Speakers
Shane Claiborne
Bestselling Author, Prominent Christian Activist, Sought-after Speaker and Recovering Sinner
With tears and laughter, Shane Claiborne unveils the tragic messes we’ve made of our world and the tangible hope that another world is possible. Shane graduated from Eastern University, and did graduate work at Princeton Seminary. His ministry experience is varied, from a 10-week stint working alongside Mother Teresa in Calcutta, to a year spent serving a wealthy mega-congregation at Willow Creek Community Church outside Chicago. During the recent war in Iraq, Shane spent three weeks in Baghdad with the Iraq Peace Team. Shane is also a founding partner of The Simple Way, a faith community in inner city Philadelphia that has helped to birth and connect radical faith communities around the world.
Shane writes and travels extensively speaking about peacemaking, social justice, and Jesus. He is featured in the DVD series “Another World Is Possible” and is the author of the several books including The Irresistible Revolution, Jesus for President, and Becoming the Answer to Our Prayers. Shane speaks over 100 times a year in a dozen or so countries and nearly every state in the US. Shane has given academic seminars at Vanderbilt University, Duke University Pepperdine University, Wheaton College, Princeton University, Goshen College and Harvard University. Shane also speaks at various denominational gatherings, festivals, and conferences around the globe. Shane’s work has been featured in everything from Fox News and the Wall Street Journal to CNN and National Public Radio.
Click here to learn more about The Simple Way
Danielle Shroyer
Danielle is the pastor of Journey Church in Dallas. She is the author of The Boundary-Breaking God: An Unfolding Story of Hope and Promise (Jossey-Bass, 2009) and speaks often on issues of theology, church leadership and emerging communities of faith. Danielle lives with her husband and two children in Dallas, Texas.
Click here to visit Danielle’s blog
Spencer Burke
For the past 10+ years, Spencer has been at the forefront of the emerging Church movement, including creating and maintaining TheOOZE.com – one of the earliest expressions of this transition in the Church. TheOOZE.com has become one of the largest relational networks where people of all Christian traditions interact in a web-based community (numbering over 150,000 users a month from over 90 different countries). He also hosts an offline gathering – a learning party called Soularize – which offers participants a safe place to experience and explore the emerging trends in theology, Church, the arts and faith.
Spencer is the author of three books: Making Sense of Church, establishes new metaphors to help define the future trajectory of the Church; Out of TheOOZE, chronicles the spiritual awakenings of members from TheOOZE.com in their own words – using articles from the site – with Spencer’s commentary; A Heretic’s Guide to Eternity, ground breaking and controversial book that explores grace and salvation beyond the confines of religion.
Through both experience and research, Spencer uniquely bridges the worlds of the traditional and emerging Church. His ministry experience spans a broad range from church planting to the merging of church bodies; from speaking weekly to leading retreats; from being a pastor to being an elder, where he learned the heartaches and joys of a pastoral search to leading a pastoral restoration. Spencer’s 22 years of professional ministry culminated with his position as one of the teaching pastors at Mariners Church in Irvine, California where he played a strategic role in the congregation’s growth from 800 to 10,000.
Click here to learn more about Spencer
Cheri Honkala
“While freedom and democracy are celebrated today, the poor still live in terror, with no right to healthcare, food, affordable housing, or a job at a living wage. They are trying to drown out our voices, but we will be heard” – Cheri Honkala
Cheri Honkala is the executive director of the Kensington Welfare Rights Union (KWRU), a mother, teacher, and social worker. She has been homeless three times and until four years ago was a welfare recipient.
Based in Philadelphia, the Kensington Welfare Rights Union is a non-violent, multi-racial organization of poor and homeless families. For twelve years it has been developing leaders from among the ranks of the poor and fighting to secure basic human needs for poor men, women, and children in the United States.
