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Brian McLaren is an author, speaker, pastor, and networker among innovative Christian leaders, thinkers, and activists. He graduated from University of Maryland with degrees in English (BA and MA). In 2004, he was awarded a Doctor of Divinity Degree (honoris causa) from Carey Theological Seminary in Vancouver, BC, Canada. In 1982, he left a career in higher education to help form Cedar Ridge Community Church (crcc.org). He has written for or contributed interviews to many periodicals, including Leadership, Sojourners, Worship Leader, and Conversations, and his books include: The Secret Message of Jesus, Everything Must Change, Finding Our Way Again, A New Kind of Christian, Adventures in Missing the Point (with Dr. Anthony Campolo), and Church in the Emerging Culture, among many others. He is actively involved in a growing generative friendship among missional Christian leaders (www.emergentvillage.com); serves as a board chair for Sojourners (sojo.net), and is a founding member of Red Letter Christians. Brian is married to Grace, and they have four young adult children. Brian travels extensively, and his personal interests include ecology, fishing, hiking, music, art, and literature. Links to online articles and songs are available at www.brianmclaren.net. |
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Alexie Torres-Fleming is the founder of Youth Ministries for Peace and Justice (www.ympj.org) in the South Bronx. In addition, she is the co-founder of the Southern Bronx River Watershed Alliance, a coalition of local groups that is “confronting the legacy of Robert Moses” by campaigning to replace the Sheridan Expressway with affordable housing and green spaces. Ms. Torres-Fleming’s work generates creative use of the urban environment and provides neighborhood leadership to solve common problems. Her leadership in her community dates back to 1992, when she helped lead a march to protest the drug-dealing and violence plaguing the South Bronx neighborhood where she grew up. The drug dealers retaliated by burning down her parish church, a building that she and the protestors had been using as their headquarters. This attack emboldened her to become even more involved in her old neighborhood. She moved back to the South Bronx from Manhattan and founded YMPJ, a faith-based, community development organization that aims to empower local youth. Using education and community development, YMPJ has helped a generation of Bronx children discover that through advocacy, community organizing, journalism, environmentalism, and the arts, they can play an active role in shaping and improving their neighborhood. This fall, the group will open “Concrete Plant Park” on the site of an abandoned concrete plant on the Bronx River. Alexie lives in the South Bronx with her husband and two children, a few blocks from the housing project where she grew up. |
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Fr. Richard Rohr internationally noted author and spiritual teacher, is a Franciscan of the New Mexico province and founder of the Center for Action and Contemplation. Fr. Richard’s gift is articulating to our minds what we already know in our hearts. He considers the proclamation of the Gospel to be his primary call and uses many different platforms to communicate that message. Themes he addresses in service of the Gospel include Eco-Spirituality, Scripture as liberation, the integration of action and contemplation, community building, peace and justice issues, male spirituality, and the Enneagram. Fr. Richard is probably best known for his numerous recorded teachings, and through the Center’s quarterly publication, Radical Grace. He is a regular contributing writer for Sojourners and Tikkun magazines. |
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