The videos

My daughter once described my work: “he talks and talks and talks..and sometimes he types.”

Here is some of the talking in three batches of videos. Tom Peterson and his sons Walt and Elliott shot these interviews during COVID in Little Rock.

The first videos are about Deeply Woven Roots, my seminal book written at The Carter Center waaaaay back in 1997 and used in many contexts since. The model of strengths underlies how congregations express God’s intentions for health, mercy and justice in the world.

I’d encourage you to watch the overview of the strengths. Each of the 8 strengths has its own video, too.

The second series of videos, also by Walt and Elliott, are about the book of prayers for a “newer new awakening.” Prayers need voice–including yours–so you might want to look at the book itself and read them out loud yourself.

The final several videos are some of the various lectures and zooms I’ve done about various occasions, usually linked to a FaithHealth gathering of some sort.

Deeply Woven Roots

Overview of the model of 8 strengths and then each of the strengths with its own short video..

Overview of the model of 8 strengths of Congregations for Community Health
Strength #1: Accompany
Strength #2 Convene: gather the people
Strength #3. Connect: Seeing and mobilizing the complex lives of the web of people.
Strength #4: Story: exercise the power of narrative to clarify roles and possibilities.
Strength #5: Create safe places for the hardest challenges and greatest opportunities.
The most inconvenient strength–to Bless. Everyone wants power to command, but. this is better.
Strength #7: to pray and use the full array of ritual, disciplines and practices to bring Spirit to bear.
#8: Congregations have a different way of understanding time, both more urgent and patient.

For God and the People: Prayers for a Newer New Awakening.

Each of these prayers has its own video of just the prayer. And a second video with a short interview of me explaining what was in my heart, mind and Spirit the produced the prayer.

Introduction to the book of prayers and reflections on….praying.
Good Trouble: Inspired by the life of Rev/Congressman John Lewis. (by far the most requested prayer)
Good Trouble Interview reflecting on how much John Lewis has been part of my life.
Prayer of waking. Not a metaphor–a prayer at the beginning of the preposterous new day
Prayer for Waking Interview. How life offers up such ridiculous generosity every single day.
Daughters to Sisters. Prayer for the astonishment of how our children become our sisters and then our parents.
Daughters to Sisters Interview. Pretty personal, this one, as I reflect on my two daughters, now raising me.
Prayer for the undone things left for tomorrow. Some of my friends with high energy big power management jobs love this prayer as they know the end of every day leaves so much undone–a blessing that needs blessing.
Undone prayer with the interview.

Leading Causes of Life. Short video conversation with TC, Jim Cochrane and me is from a rich and wildly smart YouTube Channel — Flip to Life which has a wonderful array of perspectives on Leading Causes of Life from scholars and activists all around the world. This zoom-based convening was forced by COVID; we thought we’d all be meeting in El Paso. But in many ways this turned out for the best as you can meet everyone yourself.

This short conversation wtih TC and me is in some sense Leading Causes of Life 101.