All posts tagged Andy Crouch

Echoes from Echo

by Tim Schraeder on 08/01/2011 in Echo 2011 with 1 Comment

Last week I braved the sweltering heat and onslaught of megachurches with big crosses to attend the Echo Church Media Conference in Dallas. This is the fourth year of Echo’s existence and I’m proud to say I’m 4/4 in attendance.

Billing itself as a conference for “geeks, artists and storytellers,” Echo is kind of like band camp for church nerds. You’ve never seen so many iDevices, black rimmed glasses, plaid shirts and man bags in your life. And, it’s one of the rare conferences where it’s actually a good thing if the audience is all looking at their laptops and typing away when a speaker is talking.

All joking aside, Echo is like a giant family reunion and one event I look forward to every year. Not only is the content practical and applicable, the relationships and connection that happen there are invaluable.

This year did not fail to disappoint and strangely, it seemed like all of the speakers seemed to be echoing the same message: DO THE WORK.

Having attended my fair share of church conferences [and many related to creativity/media] it seems like we’ve been on a journey as a group of church geeks, artists, and creatives.

A few years ago, we were seeking affirmation for our role in churches. We didn’t know many people like us were out there and we were just beginning to get our bearings and find our voice.

Then, we focused on creativity… where it comes from, where to find it and how to express it.

In the last couple of years the idea of story or storytelling has been central. We’ve all recognized that regardless of our craft and our day-to-day job title, that central to all we do is the narrative we express through our art. We’re all storytellers.

And, it seems like the message coming across the loudest and strongest lately is the idea of making all of our ideas and creative pursuits a reality. To stop talking and to start doing. To move from ideation to execution. To move from thoughts to action.

Jon Acuff reminded us that God has given us unique gifts and talents, and we can’t sit on them, we must use them to help rebuild people’s lives and build the Church.

Blaine Hogan, who has literally written the book on the creative process, challenged us with the idea that our art is our confession. “Your job as an artist is to journey through self-reflection and inner work and to take what you find and carry that light into the darkness.”

Culture-maker Andy Crouch admonished us to remember our goal isn’t to make culture safe for people, but to rather, embrace the full catastrophe, showing God’s grace amidst the chaos.

Focusing on our desire to be known, Bianca Olthoff (formerly Juarez) said, “Our identity changes when we encounter the living God. Our art should reflect that.”

Scott Belsky brought the house down in a rapid-fire dissection of his book “Makig Ideas Happen,” which is a must-read for anyone in the creative field.

And Kem Meyer challenged us with the idea of gaining more influence by giving up control.

There were many other great session and voices at Echo this year. Here’s a link to more notes and I highly encourage you to check out the recordings from this year to get the full dose of awesome from Echo.

My personal take-away from this year was to define my process. Instead of having scattered ideas or thoughts, I need to define my process and create the mechanism to capture and catalog my ideas. And, most importantly, to articulate the process to get those ideas into action.

What we all do matters.

The day and age we live in demands we all do the work of the creative process for the Cause that’s greater than ourselves.

Our world is waiting and it’s longing and we, through our various creative endeavors, can bring the light of hope into the darkness. We just have to do the hard work of cultivating our skills and talents to bring that light to bear.

We can have all of the right tools and talents but unless they [along with our pride] our surrendered and committed to Christ, we’re hopeless to do the work that truly matters.

Echo is a unique and fitting name. While it seemed like a lot of the speakers were echoing each other, they were all communicating a message we need to hear.

We’re called to echo God’s truth, grace, beauty, and love to our world. In order to make an echo, we have to speak. We have to work. We have to do something.

So, I hope those of you who were there or those who followed online will chose to act and be an echo to your community and your context.

The work we all do matters too much for us not to act.

A huge thanks to Rob Thomas, Scott McClellan and the entire team behind Echo… hats off to you for creating space for us church geeks, artists, and storytellers to learn, grow, connect, and be inspired to do the work!

Andy Crouch :: #Echo11

by Tim Schraeder on 07/28/2011 in Echo 2011 with No comments
  • Geeks are known for their passion for obscure knowledge.
  • Andy opened up signing us the song “Picture in a Frame” by Tom Waits and Kathleen Brennan
  • What makes works of creativity excellent?
  • What are he ingredients of excellence?
  • One of most extraordinary movies on the idea of creativity is “Ratatouille.”
  • Pixar is the only major studio producing feature films that has a number of Christ followers in positions of executive leadership.
  • This studio consistently produces incredible movies that break all kinds of boundaries.
  • A movie without 20 minutes of dialogue…
  • We need to study what they are doing if we are going to hope to be creative ourselves

The Structure of a Story

  • Every story is driven by a sender that wants to deliver something [the object] to a receiver.
  • The fundamental engine of story is at quest to get the object from the sender to the receiver.
  • The sender sends someone, the subject.
  • The subject is what we traditionally call the protagonist.
  • The sender is more like a quasi, God-like figure. Not always present, but necessary.
  • In Lord of the Rings, the object is the ring, the subject is Frodo, the sender is Gandalf, the receiver is Mt. Doom.
  • In the course of the story, the subject encounters oppositions, so there are two other forces that enter into the story: the helpers and the opponents.
  • Every Pixar movie is asking the question, “What does it mean to be a human?”
  • Our job isn’t to make culture safe for people.
  • Christian music says it’s “Safe for the family.”
  • Great culture is rarely safe for people
  • In every story, Act 1 ends in frustration.
  • In Act 2, the subject becomes the receiver.
  • In Act 3, the situation of the first act comes back, but all of the ingredients are in place for the quest to be fulfilled.
  • Act 3 brings new opposition.
  • Some people only know how to criticize culture.
  • Christians don’t just like culture, we love it so much we hate it.
  • We never show that we love culture.
  • The role of a critic in creativity is to articulate and defend what is new.
  • Gains that are won without opposition are no gains.
  • If you win without an opponent you haven’t actually won.
  • We demand real oppositions from our stories because our life is about real opposition.
  • If you don’t have a credible, real opponent in your story you don’t have a story at all.
  • How often do Christians tell a truncated story that doesn’t do justice to the real opposition in our world and in our own lives?
  • The greatest opposition to creating what we were meant to create comes from inside us.
  • The reason we don’t create what we were meant to create isn’t because of anything outside of us, it’s because of ourselves.
  • Our inner critic can convert from being our opponent to being our helper.
  • To create good work you need an inner critic.
  • The conversion fo the opponent and the happier ending are what make the difference between formulated stories and great stories.
  • Stories always have an enemy and an opponent.
  • There are often enemies that don’t convert.
  • All you can do with an enemy that doesn’t convert is to eliminate them.
  • The opponent begins in opposition but ends as an ally.
  • A happier ending… more happily than you could have ever anticipated.

Story of the Gospel

  • Why is this the structure that we expect?
  • It’s because this is the structure of the cosmos.
  • What is our story?
  • There is a sender, the creator of the world who wishes to deliver something to the receive.
  • God wishes that the world He created will be filled with His image-bearers.
  • That we would be fruitful and multiply.
    God sent His image into the whole world.
  • He send us, humans, His image-bearers.
  • Act 1 ends in frustration because we have an opponent but no helper.
  • The opponent was the voice of opposition.
  • In Act 2, the original subject has to receive something.
  • A new subject enters into the story to deliver something we could not acquire on our own.
  • God sent the Incarnate image of God… Jesus.
  • Jesus delivered to us what we needed to fulfill what we were meant to be.
  • Act 3 ends with a happier ending.
  • If it were a formulaic story, we’d go back to the garden… to the way it should have been.
  • God works differently.
  • In Act 3 of our story, not only are God’s image-bearers restored and filled… there is a new city.
  • This is the story human beings are hungry for because it’s the one true story.
  • Every story has a “Jesus” figure.
  • Otherwise, people won’t be satisfied with them.

Andy ended with Prelude & Figure #1 from Bach

The Ingredients of Excellence

  • A happier ending.
  • Is the culture you are creating giving people a glimpse of something glorious beyond what they would expect?
  • The best culture in the world deosn’t deliver expected resolutions, it takes you beyond the expected and into chaos and noise, that it provides a happier ending.
  • The full catastrophe.
  • The only way to deal with long-term chronic pain is to experience the full catastrophe… to focus on the pain.
  • Most human beings try to avoid the full catastrophe.
  • The human story is dissidence.
  • Great art always acknowledges the full catastrophe.
  • Is what you are creating do justice to the full catastrophe?

Faithfulness to the Form

  • Great works do not break most or all of the rules.
  • Be faithful to the form before you improvise and create.
  • Our creativity should cultivate our world.
  • Until you know the form you cannot create excellence.
  • Innovate in form.
  • Respect form but innovate.
  • God is a creator of order and abundance.
  • In the order of creation, God has given us to the work of filling the world with good things.
  • The greatest works of art eliminate what’s not necessary.
  • Great art calls you to listen.

The Chicago Conversation Gathering

by Tim Schraeder on 03/23/2010 in 12 Cities 12 Conversations with No comments

Last week Park hosted one of 12 Global Conversations being held in 12 Cities in preparation for the Lausanne Gathering in South Africa in October.

Admittedly, I had no idea what Lausanne was until they announced they were hosting the Chicago Conversation at Park, and when I found out what it was I was pretty blown away.

This little video will explain more…

At Park, we welcomed panelists…

Below are a bunch of different sound bytes and one-liners from the Conversation that centered around issues of social justice and the Church’s response.

Skye Jethani’s Opening Comments

  • The world has changed significantly.
  • Within the last 50 years, the global Church has changed.
  • The Church in America has radically changed.
  • More people have immigrated to the US via LAX than Ellis Island.
  • The average Christian walking the face of the earth today is an African woman.
  • We need to think differently about the impact of the Gospel.
  • It’s a new world and a new church… we need a new conversation.

There’s been a lot of talk in the Church about issues of justice and compassion. Recently, Christian Smith studied the faith of young adults and concluded that their engagement in justice is a mirage. Few emerging adults are involved in movements of justice, not many care to know much, and few are intellectually engaged. As a whole, we are less likely to volunteer or engage in issues of social justice. Is this assessment true within the church?

Andy Crouch

  • There’s a tremendous unfocused passion for justice the Church.
  • We are interested in a general way.
  • The models we have of an engaged life are becoming detached from real human begins.
  • Creators of video games, films and social media have created a world that’s so engaging that it’s more willing to go.
  • We’re willing to be virtually engaged with justice but aren’t willing to do something.

Bethany Hoang

  • There’s a significant desire for action.
  • It’s an opportunity for us to help guide where engagement goes.
  • There’s a lot of frustration and passion to do something.
  • There’s a shallowness to the passion… and an impatience.
  • We need to help develop a persevering passion in people.

Soong Chan-Rah

  • We  like cheap acts of justice.
  • There’s a lot of confusion around terms.
  • Compassion isn’t always justice.
  • We’ve created systems that allow us to do small acts.
  • Justice is a systemic issue.

Jackson Crum

  • Justice has to be an apologetic.
  • We’ve got to speak about justice and what it means.
  • We’ve to have justice defined in your language.
  • Justice is something people want to do but aren’t fully willing to engage.

We’re failing to give people outlets to engage. We can talk about justice but don’t give people an outlet for them to engage. What can the Church do to match the desire with an outlet?

Andy Crouch

  • Churches don’t need to do more than they are already doing.
  • What if you did what you are already doing differently?
  • Instead of doing more, can we do the things we’re doing in a new or better way?
  • What if going to the soup kitchen wasn’t a monthly task but it was reconfigured to be spent engaging with people.
  • 2 Million Americans leave America on a short-term trip each year.
  • What’s the affect of our going into an environment where we have more wealth and power into  a community where we go and do what they were already doing? Christians in America are good at painting walls in foreign countries, and in most instances, we do a poor job so they end up re-painting them ourselves.
  • What if our posture in going on short-term trips changed to going to learn from the people?

Bethany Hoang

  • Justice and compassion are core to the Christian life and discipleship, not a side product.
  • We’ve got to help people understand it’s implication in everyday life.
  • Understanding justice begins in understanding the character of God.

Jackson Crum

  • The Gospel doesn’t just mean “you’re saved…”, it’s a new value system.
  • It’s not just activity it’s why… it’s motive.
  • We always talk about salvation but fail to talk about its implications in everyday life.

Soong-Chan Rah

  • It’s a struggle for churches to think through practically.
  • There’s a need to find concrete ways to make this work.
  • Are we willing to pay the price to make it work right?
  • Are we willing to give the time it takes?
  • There has to be a shift in power that occurs in the actual practice of justice.
  • Most evangelicals don’t want to go there.
  • We still want to maintain our comfort, power and privilege.
  • When we talk about giving it up, we become communists and socialists.
  • Some of justice is based on a skewed power.

Bethany Hoang

  • So much of life is about making our lives more secure.
  • Yet, the Scriptures talk about spending ourselves for the sake of others… taking up our cross, which are the opposite of comfort and control.
  • We need to spend ourselves, Isaiah 58.
  • How do we teach people what that means?
  • It’s uncomfortable.

Soong-Chan Rah

  • How many non-white mentors have you had in your life?
  • American Christians are a minority, so why do we still maintain significant levels of power?
  • Are we willing to be in submission to those who are different than us.

Andy Crouch

  • What if the influential people in your life were non-western?

On race, Lausanne has been intentional that the participants reflect the reality of the global church. How are we doing with that in the local church in the USA.? Cory Edwards at Ohio State University says evangelicals have been the most purposeful in racial integration. Are we moving toward it? What do you see?

Soong-Chan Rah

  • Statistics say we haven’t changed dramatically.
  • In 2005, less than 8% of American churches were considered to be multiethnic.
  • If any institution had the same stats[colleges, universities, etc] there would be a riot.
  • For some reason, We’ve allowed it in the church.
  • There’s a lot of rhetoric and talk, but it’s not being lived out in the Church.

What is the most important factor that needs to be addressed so we can make progress?

Jackson Crum

  • We’re trying to figure that out at Park.
  • You have to be willing to change your leadership.
  • Park is doing that with their staffing and in their eldership.
  • People need to see people like them in power and in authority.
  • How diverse are your closest friends?
  • We all have to buy-in to the vision on a personal and corporate level.

Andy Crouch

  • My understanding is that most racially integrated institution in American life is the military; the least racially integrated institutions are country clubs. Why?
  • In the military power is transparent. You wear the emblems of power on your uniform. People know where your stand what the symbols mean.
  • Who knows how to get into a country club?
  • The structures of power are completely opaque.
  • Country clubs are like jellyfish; the military is like a lobster.
  • Things won’t change until there is visible leadership, power and authority.
  • Unless people know how to get it you won’t know how to get it and give it away.

Soong-Chan Rah

  • The power issue is an important issue.
  • When you do community organized among those disenfranchised there’s no problem ttalking about power.
  • But when you go to the powerful it’s hard to talk about.
  • Those without power are more willing to talk about than those who don’t.

On justice and race… most conversations about these issue tend to be emotionally driven… saying,  ”It’s not fair… it’s not right. How do you address these issues?

Bethany Hoang

  • It starts with the character of God.
  • Reflecting on who God is changes who you are.
  • He makes you look more like Himself.
  • There’s no shoulds about justice… it must become a natural part of your life.

Soong-Chan Rah

  • Guilt tends to be individualistic.
  • In order to get rid of our feelings of guilt, we feel like we have to do small, individual acts of justice.
  • As the Church, we have corporate responsibility, deeper than one act to make that bad act right.
  • None of us have owned a slave, personally… but we have benefited from a system that has.
  • There is power in corporate confession.

Jackson Crum

  • Some of it shakes out of our understanding of the Gospel.
  • The Gospel redeems us to restore and reconcile us into a right relationship.
  • When that happens, our thinking changes and realigns and we begin to take on new values.
  • We recognize something isn’t right … and we rescue, redeem, restore and reconcile.

Andy Crouch

  • Don’t just critique at what we’re bad at.
  • Criticism doesn’t change people.
  • People change based on hope, not on criticism.
  • People change when you give them a better alternative.
  • When you tell people what to stop doing they don’t know what to start doing.
  • You’ve got to give them an alternative to the way they are living.

BH:

  • There’s a simple act of reminding each other to ask God to give us the desire to do justice.
  • It’s a gift God can give us to join with Him in His work.
  • We need to ask God and remind each other.
  • It’s a lifelong sanctification process, of growing in Christ.

In UnChristian, people shared how they viewed the church and in most instances, it was quite negative. What can we celebrate about what the Church has been doing?

Bethany Hoang

  • Shared about Trafficking Victims Protection Act that was started out of the Church.

Andy Crouch

  • ½ of the people behind Pixar are Christians.
  • They are people who are culture-changing and altering the way we write..
  • Not everything that we do has to have an Evangelical stamp on it.

Soong-Chan Rah

  • That fact the National Association of Evangelicals made a statement on immigration was huge.
  • It made a statement that we are a part of the majority, not just outsiders.
  • It was a great way of acknowledging our bothers and sisters in Christ.

Jackson Crum

  • Tony Campolo and many others dragged the church in the right direction and emerging leaders have taken the work they were doing and embraced it as a calling.
  • People have realized they can make a difference.

Martin Noel talks about how the global church is growing like crazy and how strikingly similar in style those global churches are like the American church. What’s the cause? Are these churches rising up in the same conditions as the American church? What do we need to warn emerging churches in emerging countries about what we’ve done? What should they avoid?

Bethany Hoang

  • Slavery has ended in our country but it was ended poorly.
  • We still experience, deeply and painfully, in the African American community, the repercussions of slavery and how it was handled.
  • It has significant bearing on how American leaders are thinking about justice issues in other countries.
  • As we work with other governments, we would do well to make sure there’s a social mandate from within the communities to help bring an end to the structure, and that the church would lead the way in ending these injustices.
  • It shouldn’t just be imposed.
  • We would do well to do far more time listening and learning from the church in the majority world and treating them as the leaders and followers of Christ that they are.
  • We need to learn from them and work with them.

Soong-Chan Rah

  • The temptation we have is to “go fix the problem” which goes back to how the problem started in the first place.
  • The power we can exert is the power of setting the example of doing confession.
  • We need to repent for Westernized Christianity that we’ve imported to them.

What warnings would you give to the developing church?

Soong-Chan Rah

  • The prosperity theology is horribly dysfunctional.
  • Allow the culture to translate some of these forms into the culture.

Jackson Crum

  • Don’t make rockstars out of your success cases.

Andy Crouch

  • I’d warn them, you are going to have celebrities, but find a way to have accountable celebrities.

Why should we care about Lausanne? How are local churches going to be involved in this and will they?

Soong-Chan Rah

  • Historically, it’s had significant impact.
  • It was one of the first places where the important conversations took place.

Bethany Hoang

  • This will be one of the first times in history that this many Christian leaders from around the world will be together.
  • This is the first time an event like this has happened in the age of the internet.
  • It will be an experience that will be extended beyond the 4,000 that are gathered.

Skye Jethani

  • I’m naturally suspicious of superlatives.
  • This is the first time in the history of the church that this many Christian leaders form this many countries will be gathered together to talk about the mission of the church.
  • It won’t be 2 weeks in a one location, but because of communication technologies it has power to go far beyond.
  • It could be a moment to catalyze the global church to work together in partnership. This could spring board into something huge.
  • The impact could be enormous.


What does cultural integration do for the movement of justice?

Jackson Crum

  • When you learn someone’s story it raises your level of engagement.

How do you balance social gospel/justice and the gospel without watering down either?

Andy Crouch

  • Why it that when the prophets speaks of what God hates they always peak of two thing: idolatry and injustice?
  • Are these two intricately connected?
  • The real issue in poverty isn’t lack of money, it’s that someone has played ”God” in the life of the poor.
  • When the image of God in the life of the person who has become poor is crushed; their view of God is a parody.
  • The reason God hates injustice is the same reason he hates idolatry.
  • God hates idolatry and injustice because both distort His true image.
  • His image is being erased and defaced.
  • His goal is that His image is reflected in creation.
  • The image of God needs to be properly seen in the world.
  • God has been misrepresented.

Soong-Chan Rah

  • We separate discipleship and evangelism just like we separate justice and Gospel.
  • We disconnected the Gospel and justice.
  • God is reconciling everything that’s broken in creation though the cross.

Doesn’t’ changing culture give you more power?

Andy Crouch

  • Culture changes… no one has enough power to change the culture.
  • Creating culture does sometimes lead to certain amount of power.
  • Do we seek dominance?
  • Are power and dominance are different things?
  • Anyone who gains dominance is most likely going to misuse it.
  • The last thing Christians want is to dominate culture, and the good news is that we won’t.
  • The reason we’re given power by God is to put it at risk for the Kingdom.

Soong-Chan Rah

  • There is no such thing as Christian culture.

Os Guinness Closing Remarks

  • When people ask me which generation, of all the generations in human history, I’d want to be a part of, I answer: YOUR generation.
  • We are the crunch generation.
  • Many of the titanic cultural issues are coming together to raise the most profound questions the human race have ever faced… including its extinction and a post-human future.
  • We, who are followers of Jesus today, are a part of the first truly global Church.
  • We are the most numerous faith on the earth.
  • The Scriptures are the most translated and translatable works.
  • We are the fastest-growing faith, not through demography and growth, but through conversion.
  • Our ideas are the most influential in the world.
  • We as evangelicals are, by definition, people of the Good News.
  • Our defining principle is the Good news of the announcement of the Kingdom.
  • We are as only strong as we are true to the Gospel.
  • Conversation is a postmodern word.
  • Evangelicalism in the west is in deep confusion.
  • We need a renewed vision of evangelicalism.
  • The global south is largely pre-modern.Our captivity to the modern world that we helped to create is what’s keeping us from fully being the church God has called us to be.
  • Are we so faithfully following the way of Jesus?
  • Historic Christianity never divorced the Gospel and justice… some have just rediscovered it.
  • We need to get beyond our postmodern challenges and get back to the Gospel.

As you can tell, this was an awesome conversation. Check out 12cities12conversations.com to learn more about the Conversation Gatherings — and if you live in or near Chicago, be sure to check out the Micah 6:8 Conference coming to Park in June, where we’ll discuss more practical ways of living out this conversation.

Photos courtesy of Barlich Photography.

A New World. A New Church.

by Tim Schraeder on 03/08/2010 in Just For Fun with 5 Comments

We’re living in a world… and a new world demands a new Church.

It doesn’t take much to notice that the world we’re living in has changed dramatically over the past few years. 9/11, our nation’s economy, advances in technology, the emergence of social networks, the globalization of the world and the heightened awareness of human need around the world has come to a crucial tipping point… things need to change.

The old systems and old means that the Church has depended on for years is showing its fractures and an entire generation is now growing tired of a church that is focused more on itself and less on the needs in its community and around the world.

The next generation of church leaders is moved by key issues of human need: poverty, HIV/AIDS, human trafficking, injustice, diversity, race, etc. They are also concerned about fundamental issues facing the church: consumerism, relativism, postmodernity, and the proclimation of the Gospel.

While the message and truth of the Gospel is unchanging, the means and methods in which we communicate and demonstrate it need to change. Oftentimes, though, the conversation surrounding the change that needs to happen can be tricky to navigate.

Well, I’m stoked to say that there’s an awesome conversation about all of these issues that’s going to be taking place in 12 key cities around the US in one-day events called the Conversation Gatherings. The Conversation Gatherings are sponsored by Lausanne, which is hosting The Third Lausanne Congress on World Evangelization in South Africa this October.

The Conversation Gatherings will bring together some of the church’s best thinkers and leaders for a conversation about the future. The Conversations will feature a diverse group of panelists, from those who have faithfully led in the past and those who are innovating new ideas and applications.

Park is hosting the Chicago Conversation Gathering on Wednesday, March 17 starting at 6:30 PM. Guests include:

  • Andy Crouch – editor of Christianity Today International and Culture Making
  • Skye Jethani - managing editor of Leadership Journal and author of The Divine Commodity
  • Peter Furler – musician and former lead singer of the Newsboys
  • Bethany Hoang – Director of the International Justice Mission Institute
  • Peter Cha – associate professor of Trinity Evangelical Divinity School
  • Os Guiness – author
  • and will be moderated by Jackson Crum, Park’s Lead Pastor

As someone who is involved in thinking through how the church is communicating and innovating to reach emerging generations, I couldn’t be more excited about this conversation and am excited to be a part.

Two key people in the Conversation Gatherings are Andy Crouch and Skye Jethani.

Andy Crouch’s book Culture Making was one of  my top 5 reads of last year. In it, he challenges the way we, as the Church approach culture… he says, “It is not enough to condemn culture. Nor is it sufficient merely to critique culture or to copy culture. Most of the time, we just consume culture. But the only way to change culture is to create culture.”

Another of the top 5 was Skye Jethani’s The Divine Commodity. I first heard Skye share at Story and then picked up the book. Woah…that’s all I have to say. It’s an important message, especially to those of us who are out trying to live and create in a world [and church] that is motivated by consumerism. It exposes how consumerism has distorted different elements of our faith and challenges us to have our imaginations captivated by Christ.

If you can make it to Chicago for the Conversation Gathering, get here… if you can’t check out www.12cities12conversations.com to learn about other gatherings or follow them @12Conversations.

In the meantime, I’m going to give away two sets of Culture Making and The Divine Commodity.

Here’s How to Win:

Congrats to @greg__ferrell and @stgoebel2, you’re the winners!