Facing Reality, Claiming Leadership in the Church Today

Have you enjoyed Season 10 of our Igniting Imagination Podcast as much as we have?! We started with Margaret Wheatley and we are ending the season with two remarkable innovative leaders, who also happen to be part of our leadership learning and innovation team, Rev. Kathi McShane and Derrick Scott, III. If you haven’t been listening, this conversation can guide you toward the episodes that most speak to you – it’s a great place to start! If you’ve been listening along the way, we hope you’ll find it helpful to pull on the threads that name the realities we are facing today and how we claim our leadership in the midst. It’s not an easy season, but I’m convinced we have an opportunity to lead in new ways that get us a bit closer to the world that God imagines. 

In this conversation, you’ll hear:

• Leading in a time of polarization.
• The importance of naming and understanding ambiguous loss.
• More responses to Wheatley’s “addicted to hope”.

Derrick Scott, III is the associate director of learning and innovation for Wesleyan Impact Partners. Derrick has been leading ministry in the collegiate and young adult context for over 20 years.

In addition to his work with Wesleyan Impact Partners, Derrick currently serves as the creative producer of Studio Wesley, a ministry that’s exploring how to serve college-aged young adults in the digital space. He is also the co-lay leader of the Florida Conference of the UMC. He is passionate about empowering a new generation of leaders and laborers who will live as disciples of Jesus Christ to transform the world.

He has an undergraduate degree in history, is a Cicerone Certified Beer Server, and is a textbook introvert. He loves eating sushi, flying on Delta, and pouring craft beer. He lives in Jacksonville, Florida with his Chihuahua-mix dog Winston and Bengal cat Julian. Most importantly, he hates mayonnaise.

Rev. Kathleen McShane is the director of learning and innovation for Wesleyan Impact Partners. Kathi retired from active ministry as an ordained Elder in the California-Nevada Conference of the United Methodist Church in 2022. She led four congregations and served for eight years as the vice president for Institutional Advancement at Pacific School of Religion. Before attending seminary and beginning her life in ministry, she was a civil litigator, practicing law in the San Francisco Bay Area.

In her final appointment in Los Altos, California, Kathi co-founded the Changemaker Initiative, which is a small national movement of churches committed to empowering lay people to become compassion-driven changemakers like Jesus. That work has led her toward multiple projects that are re-imagining leadership for the church of the future. She is the co-author, with Rabbi Elan Babchuck, of Picking Up the Pieces: Leadership after Empire.

Kathi lives on a vineyard on the Central Coast of California.

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