Congratulations to Stephen Byrd for winning the “Why Church?” video contest. Stephen and a friend will be joining us in New York City on April 15th for a conversation about the future of the church with Tim Keller, Louie Giglio, Gabe Lyons, Jim Belcher, and others. Stephen’s video was judged to be the the most creative and authentic by the 12 Cities | 12 Conversations organizers. Take a look:

Brad Lomenick Discusses the Future of the Church from ConversationGatherings on Vimeo.

I had a very, very haunting conversation with a good friend who is a pastor at a church in southern California. We hadn’t seen each other for awhile and as we were catching up he was excited about a ministry he was starting with used clothing stores where all the profit goes to orphanages. My friend has had social justice and compassion ministries as major part of his church ethos since it began many years ago, definitely in the PB (pre-Bono) dispensation.

As he was showing me photos of his latest venture with the clothing stores he stopped and said, almost with embarrassment, “This sounds really trendy, doesn’t it?” What was haunting to me and what I have thought about since the conversation I had with my friend, is what if it is true? What if social justice and compassion projects are simply the latest trend?

by Tim Schraeder

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.

At Park, we welcomed panelists…

* Bethany Hoang of the International Justice Mission Institute
* Soong-Chan Rah of North Park Seminary and author of The Next Evangelicalism: Freeing the Church from Western Cultural Captivity
* Jackson Crum, Lead Pastor of Park Community Church
* Andy Crouch, editor-at-large of Christianity Today and author of the book Culture Making: Recovering our Creative Calling
* Skye Jethani, editor of Christianity Today and author of The Divine Commodity: Discovering Faith Beyond Consumer Christianity, served as moderator.
* Os Guinness, senior fellow at the EastWest Institute,a and founder of the Trinity Forum, closed the night with some final thoughts.

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.

Why I’m Disillusioned-Short from Andrew Means on Vimeo.