Next year's conference is in Chicago. The dates have moved a bit from the past few years. Next year's conference is SEPTEMBER 7-10.
MARK YOUR CALENDARS!
Saturday, October 24, 2009
ccda Saturday
Ellaysa, Blayne and Shane Claiborne.
Chassidi, Shawna and Ellaysa.
Great last day at the conference. We pull out for home tomorrow a.m. at 7:00 a.m.
Friday review
So much goes into a day here that it's tough to give a blog summary.
JP's Bible Study in the morning was again compelling. About justice being God's deep motivation for redemption. Unable to stand for sin, our Holy God asked the question, "how can I be true and just and yet deal with and get rid of the problem of sin?" Of course, the answer is Jesus, and we must continue to confess our sin to God and others so that we can be restored through Jesus and free to be used as God would like to use us.
Bart Campolo was our first speaker in the evening. He was gut honest and very strong in story and speech. In a nutshell, he spoke about how so very often in this walk of love and justice, we will walk with people who won't change. We can't fix and help so many....but there's nobody we can't love.
Alexias Salvatierra, an activist for economic justice in southern CA spoke eloquently about compassion and solidarity. She advocates often for immigrants in the USA, and she had some words that stuck...
Compassion means to "feel with". But before we can have compassion, we have to SEE people. It's not that we have compassion fatigue, it's that we don't have vision. We don't see because we don't have the courage to see.
She spoke about how it's not that we're not connected, it's that we already ARE family....we are connected in our human experience, and we need to live in the truth of that connection.
I bought the dvd of tonight, as the whole evening was very powerful.
JP's Bible Study in the morning was again compelling. About justice being God's deep motivation for redemption. Unable to stand for sin, our Holy God asked the question, "how can I be true and just and yet deal with and get rid of the problem of sin?" Of course, the answer is Jesus, and we must continue to confess our sin to God and others so that we can be restored through Jesus and free to be used as God would like to use us.
Bart Campolo was our first speaker in the evening. He was gut honest and very strong in story and speech. In a nutshell, he spoke about how so very often in this walk of love and justice, we will walk with people who won't change. We can't fix and help so many....but there's nobody we can't love.
Alexias Salvatierra, an activist for economic justice in southern CA spoke eloquently about compassion and solidarity. She advocates often for immigrants in the USA, and she had some words that stuck...
Compassion means to "feel with". But before we can have compassion, we have to SEE people. It's not that we have compassion fatigue, it's that we don't have vision. We don't see because we don't have the courage to see.
She spoke about how it's not that we're not connected, it's that we already ARE family....we are connected in our human experience, and we need to live in the truth of that connection.
I bought the dvd of tonight, as the whole evening was very powerful.
Friday, October 23, 2009
sassy salsa
Salsa Dancing! Cindy and Olivia Mickey, Doug and Deb Tensen, George and Judy Marshall, Neil and Barb McMahon, Dante Marcellous and Derek Sallis with salsa partners.
The Freedom Museum
Kentucky's Freedom Museum is just over the bridge of the Ohio River, a river that separated a slave state from a free state by 179 yards. Several of us went to the museum today, and toured through the atrocities of the sale of human beings for the economic gain of white man. I was struck by two things as I walked through the journey from slavery to freedom. First, the propensity for evil in our hearts and flesh. And second, the perseverance and courage that God instills in the human spirit to pursue liberty. It was such a moving experience for me of confession and repentance for the ways my fellow human beings and myself have treated other fellow human beings with such injustice. Both in the past, but even today in ways that place my gain and power over someone else's basic rights and dignity. And there was such a power in the courage and activism of the abolitionists and runaway slaves. One woman declared, "I'd rather be a corpse than a coward." That I would have that resolve and passion as a follower of Jesus to fight the good fight for people's freedom in the spiritual sense and in the very tangible ways people are in bondage in our world.
John Perkins
John Perkins, founder of the Christian Community Development Association, is a man to know. He abides deeply with Jesus, he is a prophet and visionary, and he is an evangelist to the core.
I urge you to google John Perkins and read one or more of his many books. With Justice for All and Let Justice Roll Down would be good starter books. They tell his story and the birth of CCDA.
John leads Bible Study every morning for an hour. On paper, it's a morning "option"; in actuality, he's the start of the plenary session in the morning because almost everyone arrives that hour before to hear the Word of God from John.
John Perkins will be 80 in June. He's as passionate today as he was 50 years ago about reconciliation to God through the blood of Jesus and reconciliation to one another in how we love each other.
Thursday, October 22, 2009
multi-ethnic community
One of my workshops today was entitled, "Seven Principles of the New Culture", principles for sharing life in multi-ethnic community. Real, real good. I haven't checked it out yet, but the presenters were from Renew Partnerships and recommended we go to their site at
www.thenewculture.org I look forward to being able to spend some time at that site.
www.thenewculture.org I look forward to being able to spend some time at that site.
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