History

This page offers some insight about how CRS began.  To read about our mission, click here.

The Center for Regenerative Society (CRS) is a young organization in active formation, serving a growing movement also in active formation.  But our roots lie deep in a history of service to regenerative leaders, community, and society in various forms, and to this region we love and know intimately.

Beginnings

Our director, Benjamin Webb, has been cultivating the dream that led him to found the Center for many years.  Ben grew up in Iowa and majored in environmental studies and agriculture in his undergraduate years, then spent his early working years on a diversified farm; writing professionally for a sustainable agriculture journal; crafting legislative policy on energy, environment, agriculture and health; and directing a new community foundation in the Midwest that empowered its citizens to actively participate in shaping their common life.

During college, Ben spent formative summers in the company of writer and farmer Wendell Berry.  It was then that he says he became more aware of the deeper patterns to our problems and our need to connect the dots if we want enduring solutions. Some years later, that awareness led him to attend the Graduate Theological Union and Church Divinity School of the Pacific at mid-career to complete a joint M.Div and M.A. degree in theology and philosophy.  He wrote his master’s thesis on the “public church” and the basis of its commitments to transform culture and keep the earth as a core expression of keeping the faith.

While at GTU, he was mentored and much influenced by Robert Bellah on the roots of American culture, the role of religion in society, and their co-evolution, contributing comments on The Good Society while in manuscript form. Other key influences have been Parker Palmer and Sharon Parks who have helped him see how many of the problems around us are an outward reflection of an inner condition, and how enduring solutions and good leadership must often proceed from the inside out if we hope to reshape the moral purposes of the institutions and communities through which we live.

Upon graduation from seminary in ’94 Ben co-founded a California nonprofit to build bridges of understanding and action between communities of faith and the environmental movement, which became home to the “Interfaith Power and Light” movement that now organizes climate change solutions within faith traditions in thirty-five states.  He also authored Fugitive Faith, published by Orbis Books in ‘96, a collection of interviews on spiritual, environmental and community renewal, which led to a national conference at Harvard that he helped organize and host with the Forum on Religion and Ecology.

With a deep conviction that every community of faith can best honor its own living tradition today by becoming a local center for spiritual, environmental and community renewal, he then devoted twelve years as an Episcopal parish priest in Iowa to demonstrating how a faith community – a red and blue congregation -- can actually be formed around these purposes. Despite its prophetic character, this mission of renewal became a source of congregational health, vitality, growth and authenticity, undergirded by a deeply grounded spirituality.

Adaptive and collaborative leadership – and leadership renewal – have been an important part of Ben’s experience along the way. He has felt supported by regular personal retreats and a vital year-long seasonal cycle of leadership renewal in Whidbey Institute’s “Powers of Leadership” program, which proved to be a source of strength for years afterward and continues to inspire our work now at the Center for Regenerative Society.

Each of these key experiences over the years contributed to Ben’s firm belief that a regenerative society cannot be sustained around us unless it is also being cultivated within us.  This principle became the core reason why, in 2009, he convened an advisory board composed of several regional leaders with national stature in their fields to provide guidance in the formation of CRS.

Launching

From their combined years of living and working in the upper Midwest, Ben and our founding advisors were keenly aware of the unmet need for leadership renewal programming in the Driftless region and the broader upper Midwest.  With this primary service territory in mind, they founded CRS to serve leaders who are building a healthy, just and sustainable society – in the Driftless region, the upper Midwest, and beyond.

CRS was established as a project of the Tides Center California-based 501(c)3 with a long and successful track record of incubating socially progressive nonprofits. Tides serves as fiscal agent for CRS and over 200 other projects nationally. To learn more about how we are governed, click here.

In June of 2009, the W.K. Kellogg Foundation generously granted CRS the funds necessary to accomplish a solid start-up phase consisting of organizational planning and development, hiring an administrative assistant, and delivering pilot programs in our first year. We are indebted to Kellogg for investing in us during this startup period, allowing us to make good progress on several fronts.

In the lead up to our first program in Spring 2010, our director conducted regional interviews with potential participants and institutional partners, and national consultations with colleagues who are directing centers and institutes that share some affinity for our work, all of which informs our emerging business plan.

Initiation

In April 2010, we offered our first program – a regenerative leadership retreat for selected leaders working in community food systems in Minnesota, Wisconsin, Illinois, and Iowa.  The group was composed of both rural and urban agriculturists; most of whom serve children and communities whose access to fresh, healthy food is scarce or threatened. This first program was held in Dubuque, IA, and yielded excellent evaluations across the board. (Read more about that program here!)

Looking forward

The Center for Regenerative Society now enters a three-year program development phase in order to build a track record for delivering excellent programs.

In order to best fulfill our mission in affordable ways, CRS is developing a sustainable nonprofit business model on a regional scale that consistently delivers high quality leadership renewal programs, in part through a collaborative organizational model involving national program partners.  While continuing to develop and offer our own “Regenerative Leadership Retreats®,” we are also partnering with the Center for Courage and Renewal and Whidbey Institute to offer such highly-regarded programs as “Circles of Trust” and “Courage to Lead” (Center for Courage and Renewal) and “Powers of Leadership” (Whidbey Institute.)  These programs have been developed and field-tested by our colleagues at these other centers and we are pleased to bring them to the Midwest.

We think participants will benefit from the administrative efficiencies and cost savings we already achieve as a Tides project, and the combination of top-notch national partners and programs delivered with a team of well-prepared facilitators from our own region.  We also represent a low-cost and low-carbon regional model that offers portable programs hosted in currently underutilized retreat center space located throughout our service territory.  This territory includes the 4-state Driftless Area bioregion (which includes parts of Iowa, Minnesota, Wisconsin and Illinois) and the ring of large cities that surround it.

Knowing that movement towards a healthy, just and sustainable society depends heavily on the organizational and community work of our mid-career and next generation leaders who find themselves on the frontlines, we believe we can best serve that broader movement by serving its leaders. Our aim is to offer a complementary set of leadership renewal programs that provide different points of entry for personal and professional formation in support of regenerative leaders, regenerative communities and a regenerative society. To that end we have devoted much time consulting best practices at other leadership centers and institutes in the US as we’ve shaped our mission and programs, both our own and our partnered programs.

We are indebted to the following centers and institutes whose leaders help inspire and shape our programs, management and funding strategies as we set about the work of “renewing the leaders restoring the world”:

Center for Action and Contemplation in New Mexico
Commonweal in California
Center for Courage and Renewal in Washington state
Center for Contemplative Mind in Society in Massachusetts
Center for Whole Communities in Vermont
Forum on Religion and Ecology in Connecticut
Garrison Institute in New York
Highlander Center in Tennessee
House of Prayer in Minnesota
Institute for the Humanities at Salado in Texas
Iona Community in Scotland
Island Institute in Alaska
Mesa Refuge in California
Rockwood Leadership Institute in California
Schumacher College in England
Seasons Center at Fetzer Institute in Michigan
Stillpoint Center for the Humanities and Community in Colorado
Triad Institute in Massachusetts
United Religions Initiative in California
Vallecitos Mountain Refuge in New Mexico
Whidbey Institute in Washington state

Specifically, we are currently in conversation with the Whidbey Institute, the Center for Courage and Renewal and the Center for Whole Communities as we explore co-sponsoring leadership renewal programs that bring their services and ours together to benefit the people and institutions of the Upper Midwest. Watch our program and news pages for the latest developments.

The Center for Regenerative Society invites and welcomes the participation, collaboration, and support of individuals, foundations, and other agencies that share its purposes and vision. We welcome your inquiries by email at This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it .

Check our News and Updates page to see what we’re up to now.

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