Empowered Experiments Grant!
Roll For Spirituality has recently been awarded a mini-grant from The Church Lab’s Empowering Experiments program! In their recent press release about our project they wrote, “Roll for Spirituality is an experiment that seeks to cultivate a space for self discovery and spiritual exploration outside the bounds of normative religious institutions and dogma. In this space individuals can safely explore new worlds, beliefs, ideas, face challenges, learn to solve problems, and explore deep truths about themselves, the world, and God through the medium of tabletop role playing games.
Anxiety about the church's future, faith practice, and spirituality abound in the US. However, Ryan Cagle doesn't believe the "death" of the church is a problem to be fixed but an invitation for us and our communities to dream new dreams and launch new experiments in cultivating space for self-discovery and spiritual exploration in our individual and communal lives. Ryan has spent the last decade working in church plants and ministry revitalization across various socioeconomic and political contexts within different church traditions. He has an intense passion for seeing people live into new ways of being and becoming beyond the boundaries of traditional religious institutions.
He found that role-playing games have the wonderful ability to help us explore theological ideas, worlds, and concepts that we may have never thought to explore or can't explore because we lack a safe and affirming environment to do so. "I believe that role-playing games, when done with intention, can leave us deeply transformed in the same way that prayer, meditation, participation in liturgy, and religious rituals can. Like these practices that help us on our journeys of spiritual growth, exploration, and healing, role-playing games can also be used to facilitate such outcomes."
Ryan notes that "quite often, we do not have supportive structures or safe spaces in our lives that allow us to explore our spirituality, beliefs, ideas, and life circumstances. It's difficult to wrestle with our doubts, questions, and curiosities when we feel alone, and this is the problem that Roll For Spirituality seeks to remedy. Regardless of the environment we find ourselves in, spiritual direction shows us that we do not have to go on this journey alone. By using role-playing games alongside the tools of spiritual direction, I hope to create an environment that enables individuals the freedom and safety to participate in deep reflective work and spiritual exploration in fresh ways." The Church Lab loves the creativity and experimental nature of Roll For Spirituality and we’re honored to play a role in supporting it!”
This is all so incredibly exciting and means that we have some initial funding to help flesh out the work we are doing and offer six-free sponsorships for those interested in participating over the next few months! If you are interested in participating in either individual or group adventures over the course of three months for FREE then please fill out our interest form below!