Beyond the Headlines: Faith, Community and the Stories that Shape Us

Thrive, World Renew, and the Christian Reformed Centre for Public Dialogue are excited to announce our new justice education series. At a time when justice issues often spark complex emotions and challenging conversations, we invite you into a different kind of space—one rooted in faith, community, and hopeful imagination.

Please see below for more information and details on how to register for the upcoming sessions.

Series Description 

‘Beyond the Headlines’ is a bi-national Christian justice education series designed to help people of faith faithfully engage with some of the most pressing justice issues of our time—including immigration and refugee justice, climate justice, food justice, and gender justice.

Across the series, participants will be invited to move beyond overwhelming headlines and polarizing narratives toward a deeper, biblically grounded understanding of justice. Each session will explore how the narratives we are told shape our responses to injustice, often obscuring the systemic and structural roots beneath visible symptoms. Drawing on Scripture and lived experience, the series will offer tools for myth-busting, theological reflection, hopeful imagination, and faithful action.

Every session highlights concrete ways individuals and communities can live out the call to love our neighbours and live justly. Each webinar focuses on one justice issue while showing how systems of injustice, and faithful responses, are deeply interconnected.

By the end of the series, participants will be better equipped to:

• Recognize and challenge harmful narratives about justice issues in their churches and communities
• Understand the theological foundations for Christian engagement with systemic injustice
• Identify root causes beneath surface-level problems
• Take meaningful, faith-informed collective action that nurtures church renewal.

Session Summaries

1. Immigration & Refugee Justice: Stories, Systems, and the Call to Welcome (April 30th at 7:30pm ET)

This session explores the myths and dominant narratives shaping immigration and refugee conversations in the U.S. and Canada, and how they influence Christian responses. Participants will examine the root causes of forced migration—including conflict, climate impacts, food insecurity, and gender-based violence—while challenging dehumanizing language and assumptions about newcomers.

Grounded in biblical hospitality and the call to love our neighbour, the session equips participants with empathy, theological language, and practical steps for neighbourhood engagement and faithful political advocacy. Register here!

2. Food Justice: Food as a Right, Flourishing for all (May 12th at 7:30pm ET)

This session examines the stories we have been told and we tell about hunger and food insecurity—and how those narratives shape our responses. Participants will confront myths about why food insecurity exists, explore the systemic roots of hunger and poverty, and consider the impacts of policy decisions at global, national, and local levels.

By engaging in the biblical and spiritual significance of food, the session invites people of faith and congregations to respond to our sacred duty by moving beyond temporary food assistance and embracing holistic, justice-oriented, systemic approaches that address root causes of food inequality and create community-driven, lasting impacts. Register here! 

3. Climate Justice: Creation Care, Global Neighbors and a Just Transition (Sept 15th at 7:30pm ET)

This session reframes climate change as a justice issue that compounds challenges such as hunger, displacement, and inequity. Participants will explore global climate impacts and the importance of climate adaptation and mitigation, alongside domestic opportunities for a just transition to clean energy in North America.

Through a biblical lens of creation care, hospitality and climate science, the session challenges common myths about climate action and invites participants to imagine faithful responses that protect vulnerable communities and our shared future. Register here!

4. Gender Justice: Flourishing, Power, and Faithful Community (Nov 17th at 7:30pm ET)

Focusing on gender justice and the rights of women and girls, this session invites participants to consider how gender-based inequities are sustained by cultural narratives, power structures, and theological misunderstandings. Through a biblical and justice-oriented lens and case studies participants will explore how gender justice intersects with economic inequality, migration, food security, and the climate crisis. The session will emphasize God’s vision for human flourishing and offer practical steps for advocacy, allyship, and transformation within faith communities. Register here!