ATCO 2012 Session 3 - Shane Claiborne

Shane Claiborne "Tearing Down the Walls"

Q&A

ATCO 2012 Session 2 - Rick McKinley

Rick McKinley "Leading the Sent People of God"

Q&A

ATCO 2012 Session 1 - John Franke

John Franke "What is Missional about Missional Theology?"

Q&A

Be the change!

Shane Claiborne challenges you to BE THE CHANGE you want to see in the church and the world.



To register for ATCO 2012, click here.

John Franke: "What is Missional Church?"

John Franke speaks on "What is Missional Church?"



To register for ATCO 2012, click here.

Rick McKinley on the Kingdom of Heaven

Rick McKinley speaks at Antioch Church.

To register for ATCO 2012, click here.

Shane Claiborne: "Another Way of Doing Life"

Shane Claiborne speaks at Biola University.

To register for ATCO 2012, click here.

Tony Campolo interviews Rick McKinley

Rick McKinley was interviewed by Tony Campolo and Shane Claiborne on TBN.com. He talks about how the church he pastors, Imago Dei, was founded, about his heart in the process, and about the impact God’s kingdom is having on the city.

Once God rescued me from building a church, to actually being the church and displaying the kingdom, the kingdom shatters that whole “personal empire” that’s so common in the church. There’s no way one church could reflect the kingdom in all it’s multifaceted complexity in Portland. Rick McKinley.




To go to the original post at Imago Dei Blog, click here.

What If Jesus Meant All That Stuff? - Shane Claiborne

Read original post at Esquire.com

Shane Claiborne - The Simple Way

To all my nonbelieving, sort-of-believing, and used-to-be-believing friends: I feel like I should begin with a confession. I am sorry that so often the biggest obstacle to God has been Christians. Christians who have had so much to say with our mouths and so little to show with our lives. I am sorry that so often we have forgotten the Christ of our Christianity.

Forgive us. Forgive us for the embarrassing things we have done in the name of God.

The other night I headed into downtown Philly for a stroll with some friends from out of town. We walked down to Penn's Landing along the river, where there are street performers, artists, musicians. We passed a great magician who did some pretty sweet tricks like pour change out of his iPhone, and then there was a preacher. He wasn't quite as captivating as the magician. He stood on a box, yelling into a microphone, and beside him was a coffin with a fake dead body inside. He talked about how we are all going to die and go to hell if we don't know Jesus.

Some folks snickered. Some told him to shut the hell up. A couple of teenagers tried to steal the dead body in the coffin. All I could do was think to myself, I want to jump up on a box beside him and yell at the top of my lungs, "God is not a monster." Maybe next time I will.

The more I have read the Bible and studied the life of Jesus, the more I have become convinced that Christianity spreads best not through force but through fascination. But over the past few decades our Christianity, at least here in the United States, has become less and less fascinating. We have given the atheists less and less to disbelieve. And the sort of Christianity many of us have seen on TV and heard on the radio looks less and less like Jesus.

At one point Gandhi was asked if he was a Christian, and he said, essentially, "I sure love Jesus, but the Christians seem so unlike their Christ." A recent study showed that the top three perceptions of Christians in the U. S. among young non-Christians are that Christians are 1) antigay, 2) judgmental, and 3) hypocritical. So what we have here is a bit of an image crisis, and much of that reputation is well deserved. That's the ugly stuff. And that's why I begin by saying that I'm sorry.

Now for the good news.

I want to invite you to consider that maybe the televangelists and street preachers are wrong — and that God really is love. Maybe the fruits of the Spirit really are beautiful things like peace, patience, kindness, joy, love, goodness, and not the ugly things that have come to characterize religion, or politics, for that matter. (If there is anything I have learned from liberals and conservatives, it's that you can have great answers and still be mean... and that just as important as being right is being nice.)

The Bible that I read says that God did not send Jesus to condemn the world but to save it... it was because "God so loved the world." That is the God I know, and I long for others to know. I did not choose to devote my life to Jesus because I was scared to death of hell or because I wanted crowns in heaven... but because he is good. For those of you who are on a sincere spiritual journey, I hope that you do not reject Christ because of Christians. We have always been a messed-up bunch, and somehow God has survived the embarrassing things we do in His name. At the core of our "Gospel" is the message that Jesus came "not [for] the healthy... but the sick." And if you choose Jesus, may it not be simply because of a fear of hell or hope for mansions in heaven.

Don't get me wrong, I still believe in the afterlife, but too often all the church has done is promise the world that there is life after death and use it as a ticket to ignore the hells around us. I am convinced that the Christian Gospel has as much to do with this life as the next, and that the message of that Gospel is not just about going up when we die but about bringing God's Kingdom down. It was Jesus who taught us to pray that God's will be done "on earth as it is in heaven." On earth.

One of Jesus' most scandalous stories is the story of the Good Samaritan. As sentimental as we may have made it, the original story was about a man who gets beat up and left on the side of the road. A priest passes by. A Levite, the quintessential religious guy, also passes by on the other side (perhaps late for a meeting at church). And then comes the Samaritan... you can almost imagine a snicker in the Jewish crowd. Jews did not talk to Samaritans, or even walk through Samaria. But the Samaritan stops and takes care of the guy in the ditch and is lifted up as the hero of the story. I'm sure some of the listeners were ticked. According to the religious elite, Samaritans did not keep the right rules, and they did not have sound doctrine... but Jesus shows that true faith has to work itself out in a way that is Good News to the most bruised and broken person lying in the ditch.

It is so simple, but the pious forget this lesson constantly. God may indeed be evident in a priest, but God is just as likely to be at work through a Samaritan or a prostitute. In fact the Scripture is brimful of God using folks like a lying prostitute named Rahab, an adulterous king named David... at one point God even speaks to a guy named Balaam through his donkey. Some say God spoke to Balaam through his ass and has been speaking through asses ever since. So if God should choose to use us, then we should be grateful but not think too highly of ourselves. And if upon meeting someone we think God could never use, we should think again.

After all, Jesus says to the religious elite who looked down on everybody else: "The tax collectors and prostitutes are entering the Kingdom ahead of you." And we wonder what got him killed?

I have a friend in the UK who talks about "dirty theology" — that we have a God who is always using dirt to bring life and healing and redemption, a God who shows up in the most unlikely and scandalous ways. After all, the whole story begins with God reaching down from heaven, picking up some dirt, and breathing life into it. At one point, Jesus takes some mud, spits in it, and wipes it on a blind man's eyes to heal him. (The priests and producers of anointing oil were not happy that day.)

In fact, the entire story of Jesus is about a God who did not just want to stay "out there" but who moves into the neighborhood, a neighborhood where folks said, "Nothing good could come." It is this Jesus who was accused of being a glutton and drunkard and rabble-rouser for hanging out with all of society's rejects, and who died on the imperial cross of Rome reserved for bandits and failed messiahs. This is why the triumph over the cross was a triumph over everything ugly we do to ourselves and to others. It is the final promise that love wins.

It is this Jesus who was born in a stank manger in the middle of a genocide. That is the God that we are just as likely to find in the streets as in the sanctuary, who can redeem revolutionaries and tax collectors, the oppressed and the oppressors... a God who is saving some of us from the ghettos of poverty, and some of us from the ghettos of wealth.

In closing, to those who have closed the door on religion — I was recently asked by a non-Christian friend if I thought he was going to hell. I said, "I hope not. It will be hard to enjoy heaven without you." If those of us who believe in God do not believe God's grace is big enough to save the whole world... well, we should at least pray that it is.

Your brother,

Shane

Read more: http://www.esquire.com/features/best-and-brightest-2009/shane-claiborne-1209#ixzz22zbC5x6M

A City of Activists: An Interview with Rick McKinley

Rick McKinley who pastors the Imago Dei Community in Portland, shares how his city's culture of activism can have positive affects in the local church.

Rick McKinley along with Shane Claiborne and John Franke will be speaking at the 2012 ATCO Conference. To register for ATCO, click here.

To visit the original post published in Christianity Today website, click here.

What corner have you been called to? Register for ATCO 2012

What corner have you been called to? Is God merely asking you to cross the street or are you looking at a whole new intersection? During the “At the Corner of…” conferences, we ask these questions and more. We explore ways to live out our faith on the very deepest levels. We examine those comfortable, traditional, “tried and true” ways of being the Church…those strategies that hold fast to a mantra that declares “…but we’ve always done it that way!” Sadly, we find that those strategies haven’t sustained the community transformation that we believe is at the heart of God’s commandment to make disciples.

Confronted with that reality, we’ve concluded that it’s time to start taking some risks.

There’s no question that God has indeed moved into the neighborhood. Yes, into our neighborhood. And as we acknowledge the impact of this truth, the conversation changes. To engage in that conversation takes courage. When we’re standing at that new and unfamiliar intersection, we dare to ask questions such as “What would it look like if…?”

At the ATCO conference you will hear storytellers who talk about their discoveries, challenges, successes, and thoughts about what’s next. They are ordinary people with extraordinary stories that bring tears, laughter, conviction and inspiration. Their journeys are different, but each one conveys a clear message that the same old “programs” and “10 steps to…” haven’t brought the radical transformation needed to fully impact our personal lives or our cities.

Since the launch of the ATCO conferences in 2010, the conversation has deepened and there’s an even greater sense of urgency to awake from our sleepwalking and ask some tough questions. The answers to some of those questions have challenged many of us to travel a different way…to get off our donkeys and consider some new ways to reach our destination.

If you’re tired of hanging out at the same old familiar corner, please come and dare to live dangerously. You might even find yourself at a whole new intersection. We invite you to join the conversation at the ATCO 2012 conference. Together we can impact our city eternally in ways that make sense!

ATCO 2012 CONFERENCE

OCTOBER 18 & 19, 2012 AT ECCLESIA

Thursday, Oct 18th (7-9pm) & Friday, Oct 19th (noon-5pm)
1100 Elder St. Houston TX 77007

To see a few highlights from previous ATCO conference click here.

To register for ATCO 2012 click here.

Memories of "At the Corner of..."

See a few highlights from previous ATCO conferences: