It’s so exciting to see Hatch-a-thon alumni doing amazing things throughout the US, and to see their hatchling ventures flying!
Pastor Brent Raska and Burning Bush Brewery
Pastor Brent Raska, former pastor of a Chicago-area Presbyterian congregation, recently made the news with his new venture, Burning Bush Brewery, opening later this winter on Chicago’s North Rockwell Street in Lincoln Square.
The blockclubchicago.org post says, “Though operating a brewery is a career change for the pastor, he said Burning Bush will build community much like a church does. He hopes to partner with local nonprofits and community groups to host coat drives, fundraisers and fellowship.”
Rev. Meredith Mills and Gastrochurch
The Rev. Meredith Mills, pastor at Westminster United Methodist Church in Houston, TX, received coverage by the Houston Chronicle for her work with Gastrochurch.
Rev. Mills conceptualized Gastrochurch—dinner gatherings where the food supports the theological theme for the evening—as an intentionally created “space where a range of guests could come, somewhere outside of church walls, and talk about spirituality,” and to be “’church’ for people who didn’t fit in at a traditional setting.”
Congratulations to both!
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I call myself a finder, and not a founder. Why? Because this whole thing was an idea I sort of stumbled into. In March of 2018, with just a hunch about the importance of indoor play spaces and the dream to see families united, two friends and I brought a very vague idea to the Hatch-a-thon, an event designed to launch new social enterprises. But even after a couple days of innovative design thinking and coaching, we were stuck. We were struggling to answer the questions, and when we did finally work out a response to one of the prompts, the room applauded for us because they knew we were struggling, too. It was a stretching and humbling experience.
We turned our idea over to the play experts and let them lead us. At first, we stood back and watched them reimagine the boxes. But they wanted to take us with them, so we followed—climbing, crawling, and creating along with them. Sure, we all got lice from the boxes we pulled out of the dumpsters for our experiment… and sure, we had a huge mess to clean up in the living room afterwards (read: pulling scraps of cardboard and tape off the carpet for weeks), but in the end my oldest son declared, “Mom, I want to keep this forever!” I believe it was in this moment that WonderSpace was found. I know my son didn’t mean that he wanted to keep the cardboard forever, and he certainly didn’t mean he wanted to keep the lice… so what was it that he wanted to keep forever? He wanted to keep the same thing I wanted to keep—a sense of wonder and togetherness.
This became my hope for WonderSpace: to provide a place for family formation—that long after the materials are recycled, there remains a long-lasting impact on our children, families, and community from the play we experience together.
Fast forward to March of 2019. WonderSpace now has the support not only of one local church, but of other local churches in the area as well. The Community Foundation of Grant County has awarded us a grant along with two other anonymous foundations. Because we don’t have funding yet to buy a permanent building, we have designed 3 mobile play exhibits that can be packed into a 26-foot moving truck and moved around the city for “pop up play events.” We have opened WonderSpace to the community twice (once in a church and second in a school gymnasium) and have already experienced playing with over 400 people from Grant County. I have met so many new people in our city in these past 12 months and have become friends with many. Even in the designing phase, WonderSpace is doing exactly what we had hoped! We’re building friendships, meeting our neighbors, and creating a sense of togetherness.
I call myself a 
Through prayer and through the relationships 
