Jonathan Brooks is the pastor of Canaan Community Church in Chicago’s Englewood neighborhood and the author of the forthcoming book, Church Forsaken: Practicing Presence in Neglected Neighborhoods. He is a community developer, hip hop artist and Chicago city director for Mission Year. Jonathan grew up in Englewood on Chicago’s south side, moved away, and eventually returned to build community. Together with […]
Austin Channing Brown is the author of I’M STILL HERE: Black Dignity in a World Made for Whiteness. She is a writer and speaker with a focus on black womanhood and faith. Her work has appeared in Sojourners, Relevant, Mutuality and on her blog austinchanning.com. Austin has been committed to advancing racial justice and reconciliation in her work with nonprofits, churches, parachurch ministries, and […]
AnaYelsi Velasco-Sanchez is an IndoLatinx mujerista working to create and agitate her way through the latin diaspora. She is a writer and speaker, visual artist, and faith-based community organizer. She blogs at Patheos Progressive Christian and shares other resources at browneyedamazon.com. Born in Venezuela, she came to the United States at a young age where she was adopted and given the name Ashley. When she […]
Dr. Mark Mulder is professor of sociology, adjunct professor of congregational and ministry studies, and director of the urban studies minor and at Calvin College in Grand Rapids, Michigan. He teaches classes on church and society, diversity and inequality, and urban sociology. Mark is the author of Congregations, Neighborhoods, Places, Shades of White Flight: Evangelical Congregations and Urban Departure, and co-author of
Jonathan Wilson-Hartgrove is the author of Reconstructing the Gospel: Finding Freedom from Slaveholder Religion. In 2003, he and his wife Lead founded the Rutba House, a house of hospitality where the formerly homeless are welcomed into a community that eats, prays, and shares life together. As the director of the School for Conversion, Jonathan pursues the beloved community in his neighborhood, North […]
DeAnza Spaulding is the Lead Disrupter for Table Turning, a Holy Week movement initiated by her neighborhood church, Valley & Mountain, that is “grounded in the radical tradition of Jesus, who turned tables to interrupt the oppression of people disregarded by society.” The daughter of a Filipina mother and Norwegian father, DeAnza is committed to the liberation and empowerment of marginalized people in her […]
Brian McLaren is a well-known author, speaker, activist and public theologian who has been advocating for “a new kind of Christianity” that is just and generous for over twenty years since he wrote The Church On the Other Side while serving as pastor of Cedar Ridge Community Church. Since then, he has written numerous books including A New Kind of Christian, A Generous Orthodoxy and Why […]
The Reverend Dr. Soong-Chan Rah is the author of Prophetic Lament: A Call for Justice in Troubled Times, The Next Evangelicalism: Freeing the Church from Western Cultural Captivity, Many Colors: Cultural Intelligence for a Changing Church, and Return to Justice: Six Movements That Reignited Our Contemporary Evangelical Conscience. A former church planter and Senior Pastor of Cambridge Community Fellowship Church, a multi-ethnic church living out the values of racial […]
Daniel Hill is the Author of White Awake: An honest look at what it means to be white and 10:10: Life to the Fullest. He is the Founding and Senior Pastor of River City Community Church, located in the west Humboldt Park neighborhood of Chicago, a church that is on the quest to become a multiethnic community of Jesus-followers that transforms the city of Chicago through worship, […]
The Rev. Dr. Randy Woodley and his wife Edith are co-sustainers of Eloheh Farm, a permaculture, regenerative teaching farm, school and community in Newberg, Oregon. Dr. Woodley, a legal descendent of the United Keetoowah Band of Cherokee Indians in Oklahoma, is an activist/scholar, distinguished speaker, teacher and wisdom keeper who addresses a variety of issues concerning American culture, faith, justice, diversity, racism, our relationship with the earth and Indigenous […]
