Called to Be Human: Introducing the LiVE Project's 2026-2027
What does it mean to be human?
Adrienne Marie Brown's Emergent Strategy names a principle that's been on my mind: “There is a conversation in the room that only these people at this moment can have. Find it.” What is the conversation the church, at this moment, needs to be having? This year's LiVE Project theme is our answer: Called to Be Human. What kind of people does our world need us to show up as, in light of our life in Jesus?
Amid our challenges, disagreements, and anxieties, the Spirit is calling the church to wrestle with this question in ways that honor the dignity of being human — even as so much of our world, its economics, politics, and digital cultures, works to divide our attention and our intentions to live with and for one another.
Across four retreats and two online courses, we'll explore what it means to live fully into our humanity in light of our Christian faith, our motivations and presuppositions, our affections and desires, our freedom, our consciousness, our conscience.
A passage from Inviting the Mystic, Supporting the Prophet, by Katherine Dyckman and Patrick Carroll, has been sitting with us as we've built this year's programming:
It is as if each human person constitutes a committee constantly sitting to decide life’s questions and the behavior desired in a given situation. This committee has many members within, each voicing a particular slant—our fears, feelings, dreams, and hopes, our history and relationships, our member, our various subpersonalities, and our reason. Hopefully, the chairperson of that committee is reason, deeply influenced and guided by affectivity. All the voices need to be heard and listened to. Ultimately, at their best, people make choices that chart the direct and, over time, develop the person.
That's the heart of “Called to Be Human.” Not a call to have it all figured out, or to quiet the noisy parts of ourselves, but a call to the ongoing, sacred work of listening to every voice at the table, so that, choice by choice, we become more integrated, more whole, more truly ourselves in Christ.
This year's retreats and courses put in conversation various members of that inner committee: our desires, our freedom, our conscience, our imagination, our history. We'll ask what it looks like for God to be present in these, in our community conversations, and with curiosity rather than judgment. None of us chairs that committee alone; we do it in relationship, with God, with each other, and with the communities we're called to serve.
We can't wait to gather alongside you this year, to wonder together about this timely and necessary question:
who is God calling us, and not challenging us, to be?
Peace,
Pastor David
Director of Formation and Learning | Northwest Washington Synod | david@lutheransnw.org
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