Media
LEAD UMC 2020: Jenny Smith
Jenny Smith takes to the LEAD stage to share her "Palms Up" philosophy and practice inspired by Dr. Elaine Health and Bob Goff. A Palms Up Life means we show up, pay attention, cooperate with God, and release the outcome.
A Palms Up Manifesto
This is for any leader in our world who’s tired of cultures of fear, control, distrust, cynicism, isolation, unhealthy competition, status quo and fear of failure. Let’s keep shifting our cultures together toward something more beautiful, more compelling and much more effective.
National Leadership Institute 2021
Let’s resurrect the gift of leadership, especially after the year we just lived through. We talk burnout, trauma, grief, shared leadership, living a palms up life, and embodying the gift of leadership again.
Exploration 2017: Closing Worship
In a return to the space Jenny first experienced as a 17-year-old discerning a call to ministry, Jenny shares a message on identity, vocation, mental health, healing, living a palms up life.
Rev. Jenny Smith: Living With Our Palms Up
In a time when it’s harder than ever to look reality in the eye, Rev. Jenny Smith offers people the courage to show up authentically to all of life’s complexities. As a writer, coach, and spiritual guide, she believes we cultivate resilience and healing when we move from the story of fear and avoidance toward a palms up posture of curiosity and creative awareness. Drawing on her own life experience, she treats sensitive topics like anxiety, perfectionism, professional burnout, guilt, and grief with disarming humor and grace, offering hope that the way to wholeness is often right through the heart of the hard things.
Grief and Grace with Jenny Smith
This week we welcome Jenny Smith to the podcast and it is a truly beautiful and life-giving conversation. Burnout in ministry is a real thing and it takes courage to admit when you aren't able to go on anymore; even more to walk away into something new. That is something Jenny has done and we hope that her story is one that helps you learn how to accept, celebrate, and grieve each thing in its season.
Living a Palms Up Life w/ Jenny Smith
A Conversation with Andy Lang at Patheos
At the beginning of 2020, I had the immense honor of speaking at the UMC LEAD Conference, mere months before our lives were upended by the COVID-19 Pandemic. I spoke on the impact of small group settings and communities with no idea that I would soon be unable to meet in those kinds of spaces for more than a year.
During the event, I also had the chance to listen to my friend Jenny Smith present on embodying a “palms up” stance in the world. Jenny is a writer, pastor, and all around amazing and kind human, making her way here in the Pacific Northwest. I recently connected with her and was able to ask some questions about what this palms up life really means for her.
Jenny Smith: Living a Palms Up Life and Reimagining Church Leadership
Jenny Smith is a United Methodist Church pastor living in the Pacific Northwest who is living what she calls a palms-up life. She's also reimagining church leadership within her denomination by living it out with seven of her colleagues. She's passionate about inclusion, co-visioning with her people, and living in opposition to hustle culture.
In this episode, we discuss:
* How her church has integrated an outward focus with inward transformation
* The relationship between how a leader lives and how a leader leads
* The competition, comparison, and isolation that mark most pastors' lives
* What happened when seven clergy colleagues decided to walk alongside each other using Zoom and the Marco Polo app
* The four phases of the palms up life and why they matter in today's hustle culture