Applied Research
The climate-changed world in which we live requires new approaches to research. Through Applied Research, The BTS Center aims to provide grounded guidance for leaders who wish to meet the unique challenges of this time by leading from deep intention rather than from anxious reactivity.
We believe that our constituents are our greatest teachers. Our work centers the needs, knowledge, and wisdom of practitioners: from clergy in congregations, to lay leaders, to spiritual leaders working in a multitude of settings. Our research starts from a place of description and observation, attentive to the dynamics of emergence.
We aim to be honest without lapsing into despair, hopeful without being optimistic, empowering while naming the very real limits of our power, and grounded in daily practice while weaving threads that connect back to the deepest roots of our story and out to the planetary issues facing us now.
Our Questions for Investigation
How do spiritual leaders and faith communities understand their vocation in a climate-changed world, and how do these understandings shift over time?
What does transformative faith leadership look like when embodied by spiritual leaders and faith communities in a climate-changed world?
What frameworks, postures, and practices contribute to transformative faith leadership in a climate-changed world?
What interventions cultivate these frameworks, postures, and practices in spiritual leaders and faith communities?
What do we mean by frameworks, postures, and practices?
Frameworks: The ways that people make meaning of the world around them — for example: worldview, theologies, dominant stories
Postures: The dispositions or ways of being that describe how leaders interact with the environment around them
Practices: The day-to-day habits that leaders integrate consistently into their work and model for others
How We Do Our Work
Our approach to Applied Research is unique in several ways. Please click on each to learn more about the principles that guide our work.
Who We Are Doing This For
Our Applied Research is co-productive research done for and with spiritual leaders in a climate-changed world.
Centering Practitioners
The BTS Center’s Applied Research efforts begin with the needs, knowledge, and wisdom of practitioners — congregational clergy, laypersons leading within faith communities, and other spiritual leaders — rather than producing material that is intended for the research community or academic audiences. We believe that not only do practitioners deeply need the support of research efforts in order to better engage in their work, but also that they possess invaluable wisdom that deserves to be cultivated and shared with others.
Our Research Results In
Descriptions: Through our research, we offer evidence-based descriptions of the day-to-day realities of congregations and their engagement with a climate-changed world which help spiritual leaders better understand the contexts in which they are leading.
Pathways: Through our research, we offer evidence-based pathways for faith communities to step more deeply into transformative engagement with a climate-changed world.
In The Context of Our Broader Work
Our research is embedded in the context of our broader work to cultivate and nurture spiritual leadership for a climate-changed world.
We bring a unique organizational perspective to this research effort, asking big questions about what this climate-changed moment is calling out of us. This includes a few assumptions, including that the climate crisis is a spiritual crisis; that the Christian tradition has a unique role to play in a climate-changed world; and that our work is to cultivate “spiritual leadership for a climate-changed world.” We choose to bring that mission and perspective to our work, rather than trying to set them to the side.
The Language of Observation and Description
While some of our work focuses on building conceptual frameworks — for example, making the case that the climate crisis is a spiritual crisis — much of it focuses on asking, “What do we see here?” This means that we frequently employ rigorous qualitative and quantitative research methods — intake and exit questionnaires, interviews, focus groups, and site visits, for example — as a way of ensuring that we are describing what we see with honesty, clarity, and rigor. We work closely in collaboration with other scholars and with the guidance of our Research Advisory Committee.
Collaborative, Cross-Sector, and Cross-Cultural
Our research is collaborative, cross-sector, and cross-cultural.
We are always looking for partners and collaborators who are willing to check our assumptions and offer their own wisdom. We seek cross-institutional (such as other researchers or other invested organizations), cross-sector (such as non-profit leaders, chaplains, and spiritual directors), and cross-cultural individuals, groups, and institutions as both partners and sites for our research efforts.
Democratized Research
We democratize research through collaboration and co-learning. Our research is rooted in specific programs, and we work to ensure that participants have a degree of control in setting the agenda, making observations, and offering conclusions.”
Space For Emergence
We intentionally create space for emergence in our research, so that there is room for change, surprise, and co-creation. We take care to shape our research in ways that allow us to be proven wrong, to change the framing of our questions, and to invite new ways of understanding to emerge organically from the leaders and communities with whom we work.
Rigorous and Reverent Curiosity
We use the word rigorous because we aim to bring the discipline of quantitative and qualitative research to our programs, asking important questions, surfacing stories, collecting data, drawing conclusions, and sharing our findings. We use the word reverent because we believe that we are tending a sacred ecology of wisdom growing from the ministry of everyday practitioners, which can be offered as a gift to all who seek to be spiritual leaders in a climate-changed world.
What We’re Learning
From November 2021 through November 2022, Cultivating Earth-Shaped Leadership gathered eight cross-sector organizations, all planted within Northern New England (plus one organization across the border in Montreal) — organizations representing many different sectors, including education, prison reform, the arts, community gardening and food justice, and social action — to explore the question “How would organizations act differently today if they embodied an ecological imagination?”
This project took the form of a co-learning community which was nested within an in-depth qualitative research process. Together we spent a year in mutual exploration: reading together, asking big questions, sharing our experiences, wondering aloud, and engaging in personal and organizational experiments.
The Compelling Preaching for a Climate-Changed World research project centers on the EcoPreacher Cohort, a nine-month cohort designed to help preachers hone their craft within the context of a climate-changed world. During the pilot EcoPreacher Cohort, this research resulted in program reports, academic papers, and presentations at the Society for the Scientific Study of Religion. Research during the current EcoPreacher Cohort focuses on the program’s impact among participants and their congregations and also how a congregation’s cultural, ecological, and institutional context informs engagement with climate and care of the Earth. This research is being conducted by Ben Yosua-Davis, The BTS Center’s Director of Applied Research, and Rev. Dr. Leah Schade, Assistant Professor of Preaching and Worship at Lexington Theological Seminary, in collaboration with a team of research advisors.
Claiming Your Call for a Climate-Changed World
These research projects accompany cohort-based programs that are engaging teams from New England congregations. Both focus on how congregational teams understand their vocation in a climate-changed world and how their sense of vocation shifts over the course of their involvement with these programs. The research includes intake and exit questionnaires, selective field noting of gatherings, and site visits to participating churches.
Small Church Leadership Community
These research projects accompany cohort-based programs that are engaging teams from New England congregations. Both focus on how congregational teams understand their vocation in a climate-changed world and how their sense of vocation shifts over the course of their involvement with these programs. The research includes intake and exit questionnaires, selective field noting of gatherings, and site visits to participating churches.
Meet Our Applied Research Team
Ben Yosua-Davis
Meet Our Advisory Team
Rebecca Kneale Gould, Ph.D.
Kristina Lizardy-Hajbi, Ph.D.
Susanne Moser, Ph.D.
Debra Rienstra, Ph.D.
Rev. Leah D. Schade, Ph.D.
Wayne Luther Thompson, Ph.D.
Amanda Wilson Harper, Ph.D.
