Billy Daniel
Billy Daniel is Director of Christian Formation in St. John’s Episcopal Church in Tampa, Florida, and is completing his PhD in Philosophical Theology at the University of Nottingham on Liturgy and the Rise of Secular Exchange. He has taught courses in Philosophy, Ethics, Church History, and New Testament Theology, and works to increase the theological rigor of Christians in the local church. He has also served as Perspectives Editor for The Other Journal, and occasionally submits writings for various theology publications. His most recent publication is: Gird Up Your Loins, Haiti: A Lesson in Theodicy from Job. The Other Journal, February 2010.
Brian Sanders
Brian is the founder and Executive Director of the Underground Network, an international coalition of churches united by the prophetic call to love the poor, reach the lost and seek biblical justice. He also serves as Director for the Underground Church which is a founding church in the network and is made up of 48 micro churches that are seeking to be missional expressions of the church in the Tampa Bay area.
Bruce Wright
Bruce has a Masters in Pastoral Psychology, a Doctorate in Ministry, is a licensed addictions counselor and domestic violence counselor. Has directed Refuge Ministries, a ministry of justice for the poor and homeless for 17 years. Is on the National Committee for the Poor People’s Economic Human Rights Campaign. And, is an activist, poet, musician, and preacher of Good News for the Poor.
Charity Dixon
Charity Brooke Dixon is a hopeful philanthropist and incurable optimist. She is traveler, writer and lover of life. She lives to “appreciate, reflect and inspire simplicity”. She currently serves as a Director for the nonprofit organization Greater Works. “My heart filled with a desire to save humanity before I could reach the cereal on the top shelf of our pantry,” she says. “Greater Works brings Literal Salvation such as clean water and medical attention to global neighbors less fortunate than I; passion can always change reality!”
Cheri Honkala
Cheri is a founder and national organizer for the Poor Peoples Economic Human Rights Campaign (PPEHRC). PPEHRC is an organization of 125 poor peoples groups from across the country that uses the economic human rights as contained in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (the rights to housing, health care, food, clothing, education and living wage jobs) as the framework for a movement to end poverty.
As a woman who was formerly homeless and on public assistance herself, Cheri has been a tireless fighter for the rights of poor families for many decades. In 1999, Pulitzer Prize-winning author David Zucchino profiled Cheri Honkala in his book, The Myth of the Welfare Queen. Cheri co-founded the Kensington Welfare Rights Union (KWRU) with other poor women in 1991 to fight for the rights of poor families in Philadelphia’s once thriving, now struggling, Kensington neighborhood. PPEHRC was founded out of KWRU.
Through Cheri’s leadership working alongside the poor and disenfranchised, the issues of poverty have been raised at a level that the powers would wish to keep hidden. These have occurred through such events as the tent cities and marches of 10’s of thousands of peoples at the Republican National Conventions of 2000, 2004, and 2008, a national truth commission putting poverty on trial, and the upcoming march from New Orleans to Detroit. At the same time victories have been achieved ranging from saving FEMA housing being taken away from Katrina victims on the Gulf Coast to housing takeovers of vacant abandoned homes for those without homes.
Christopher Dixon
Christopher B. Dixon is the associate pastor of Heritage Church Dallas. Christopher is also the CEO of Greater Works Inc. and co-founder of The Mission Dei an emerging Christ centered community in St. Petersburg, FL. He is the proud husband of Charity Dixon. He enjoys Belgian Beer and is better than you at Golf. His personal mission is to restore, illuminate and amplify inner peace in himself and others.
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.
Deth Im
Deth is the Lead Pastor at Jacob’s Well, which is a holistic, missional, Christian community in Kansas City, MO. His role is to cultivate organic communities that live out our commitments of worship, creativity, learning, hospitality and justice. He does this by facilitating staff conversations and collaboration, by encouraging staff to engage their intuitive leadership and by resourcing staff as they gain new perspectives and tools.
In 2007, he ran for city council in Kansas City as an expression of his belief both in grassroots change efforts and the importance of systemic change for the long-term health of organizations.
He is the recipient of the meritorious COMIEL (Creating Opportunities for Multiple Intelligences and Experiential Learning) Award, which is a self awarded and self recognized honor that he annually bestows upon himself. Given the broad-based appeal and significance of this award, he is currently seeking to grow membership in the COMIEL organization beyond one.
Doug Pagitt
Doug is an author, speaker and consultant for churches, denominations and businesses throughout the United States and around the world on issues of postmodern culture, social systems and Christianity.
Doug’s professional endeavors include pastoring a Holistic Missional Christian Community – (www.SolomonsPorch.com), speaking and writing (www.DougPagitt.com) and owning businesses in Minneapolis, Minnesota. He is seeking to find creative, entrepreneurial, generative ways to join in the hopes, dreams and desires God has for the world. Doug was one of the founders of Emergent Village.
Doug is the author of A Christianity Worth Believing (Jossey-Bass 2008), Church Re-Imagined (Zondervan 2004), Preaching Re-Imagined (Zondervan 2005), and BodyPrayer (Waterbrook 2005). He is the co-editor of An Emergent Manifesto of Hope (Baker Books 2007). He has contributed to numerous books, including The Post-Evangelical (Zondervan 2003), Practioners (Regal 2006), and Listening To The Beliefs of the Emerging Church (Zondervan 2007).
Frank Valdez
Frank is a native of Tampa where he still lives. He is a former teacher and attends St. John’s Episcopal Church in Tampa. Frank would never say this of himself, but he is an incredible teacher of Christian history, thought and practice. The topic will be: Night Vision: Social Justice Ministry in a Post-Christian and Postmodern World.
GW Rolle
A tireless advocate for human dignity, G.W. Rolle has appeared on television in France, Denmark, Austria, Mexico, and Germany , as well as Swiss National Public Radio, and National Public Radio here in America. Rolle’s interviews and speeches, as well as his writings have appeared in numerous blogs and publications.
Mr. Rolle enjoys cooking at various functions and homeless gatherings. An ordained minister since 2008, he can be found cooking breakfast at the Trinity Lutheran Church on Saturday mornings, and distributing coffee and sandwiches around the city while being briefed on homeless issues and concerns.
Jon Dengler
Jon serves as a leader and teacher in a micro church called the Lake House. The Lake House is an intentional community in Ybor city that is committed simple church gatherings, welcoming the poor, ecological mindfulness, simplicity, and our neighborhood. The Lake House has several ministry initiatives such as a meal site, a community garden project, and a monthly night out for the homeless community.
John R. Franke
John is the Lester and Kay Clemens Professor of Missional Theology at Biblical Seminary in Hatfield, PA. He holds the DPhil degree from the University of Oxford and is particularly interested in engaging postmodern thought and culture from the perspective of missional Christian faith. He has spoken on the relationships between the gospel, theology, mission, and culture throughout the US and around the world and is actively involved in research and writing. In addition to publishing numerous articles and reviews he is the coauthor of Beyond Foundationalism: Shaping Theology in a Postmodern Context (Westminster John Knox Press), the author of The Character of Theology (Baker Academic) and Barth for Armchair Theologians (Westminster John Knox). His most recent book is Manifold Witness: The Plurality of Truth (Abingdon).
Nick Fiedler
Nick is a twenty-something currently living in the heartland of the American Southeast. He has taken a hiatus from institutional Christianity and church in order to give himself some breathing room to form a healthy faith of his own. He struggles daily with understanding what it means to embody the teachings of Jesus. He and his wife recently got back from a year and a half traveling abroad and immersing themselves in other cultures and ways of life. In December 2009, Nick published his first book, The Hopeful Skeptic: Revisiting Christianity from the Outside, with Likewise and he is the co-creator and co-host of The Nick and Josh Podcast, a podcast on “Faith, Reason, and Absurdity”, that has been interviewing authors, speakers, and community leaders for the past 4 years. Nick also has 8 years of Youth Ministry experience and randomly bumps into people that say “Hey man, weren’t you my Youth Pastor?”
Rick Bennett
Rick Bennett, Director of Spiritual Care for a Florida hospice organization, rock critic, and satirical blogger, currently living in Tampa, FL is the father of 3, husband of 1 and owner of a dog. He has been part of the emerging church conversation since the late 90s and has written on justice issues for the book, Baptimergent: Baptist Stories from the Emergent Frontier and other publications.
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.
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.
Tim Salmonson
Tim is the Executive Director and founder of Invision Global Network, a non-profit organization that works with people through a process of discovering, developing and deploying their skills, gifts and resources in the hopes of overcoming the various forms of poverty throughout the world. He has served with hundreds of volunteers in over 25 different countries during the past 20 years.