Real stories, gathered from real communities.
The Beautiful Stories Collective brings together ten organizations from across the country, each with its own relationships, traditions, creative practices, and points of view. Over five years, they will create and share hundreds of pieces through writing, music, podcasts, film, live storytelling, gatherings, and more.
Together, their work offers a wider view of faith and life, shaped by the people and places they know firsthand.
Stories begin with relationships.
The Collective is built on the belief that proximity matters. Each partner already belongs to networks and communities where relationships have been formed over time. They know the questions being asked, the experiences that have shaped people, and the voices that might never emerge through a single national platform.
Rather than telling from one perspective, Beautiful Stories works through these existing relationships, allowing a broader range of cultural, geographic, theological, and vocational expressions of Christian faith to emerge.
Meet The Collective
The Collective partners span publishing, the arts, spiritual formation, education, ministry, and community work. Each brings its own perspective and approach to storytelling, creating a body of work shaped by different communities, traditions, and ways of seeing.
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Arrabon is a spiritual formation ministry that equips churches to pursue racial healing and reconciliation. Through Story Share Circles woven into its workshops, participants tell the stories that have shaped them and their communities. They then share those stories through podcasts, short videos, and more.
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Comment is a quarterly journal of Christian thought and culture, offering essays, interviews, and art to readers around the world. With Beautiful Stories, it is creating the film What Is a Human? and hosting Comment Suppers. These are small gatherings in homes, churches, and on campuses, where people share where they have seen the image of God at work in their ordinary lives.
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The Episcopal Diocese of Central Florida is a family of congregations across the region, bound together in worship, pastoral care, and shared ministry. Its project, Coming Home: Stories of Grace and Return, uses documentary-style short films. They follow people who once left the church, or never belonged, and later found their way into grace and community.
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The Eugene Peterson Center at Western Theological Seminary convenes the Beautiful Stories Collective. It carries forward Eugene Peterson's belief that faith is personal, relational, particular, and local. It shares stories at the annual Doxology Gathering, where late-night salons invite pastors, writers, and artists to tell their own stories, and at the Order of the Kingfisher pastoral retreat.
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The Genesis Project is a grassroots collective of pastors, writers, and engaged Christians, held together by friendship and shared work. Its contribution includes a writing festival and an annual retreat for established writers. It also includes a photography project led by author Seth Haines, following people whose traditional craftsmanship in wood, clay, cloth, and cuisine points toward a deeper way of being human.
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The Parish Collective is a movement of neighborhood-rooted churches and leaders learning to be the church in the places they live. Through its Story Garden Initiative, it gathers stories of resilient, rooted faith from across its national network. Together they map where goodness is taking root, one neighborhood at a time.
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Pastors, Priests & Guides offers restorative retreats and ongoing support for clergy and Christian leaders, creating space for renewal, peer connection, and the rhythms of grace. With Beautiful Stories, participants keep working with their own stories after the retreat ends. They shape them into narrative, poetry, and lament to be shared more widely.
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The Porter's Gate is an ecumenical arts collective reimagining worship through music rooted in justice and discipleship, made for the church and the wider world. For Beautiful Stories, it is gathering nine musicians to write and record an album of original songs, the heart of Beautiful Stories Audio.
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The Rabbit Room is a community in Nashville that cultivates story, music, and art to nourish Christ-centered creative life, through podcasts, publishing, live events, and gatherings. For Beautiful Stories, it brings Rabbit Room Live: intimate acoustic performances paired with unhurried conversations about faith, the creative process, and how each shapes the other.
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Renovaré helps people pursue deeper spiritual formation through resources, study programs, and a two-year Institute centered on the "with-God life." Its work with Beautiful Stories profiles faith communities across many Christian traditions that are committed to whole-life discipleship. These stories are told through essays, short films, and podcast series.
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Local voices. A larger story.
What begins within individual organizations and communities becomes part of something larger. Throughout the initiative, Collective partners will create work for their own audiences and platforms, while selected pieces and voices may also appear in the Beautiful Stories Journal and the wider Beautiful Stories experience. The result is a storytelling initiative shaped by different places, traditions, vocations, creative forms, and ways of encountering the world.