPherson of Mutuality In this podcast we explore what real, authentic collaboration is and how it can help us out of our deep ruts of resentment and rivalry. Rachel McPherson, Founder and CEO of Mutuality, joins us to share about nurturing collaborations amongst the least likely of suspects in the New York Governor's Office and amongst businesses and nonprofits.      

In this City as Playground episode, Jim Wallis -- founder of Sojourners and author of the recently released Christ in Crisis: Why we Need to Reclaim Jesus -- join us. Together, we explore Jesus' distinct response to our all-too-human tendency to build walls, make enemies, and create deep divides in our society and world. Join as we explore the role of leadership and the power of the gospel to transform those wounds. Whether their character is political, racial, ideological, our world is in desperate need for such healing today.

Nicholas Sensley, President and CEO of the Institute for American Police Reform joins us to talk about policing, the need for reform, leadership, and how to bring about real, lasting and comprehensive change.  

Pancho Argüelles, Executive Director of the Living Hope Wheel Chair Association, joins us for this episode exploring spiritual and social aspects of Accompaniment.

How do immigrants survive in cities during a pandemic? Sam Rajshekhar - President of the YuvaLok Leadership Foundation in Bangalore, India - and Noah Baskett - Director of Global Advancement for Leadership Foundations - join the podcast to discuss the challenges that immigrant communities face today.   Sam describes, in heartbreaking detail, both the challenges he's seeing on the ground in Bangalore as his team works to meet their needs, along with the many signs of hope that continue to make themselves known.    Music - Epidemic Sound: Under a Cloud - Across The Great Valley Let us Go Back - Tomas Skyldeberg About Leadership Foundations:​ RELATIONSHIPS THAT CHANGE OUR CITIES CHANGE OUR WORLD.CITIES ARE THE EPICENTERS OF CHANGE IN THE WORLD. And it’s painfully obvious that the only way to positively change our cities for the better - particularly for the marginalized - is through the power of relationships.Leadership Foundations creates meaningful and productive relationships between experienced leaders, passionate local advocates, and community stakeholders, all working together toward one common goal.   Learn More at https://leadershipfoundations.org    

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.

Join host Rick Enloe and Leadership Foundations President, Dave Hillis, as they explore what nonreactive leadership looks like in this time of pandemic.  They'll explore how The Art of Seeing is so critical in leadership, what holiness has to do with the city as a whole, and hear from Dan Cardinali, President of Independent Sector, the largest civil society membership organization in the US. Dan will discuss the impacts of Covid-19 on the sector, and where he sees hope.

Leadership in a time of Covid - Part I - Join Leadership Foundations President, Dave Hillis, and podcast host Rick Enloe as they introduce a conversation on what real Leadership looks like amidst a time of crisis.  For this multipart series we'll be exploring the notion of "Nonreactive Leadership," and the promise it holds for our cities, particularly in this time of global crisis.  As a guide, we'll be delving into this topic with this provocative statement that theologian James Alison offers: "Neither reactive Churches, nor reactive organizations [nor reactive leaders] can be part of the sign of the beginning of gathered humanity reconciled with God. The fact is that the meaning of the Gospel, the life of God, the sense of the Spirit, is never to be found in reactive spaces. It is always and only found in the hard-won space where rivalry has broken down and forgiveness emerges.”   

This episode begins a new series of the LF podcast which will feature the heroic stories of leaders throughout the LF network. Rick and Dave begin by discussing Bob Terry’s definition of leadership as well as Marshall Gant’s framework of storytelling which will be used in the upcoming interviews of LF leaders. Please join us for the upcoming episodes as we tour LF cities and leaders. Listen here and send any questions or comments to info@leadershipfoundations.org.

In the final episode of the series celebrating LF’s 40th year of work, Dave and Rick are joined by CIS Founder and LF Board member Bill Milliken. They talk about the inauguration of the Colangelo Carpenter Innovation Center (CCIC) in Washington DC, ideas from organizational theorist Richard McDermott on how innovation is used to sustain a movement like LF, and what this means for LF’s future. Listen here and send in any questions you would like answered to info@leadershipfoundations.org.

In this episode, Dave and Rick are joined by Leslie MacKrell, Partner at The Bridgespan Group. Together they discuss the intensive Bridgespan project and how it better positioned LF to cultivate and drive global impact. Listen here and send in any questions you would like answered to info@leadershipfoundations.org.    

In this episode, Dave and Rick explore how LF has ventured into the public sector over the past 40 years. Together they delve into the necessity of engaging all sectors of the city- from political to social service to religious- on behalf of the common good. Listen here and send in any questions you would like answered to info@leadershipfoundations.org.  

In this episode, Dave and Rick discuss the emergence and evolution of the LF organization. Together they explore the formation of LF as we know it today and how LF has balanced the tension between organic and organizational realities over the last 40 years. Listen here and send in any questions you would like answered to info@leadershipfoundations.org.

In this episode, Dave and Rick discuss LF's organizational development over the course of its 40-year history. With a clip from LF founder Reid Carpenter, the conversation explores the early years of fellowship, the importance of the Incarnation, and the emergence of a robust global organization. Listen here and send in any questions you would like answered to info@leadershipfoundations.org.

In this episode, Dave and Rick continue to discuss LF's 40th anniversary and look back at key pieces of the LF theological framework. The conversation includes clips from Dr. Ray Bakke, a pivotal voice since LF's early years, reflecting on why loving the city was not just important, but foundationally Christian. Listen here and send in any questions you would like answered to info@leadershipfoundations.org. 

In this episode, Dave and Rick continue their conversation about LF's 40th anniversary. Together they discuss key moments, people, and ideas that contributed to the founding of the Pittsburgh Leadership Foundation in 1978. Complete with words from our founder Reid Carpenter, they look at how this moment in our history has continued to blossom in Pittsburgh and inspire the love and work of LF member cities around the world. Listen here and send in any questions you would like answered to info@leadershipfoundations.org.    

In 2018, Leadership Foundations marks its 40th anniversary. In this episode, Dave and Rick discuss the importance of remembrance and set up our next podcast series which will explore significant events over the last 40 years that have brought us to where we are today and position the LF network for the next decades of impact. Listen here and send in any questions you would like answered to info@leadershipfoundations.org.    

How does the Eucharist impact and shape leadership? In this episode, Dave and Rick look back on the last 10 months and our dive into the idea of Eucharistic leadership and its four movements- taken, blessed, broken, and given. Together they discuss the key questions and lessons that surfaced and the implications these have for our leadership and everyday lives.

What is the purpose of being given and how does it impact leadership? In this episode, Dave and Rick talk with Jack Fortin, Chair of the Leadership Foundations Board and Senior Fellow at Augsburg College, about the importance of this action in Eucharistic leadership- being given for the sake of our community. They explore the idea of being given power so that we, individually and corporately, may give it away to others, thereby acting as servant leaders and establishing trustworthiness, which is central to giving.

How does power shape leadership? Can one lead without being in control? In this Whispercast, Dave and Rick dive into the fourth and final movement of Eucharistic Leadership, being given. Join them as they discuss how this notion can shape our leadership and move us to empower others. This sets up our next full-length episode where we will be joined by Jack Fortin, the Leadership Foundations Board Chair and Senior Fellow at Augsburg College. Listen here and send in any questions you would like answered to info@leadershipfoundations.org.

What if our identity is not wrapped up in getting it right or being perfect? In this episode, Dave and Rick talk with Kris Rocke (Executive Director of Street Psalms and LF Senior Associate) about his experience of the third movement of Eucharistic leadership, being broken. They dive into the experience of being broken and how our wounds can bear new life. This counter-intuitive movement is vital to transforming cities into playgrounds.   

What does brokenness have to do with leadership? In this episode, Dave and Rick introduce the third movement of Eucharistic leadership, being broken. They discuss how this counter-intuitive movement is vital to the vision of the city as playground. This sets up our next full-length podcast where Rick and Dave talk with Kris Rocke (Executive Director of Street Psalms and LF Senior Associate) about his experience with this movement of Eucharistic leadership.    Listen here and send in any questions you would like answered to info@leadershipfoundations.org. 

Take a moment to listen to the latest episode of the City as Playground Podcast. What does it mean to be blessed, even in the midst of life’s most challenging realities? In this episode, Dave and Rick talk with Sara Melchior (LF Network Relations and Development Associate) about her experience of the third movement of Eucharistic leadership, being blessed. You won’t want to miss this honest discussion between Sara, Dave, and Rick about the professional and personal experience of being blessed as a leader.

Take a moment to listen to the latest episode of the City as Playground Podcast.   What does it mean to be blessed as a leader? In this Whispercast, Rick and Dave introduce the second movement of Eucharistic leadership, being blessed. They discuss Eucharistic leadership and how mercy and blessing come together as one lives into being blessed as a leader. This sets up our next full length podcast where Rick and Dave talk with Sara Melchior (LF Network Relations and Development Associate) about her experience with this movement of Eucharistic leadership.     Listen here and send in any questions you would like answered to info@leadershipfoundations.org.

Take a moment to listen to the latest episode of the City as Playground Podcast.  How can fostering humility in leadership help us be more effective and life-giving leaders to those we serve? Rick and Dave talk with Larry Lloyd—President of Memphis Leadership Foundation and LF Vice President of Network Impact—about how being taken as a leader can inform our ideas and styles of leadership. Join them as they explore this first movement of Eucharistic leadership. Listen here and send in any questions you would like answered to info@leadershipfoundations.org. 

Take a moment to listen to the latest episode of the City as Playground Podcast.  Is leadership simply possessed by the luck of the draw, or is it a gift that each of us have the ability of cultivating? In this Whispercast, Rick and Dave—using the Taken movement of Eucharistic leadership—explore how viewing leadership as a gift rather than a possession changes how one leads. This sets up our next full length podcast where Rick, Dave, and their guest (Larry Lloyd, President of Memphis Leadership Foundation and LF Vice President of Network Impact) will dive more into the idea of being Taken as a leader.  Listen here and send in any questions you would like answered to info@leadershipfoundations.org.

Is leadership bred or born? In this episode, Rick Enloe and Dave Hillis explore how the Eucharist shapes our view of leadership. They contrast the 4 P's of conventional leadership to a Eucharistic leadership of being taken, blessed, broken, and given. Join them as they dive into the process of moving from a leadership of egotism to one of service.