Written and compiled by Missio Alliance and BGAV staff

Nearly 300 church leaders gathered at Columbia Church in Falls Church, VA—a suburb of the metro DC area—to examine “Wholeness and Beauty in the Life of the Church” at Awakenings, an every-other-year national conference held by Missio Alliance. From March 6-8, 2025, participants explored how the Church can embody wholeness and beauty as a missional witness through worshipful plenary sessions, engaging workshops, storytelling, and interactive discussions, cultivating a vision for the Church that reflects God's restoration and renewal.

Attendees greeted beloved friends with a shared weariness and collective sense of needing to catch their breath: What was the Spirit going to do in our midst? How would we find a fresh wind and resilient courage to continue faithfully attending to the complexities in our churches and daily lives? 

Amidst the collective challenges, in the opening session, Lisa Rodriguez-Watson, Missio Alliance’s national director, spoke with a calm sense of strength and a clear surrender to the Spirit’s work. She reminded listeners of previous seasons that had seemed intense and fractured. God has always come through, even in the darkness and struggle of faithful obedience to Christ in trying times.

Her powerful and challenging reminder was to live fully as God has always intended for us to live, for the Church is in a “budding season.” She explained that within the Tidal Basin of the nearby Potomac River, every April hundreds of Japanese cherry trees bud slowly in the grips of late winter, wrestling with the Atlantic cold towards the promise of springtime blooms. Residents of the DC metro area often wonder, as they tire of the grey chill of winter’s cold: Will the cherry blossoms bloom this year?

Yet every spring, the cherry trees answer in a riotous display of vibrant pink beauty. However, before the beauty of a cherry tree in springtime, and the wholeness of a cherry tree’s summer harvest, comes the budding season—a season of expectancy, of faith, and of wonder. The Church is in this season. It is like cherry trees in the budding season, and the kingdom of God is here. Church leaders must have steadfast hope in Christ—expectant of the bloom of resurrection to come in outlandish beauty.

Rodriguez-Watson’s challenge provided a framework for the remainder of the conference, where participants found a “brave space to have hard conversations that will awaken the Church,” a stated goal of the event. Conversations included panel discussions of the art of neighboring, connecting with creatives, and theological imagination and the stories that shape community. Numerous workshops offered a wide range of topics such as planting churches of beauty and resistance, principles and practices of peacemaking, spiritual attunement for mental health, navigating difference and leading through change, healing leadership trauma, and engaging young adults in faith and community—among many others.  

After the conference, participants dispersed to travel back home, taking with them these newly planted seeds of revitalization and faith to awaken the spiritual “buds” within their own ministries.

Missio Alliance, a BGAV ministry, is releasing a series of these reflections on Awakenings over the next several days and weeks. To read them as they are published, and to learn more about Missio Alliance, visit missioalliance.org.

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