Fellows in Chicago

This week the Phygital Fellows are gathering in Chicago for our final Learning Journey together. Over the past 18 months this cohort has been exploring what soulful leadership looks like in a world where digital and physical life are no longer separate spaces but deeply intertwined realities.

The fellowship was never primarily about technology. It has been about soulful imagination. Fellows entered the program with a ministry context already curious or shaped by digital life. Congregations gather online. Communities form across platforms. Ancient wisdom circulated through podcasts and video. Pastoral presence now happens in comment sections, group chats, and livestreams as much as in sanctuaries and coffee shops.

Throughout the fellowship, we have asked a simple but demanding question. What does it mean to shepherd souls in a phygital world?

During our time in Chicago, each Fellow has been invited to present something meaningful that has emerged from their time in the program. Some are sharing projects that took shape during the fellowship. Others are naming insights that have changed how they think about ministry, community, and leadership. Many are offering questions that continue to unfold rather than tidy conclusions.

Those emerging questions may be the most important outcome of the program. Questions about authority, presence, embodiment, formation, ethics, and community in a world where digital spaces are not secondary to life but woven into it.

This final Learning Journey is less a graduation and more of a marking of the moment. The conversations that began in this cohort are traveling outward into congregations, networks, and communities that are still learning how faith lives in both pixels and flesh. The group will shepherd a larger gathering on phygital themes this fall when they are together again.