What Makes Us Different
We’re Building a New Kind of Community
At The Way Forward, we are committed to building a community centered on healing and courageous action in the pursuit of a more just world. We believe faith and values should shape how we love, serve, and engage the world around us.
We come from many different backgrounds, including faith traditions that have deeply influenced our behaviors and beliefs. Many of us were formed in environments that emphasized personal belief over shared responsibility, private devotion over public love, and supporting man-made idolatry over Christlike transformation.
We do not completely discard the faith that has shaped us, but we are honest about its limitations and where it has fallen short. The Way Forward is rooted in radical inclusion, love for all our neighbors, and a commitment to living our faith and values with greater courage, deeper compassion, and a fully integrated commitment to justice.
We recognize that real transformation requires ongoing self-examination, humility, and repair. It involves confronting both the systems that shape our world and the ways those systems have shaped us. We do not turn away from pain, but engage it with honesty and care.
This is a space where you can show up fully as you are. You will not be shamed for your questions or judged for your doubts. Curiosity and honesty are not just welcomed, but strongly encouraged.
Our Mission
To cultivate a community of people committed to deep transformation, radical love, and active participation in the restoration of the world.
Our Vision
To create a world where we live with courage, compassion, and clarity, working together to transform systems and build communities rooted in love where everyone has the opportunity to flourish.
What We Believe
The Old Way
Faith has too often been reduced to rigid certainty, conformity, cultural identity, and a narrow focus on personal salvation.
At its worst, it has been fused with greed, power, white supremacy, and patriarchy, perpetuating harm, trauma, and exclusion.
At its best, many communities have sought to cultivate belonging, moral formation, and devotion, yet often without fully engaging the deeper truths and systemic realities that shape the human experience.
The Way Forward
We believe faith is meant to be lived, not just believed. It calls us to embody the love, courage, and consciousness of Christ in every aspect of life. Following Jesus, and those who have walked in his footsteps, is not passive or private. It is an active, relational journey with God that calls us to participate in the transformation of ourselves and the world.
We believe every person bears the image of God and carries inherent, sacred worth. While we acknowledge the reality of sin, we do not define ourselves as inherently depraved. Instead, we understand ourselves as the embodiment of infinite possibility, created for growth, healing, and restoration.
We value curiosity, questions, and ongoing discovery. Doubt is not something to fear, but an essential part of an authentic faith. While we are rooted in Christlike Christianity, we welcome people of all beliefs and backgrounds. We do not coerce, exclude, or claim a monopoly on truth. We remain open to the ways God may be revealed through other traditions, through any and all voices, and throughout all of creation.
We are committed to confronting difficult truths and dismantling the false idols we have inherited, including greed, power, patriarchy, white supremacy, and individualism, as well as forms of civility that prioritize comfort over justice. We value the Bible as a source of wisdom and connection to God, while also recognizing the importance of history, science, social sciences, and the fullness of human knowledge and experience as essential to how we show up in the world.
How We Come Together
The Old Way
Religious gatherings have often followed a predictable format that helps to preserve the status quo. They can become spaces where people receive inspiration and information without a clear invitation into transformation.
At their worst, they have reinforced control, exclusion, harm, and hierarchy that places faith leaders above everyone else with an unhealthy amount of control and influence over their congregations.
At their best, they offer encouragement and insight, but often without helping people meaningfully connect their faith to the complexities of the world, including trauma, injustice, and human suffering.
The Way Forward
We gather not only to grow in understanding, but to be transformed. While we value scriptural wisdom, we also engage our wounds, our biases, and our place within broken systems. We believe this kind of honest work is essential to living out love in the world.
Our gatherings move beyond passive participation. We prioritize shared learning, reflection, and active engagement. Through dialogue, education, and community, we cultivate the kind of formation that leads to action. We are not here to consume content, but to become people who embody it.
We do not center hierarchy or performance. Leadership exists to equip, not to elevate. Gatherings are participatory, thoughtful, and grounded in real-world context. Questions are welcomed, and when answers take time, we continue the conversation beyond our gatherings.
We intentionally engage what is happening in the world and allow it to inform our time together. Scripture remains a vital source of wisdom, but it is not used to avoid reality. Instead, it helps us better understand and respond to it with clarity, humility, and conviction.
Community & Belonging
The Old Way
Many faith traditions, especially Christianity, have allowed themselves to be influenced by culture rather than a true and inclusive love for their neighbors.
At its worst, belonging has been defined by rigid certainties, conformity, and unquestioned obedience, creating echo chambers that limit both identity and imagination, far from God’s vision for a people drawn from every nation and walk of life.
At its best, faith communities have sought to be welcoming, but often without fully engaging difference, resulting in inclusion that quietly expects assimilation. Too often, the focus has remained on preserving the institution rather than doing the harder work of building a truly inclusive, integrated, and participatory community.
The Way Forward
We believe community begins with people showing up fully as themselves. We welcome people of all races, ethnicities, genders, sexual orientations, beliefs, and backgrounds. We believe diversity strengthens us, and that our differences are not meant to be erased, but woven together in love. We are committed to integration, not assimilation. You do not need to become someone else to belong here.
We practice shared leadership rather than traditional hierarchy. Every person has agency and every committed member has a voice. Leadership exists to support and equip, not to dominate or authoritatively define the community. We do not center a single personality or platform. Together, we form the collective expression of this community.
Belonging here does not require exclusivity from other communities. We do not see ourselves as your only community, and we do not ask for your loyalty in that way. You are encouraged to be part of other spaces, other communities, and other movements. We believe God’s plan for us is far bigger than any single community, and we actively seek collaboration, partnership, and connection with other like-minded communities to advance our collective missions and visions.
We also believe generosity should be freely given, not compelled. We encourage supporting causes and communities that align with your values. While we welcome contributions to sustain this work, we will never use guilt, pressure, or obligation to secure them.
How We Engage the World
The Old Way
Too often, faith has remained contained within the walls of buildings, while the loudest voices reaching the public are shaped by fear, bigotry, narrow-mindedness, and the worship of false idols.. This has led to public expressions of faith that distort the way of Jesus and everyone who has walked in his footsteps.
At its best, churches have served those in need, yet often without addressing and confronting the deeper systems and conditions that create that need in the first place.
The Way Forward
We believe love moves outward in thoughtful and sustained ways. Faith is not confined to a single space or community. We see ourselves as part of a much larger ecosystem of people and organizations working toward healing, dignity, and the common good.
We actively pursue partnership and collaboration across faith communities, nonprofits, grassroots organizations, educators, businesses, and public servants. Wherever people are working to love their neighbor and restore what is broken, we see shared purpose. We do not need uniformity to work together. We seek alignment in values and commitment to the flourishing of others.
We believe lasting change requires both compassion and strategy. It is built through relationships, trust, and long-term investment in people and communities. This work is often quiet and unseen, but it is what creates sustainable progress over time.
We commit to learning from others, contributing where we can, and strengthening the work already being done. We are not here to replace what exists, but to join it, support it, and help it grow.
Justice & Liberation
The Old Way
Justice has often been dismissed as divisive or approached cautiously to preserve comfort and stability. Many faith communities have remained silent or passive in the face of injustice, allowing harm to continue while avoiding disruption. In many cases, faith is separated from public responsibility altogether.
At its worst, justice has been perceived as a way of enacting God’s wrath, whether that be punishing people for misbehavior through incarceration, war, or condemning them to hell.
At its best, true justice is addressed and talked about to educate communities, but typically without the public witness and activism that is required to turn the tide.
The Way Forward
We believe love is the most powerful force in the world. Love is not passive. Love is not weak. It is active, courageous, and disruptive when it needs to be. It tells the truth, confronts injustice, and refuses to remain silent when harm is being done.
We believe in a public faith that speaks truth to power without seeking power for itself. We are committed to protecting the vulnerable and confronting systems of harm, while refusing to dehumanize those we disagree with.
We do not exist to maintain comfort or preserve the status quo. We challenge harmful systems, call out injustice, and disrupt patterns that perpetuate harm. This requires us to focus our energy upward, holding those in power accountable, rather than turning against our neighbors.
Our work is not driven by outrage alone. We are committed to building something that lasts. This means engaging in tangible action, including community organizing, political advocacy and policy engagement, mutual aid, and sustained support for impacted communities.
Justice and liberation are not side efforts. They are the natural fruit of a life shaped by love, expressed through consistent action in the world.
To learn more about the work we do, checkout our Faith in Action webpage.