ccda mnpls speakers

We're two days in at the Christian Community Development Association's National Conference this year.  My head, heart, and notebook are being filled with thoughts from those who have spoken at the conference so far.  Just some snippets....

Tony Campolo and Shane Claiborne came on stage yesterday morning to talk about their new co-authored book, Red Letter Christians.  The term "Evangelicals" no longer has many positive connotations, so they were seeking a new word that would better represent Christ-followers, and they landed on "Red Letter Christians"..people who take the red letters of the Bible (the words of Jesus) and take them seriously.

Campolo: "We've created a god that has made Jesus the god of middle-class American values.  Are we going to make God American or are we going to embrace the Jesus of Scripture?"

Emmanuel Katangole and Chris Rice spoke beautifully about a theology of reconciliation.  They work together at Duke University's Center for Reconciliation.

Rice talked about how we can't have Jesus without Justice or Justice without Jesus.   Katangole and Rice both spoke of New Creation, Lament, and Spirituality for the long haul in the work toward reconciliation.  They followed an outline found in their book Reconciling All Things, one of the most helpful books for me in the past year and a half of my life.

Richard Twiss spoke powerfully our opening night at CCDA.  After watching awesome Native American dance and Aztec dance, Twiss came on stage to talk about Story, both the power of and the need to redeem some of the stories that have taken root in our American society.

Sami Awad, director of Holy Land Trust, spoke so beautifully about his journey in engaging in nonviolence in the Middle East and his revelation about Jesus's command to us to love our enemy.  Awad spoke about the enemy as being fear and lack of trust, not the Israeli, not the soldier, but enemy as presence of fear and absence of trust.

Ray Rivera spoke last night passionately about being a reconciler with contradictions.  He spoke about how being a reconciler will sometimes demand confrontation, sometimes collaboration, sometimes civic engagement, sometimes confronting your own people.  Ray has a book recently published called Liberty to the Captives, and he spoke from a strong captivity theology...our captivity, even as we do the work of reconciliation, in the broken systems and structures of our world.