Shane Claiborne

 

BIOGRAPHY

Claiborne is a 30-year-old  former Tennessee Methodist and born-again, high school prom king,

"I was raised in the Bible Belt down in East Tennessee, sort of suffocated with Christianity"
Shane graduated from Eastern University, studied sociology and youth ministry, did his final academic work for Eastern University at Wheaton College in Illinois, did some graduate work at Princeton Seminary, but took a leave of absence, and is now a part of The Alternative Seminary in Philadelphia. His ministry experience is varied, from a 10-week stint working alongside Mother Teresa in Calcutta, to a year spent serving a wealthy mega-congregation at Willow Creek Community Church outside Chicago

The theme of the convention is “Nourish Your Soul, Engage Your Mind, and Connect in Meaningful Conversation.”

Shane Claiborne

In February 2009, Brian Snider and I covered the 2009 National Pastor's Convention with media credentials. Attended by 1,500 pastors and Christian leaders, the conference was sponsored by Zondervan and InterVarsity Press and featured influential voices such as Leighton Ford, Bill Hybels, Brian McLaren, and Rob Bell. It represents what is being called the emerging church, and it is all about change. Society is changing, so the churches must change, and these publishers are major change agents. Their objective is to move traditional Bible churches into the new emerging model. They have many tactics, and they are willing to be patient. In his 2008 book "Finding Our Way Again", Brian McLaren described the plan to infiltrate churches and Christian institutions that are currently rejecting the emerging church. They are targeting our grandchildren. The Christian book publishing industry is a lot like the Christian music industry. Doctrine does not matter and there are a lot of rock stars being made through the use of slick marketing materials, but when you strip away the slick packaging and cool marketing gimmicks, what you find is the continual disintegration of evangelicalism as it is pulled further and further into the emergent church movement. The attendees represented a bewildering range of views, including Methodist, United Church of Christ, Lutheran, Episcopalian, Presbyterian, Baptist, and Pentecostal. The speaker lineup included an agnostic Jew (A.J. Jacobs), a Roman Catholic priest (Emmanuel Katongole), and a man who depicts God as a woman (William Young). The first half hour of every general session started out with a 30-minute comedy routine by a stand-up comic, some of it pretty crude. One comedian, Michael, Jr., did a mocking send up of people who were "oversaved", or those who were zealous for the Lord. One of the standards for being "oversaved" was that you were not willing to laugh at off-color jokes. The apostasy of this day is astonishing, when you consider the wickedness that faces our nation and world on every hand and then you have a gathering of Christian leaders beginning their meeting with stand-up comedy; surely the Lord is at hand. The comedy routines were followed by rock concerts. On display at this meeting was the blending that has been at the heart of the evangelical movement since the early days of Billy Graham. Old school evangelicals like Leighton Ford, Graham's brother-in-law, were on hand, and on the far left were men like Brian McLaren who are willing to reject the doctrines of the infallibility of Scripture, substitutionary atonement, and an eternal fiery hell. There seem to be no limits as to how far Christian book publishers will go in being agents of change and moving churches away from the Bible into dangerous and uncharted waters. We have posted a brief video overview of the conference at the Way of Life web site, and soon we plan to publish an extensive written report. Our new book "What Is the Emerging Church" deals with this subject in depth. Our purpose in doing this research is to warn Bible-believing churches that might be tempted to move in a more contemporary direction and to adopt the "judge not" philosophy. This is exactly what the New Evangelicals did 50 years ago, and we see where they are today. The Bible says, "Be not deceived, evil communications corrupt good manners."
 

Over 2,000 pastors and ministry workers are gathering in San Diego for a week of education, replenishment, and fellowship at The National Pastors Convention (NPC) presented by Zondervan in partnership with InterVarsity Press beginning February 10, 2009 .
Attendees at the four-day event can choose from over 70 sessions featuring more than 50 speakers on a variety of relevant topics, including: Bill Hybels, Rob Bell, Shane Claiborne, Brian McLaren, Scot McKnight, Andy Crouch, Cathleen Falsani, Gabe Lyons, Larry Osborne, Margaret Feinberg, Christopher Wright, Will Willimon, Efrem Smith and many others.

General Session Speakers 
                     
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Founder of The Simple Way

We are the simple way, a community of faith.  Each of us is created for community, and in the image of community. And yet everything in the world tries to rob us of this Divine gift.  The life of the simple way is the story of that struggle to love and to be loved. The most radical thing we do is choose to love each other... again and again.  If you are a seeker of the Way, may our story feed you hope... or at least keep you from making all the same mistakes.  "Life in community is no less than a necessity for us, an inescapable 'must'... all life created by God exists in communal order and works toward community." -- Eberhard Arnold


"Each of us is created for community, and in the image of community. And yet everything in the world tries to rob us of this Divine gift. The life of the simple way is the story of that struggle to love and to be loved.  The most radical thing we do is choose to love each other... again and again.   If you are a seeker of the Way, may our story feed you hope... or at least keep you from making all the same mistakes."
 

And serves on the board of the

QUOTES

From an interview with Krista Tippett. @ SPEAKING WITH FAITH

"You know, and I felt like the Christianity I grew up with really sort of looked at world and said, 'Yeah, it's fallen apart, but there is life after death.' While a lot of us were really asking, 'Is there life before death?' you know, and 'Doesn't our faith have just anything to speak into the world that we're living in?' I became pretty disenchanted with a lot of the church culture that I grew up with and just felt like I was asking bigger questions than they were willing to trust me with."

"You know, I start reading this stuff that Jesus said. And I'm just, like, 'Man, does anyone really believe this anymore?' And Mother Teresa was one of those people that I felt just lived so magnetically and authentically the simple words and teaching of Jesus. So we wrote her a letter, you know?"

"There was a group of us out of that student movement that ended up going, 'Let's try to do church like, like the old days,' you know? We would read in the Book of Acts that all of the believers were together and shared everything in common. No one claimed any of their possessions were their own, but they shared everything. And there were no needy persons among them."

"And, you know, and we just said, 'We're going to stop complaining about the church that we've experienced and try to become the church that we dream of."
Most people my age that I see, even within the evangelical church, like, transcend those categories of left and right, and really are wanting to know how to create a better world and know that the world that we've been handed is very fragile. And I love when Jesus said that if the Christians are silent, then the rocks will cry out. And I think, now, He would say, maybe, 'The rock stars will cry out,' you know? I mean, there's a lot of Christians though that are going, 'We don't just need, you know, these celebrities to work out, you know, to change the world. We need to figure out how to live differently ourselves and how to live with some imagination and some creativity, and give ourselves for something bigger than just our own little circle of friends.' And so, that, to me, that's so encouraging. And I'm convinced that if the Christian church loses this generation, it will be not because we didn't entertain them, but because we didn't dare them, you know, with the truth of the world. And it won't be because we'd made the Gospel too hard, but because we made it too easy, and we just played games with kids and didn't actually challenge them to think about how they live."

"And so, it was — it makes us feel good just by making everybody else feel how bad they are. And I think, what I really love about much of what's happening in the younger generation is there's a sense that, man, we all have a lot of contradictions and we don't need to feel like we have it all figured out. There's something just as magnetic as a church that seems to, like, pretend that we've all gathered together, which is definitely the church that I grew up in, you know? "

"There's something magnetic about a group of people that say, 'Hey, we don't have it all figured out, and we need each other.' And for me, that was a story — what happened after September 11th is that some people, you know, they just rallied around the flag and the church community, and I went to those congregations and spoke at some of them, you know, and other folks rallied in the streets. And yet, there — from many sides, there was such a polarity of anger and homogeneity that everybody was just with their own people, and I was really hurt by that because I think we would do well to just acknowledge the vulnerability of the moment and respond well in the midst of that. And I think of how the Amish responded to the shooting in their school, you know, and how tragic that was. And yet their instinct was to go and, you know, be with the murderer's family and go to the funeral of the one that killed some of their kids and send resources there, you know? And a couple of friends of mine are writing a book right now, and one of the sections we have is "What if the Amish were Homeland Security?" You know, I'm thinking about, like, what if that were how we responded to terror and violence?"

"I think that Jesus, when He's telling us these things like turn the other cheek, He's speaking to people who had been slapped. You know, He's speaking to people who are peasants and revolutionaries and people that were confronted with violence every single day. And yet, it's not a cowardly, like, just sort of, 'Well just get stepped on.' But I think every one of the instances that Jesus is showing us in the Sermon on the Mount when He says, you know, "If a person slaps you on your cheek, turn your other cheek. And if someone asks you to walk a mile, walk two miles." All these things were very real realities that confronted evil, but not on its own terms. "

"I'm careful because I don't ever want to fall in love with a movement or a revolution. You know, I think that Jesus' life shows me that revolution is not a big thing, but it's a very small thing. You know that we've got to live it in small ways out of little communities. And Dietrich Bonhoeffer who has been a good teacher for us on the community, he says,  'The person who's in love with their vision of community will destroy community. But the person who loves the people around them will create community everywhere they go.' And I think that that's something that's held us together is not just to fall in love with a movement or a revolution, but to try to live in radical ways and in simple ways. Because I think that the world right now is undergoing a beautiful transition of thought and in young people within the church, there's so much that's hopeful."

  From, "open source theology
 
"In our culture of 'seeker sensitivity' and radical inclusivity, the great temptation is to compromise the cost of discipleship in order to draw a larger crowd. With the most sincere hearts, we do not want to see anyone walk away from Jesus because of the discomfort of his cross, so we clip the claws on the Lion a little, we clean up a bit the bloody Passion we are called to follow. (The Irresistible Revolution, 104)

BOOKS

Jesus For President with Chris Haw A different kind of campaign.  A different kind of party.  A different kind of Commander in Chief Amid all the buzz of politics and elections, Jesus for President is a refreshing reminder that our ultimate hope lies not in partisan political options but in the Jesus who gave his life for us. Politics for ordinary radicals who want to love the world into the kingdom of God.	Irresistible Revolution Using unconventional examples from his own life, Shane Claiborne stirs up questions about the church and the world, and challenges readers to truly live out their Christian faith. In The Irresistible Revolution, you'll be challenged by a radical Christianity passionate for peace, social justice, and alleviating the suffering found in the local neighborhood and distant reaches of the world. Live out your faith with little acts of radical love as you join the movement of God's Spirit into a broken world.
Becoming the Answer to Our Prayers with Jonathan Wilson-Hartgrove In their new book, Becoming the Answer to Our Prayers, activists Shane Claiborne and Jonathan Wilson-Hartgrove show us that prayer and action are inextricably tied—-you can’t have one without the other.	Follow Me to Freedom with John Perkins In a world hungry for radical hope, their stories, lessons learned and wisdom will guide us as we walk down the rugged road to another world. Followers of Christ will not only be inspired, but also catalyzed into being the hands, feet and heart of real change—and the world will never be the same.
Iraq Journal 2003 Iraq Journal 2003 is Shane Claiborne's account of his peacemaking trip to Iraq in March 2003, just before the US invasion. Told mostly through emails that he sent home, this book offers a gracious and humanizing depiction of the Iraqi people. From the rear cover: "One of the children we are close to, Amal, decided to celebrate her 13th birthday with us! So we had a feast, grilled out in a park nearby... As we were playing a little game of balloon volleyball, bombs began to explode in the background. The adults all looked uneasily at each other, but we kept playing. Then one explosion hit very close. A couple of us huddled down with the little children... These children were raised hearing bombs, in 1998, in 1991... and yet they will still play in a park with the people whose country is destroying theirs... As bombs continued to thunder in the background, I was reminded once again that life is more powerful than death, that children can teach old tyrants and cynics how to love."