About Vibrant Faith

Our name is our mission

We believe that we need a transformation in the way we envision and design faith formation for all ages and generations in the twenty-first century.

We need families to be communities of faith practice. We need churches that are vital faith forming communities. We need all ages to be engaged in faith forming experiences for a lifetime. We need to engage those who no longer experience belonging and meaning in Christian faith.

We’re generating adaptive change in Christian faith formation alongside curious leaders who seek to change the church, and change the world.

We believe that vibrant faith changes everything. Our work springs from three core ideas. Vibrant faith…

Flows from trust in a living God.

We’re confident in God’s promise of presence in this world (Ezekiel 36, Matthew 28). The evidence of God’s presence comes through most in God’s people. We say God is alive and acting, and that’s true, especially in us.

Is nurtured as people “family” to form faith

“Familying” is the relational process that the Spirit uses to form faith. This makes the word family a verb, something active and always in process. And we believe that God intended the us – as Church – to family, and also intended families to family. In fact, when you look at the biblical story from beginning to end, you see story after story of people who are related by blood and faith, familying. Familying changes everything about what we do in ministry, and how we do it. [More on Familying]

Grows by tending the processes that form faith in homes, online, through churches, and in communities.

The walls of our church buildings simply are not the only places faith is formed, in fact, they are often the least impactful places for transformational faith formation. People live out their lives in a variety of spaces, some physical and some digital. Experiences and relationships that span multiple spaces are without a doubt the most influential and formative.

We’re a group of ministry leaders who care most about helping people experience God’s presence in the world.

We’re passionate about rethinking Church with dynamic leaders, redesigning methods and models for the Church, and continually reimagining faith formation. We’ve got a breadth of skills, ideas, and experiences that we bring to the conversation with the Church and its leaders. We’re a deployed team, spanning the country. We meet a few times a year around physical tables, and regularly via digital spaces as well. We use tools like Basecamp, Dropbox, Zoom, and multiple social media platforms to communicate with each other, and with the ministry professionals we work with.

Meet the Team

An intentional process, based on action research and human-centered design, is carried out in all of our work, creating an atmosphere of continuous renewal and innovation.

Our logo captures our identity, and was designed with our hope for the Church in mind.

This organization was born out of tragedy…

…in order to bring hope and faith to life. Dr. Mert and Irene Strommen founded The Youth & Family Institute in 1987 in memory of their son David, a young seminarian and youth worker who was killed by lightening while leading a youth trip in the Colorado mountains. The organization was renamed Vibrant Faith Ministries in 2010. The Strommens’ vision was to take the best research and academic insight, ground and deepen it with Christian theology and instill an evangelical spirit of ministry to help congregations strengthen families to nurture faith. The clarion call across the Christian church and the world to claim the role of the family in the formation of faith actually emanated from this little organization. We celebrate with amazement movements like Think Orange and D6, knowing that they are bearing the fruit of our work.

Now we’re on a new adventure.

2014 brought significant changes to the work of Vibrant Faith. Sensing the need for change in the church, we began to re-organize ourselves around a defining new initiative in Action-Research. Rollie Martinson agreed to lead that initiative offering services to churches, organizations and leaders designed to accompany them in delving into struggle and possibilities in the church’s processes of faith formation. Rollie was uniquely gifted to get our crew of Research Specialists started as we partner with leaders to explore new practices and perspectives in forming faith in today’s world. We believe this work is urgent are excited about the results in multiple projects already.

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