So exciting! It’s almost release day for our new Love Is an Orientation DVD Curriculum which is set to release on December 13th (for those of you not in North America it will release January 1 through your respective Amazon sites and the Zondervan website).

This new resource will be for any church, university, non-profit, organization, clinic, community center, small group of friends or individuals interested in what it means to not only elevate the conversation between the LGBT community and the conservative world, but also culturally engage each community through our Living in the Tension (LITT) gatherings—as there will be an entire session devoted to building and sustaining your own LITT group. We are so, so pumped about this new resource and pray it has a huge impact in continuing to spread this bridge building movement! The six sessions will include:

1) Love is an Orientation

2) Building Bridges between Conservatives and the LGBT Community

3) Theology of Bridge Builders

4) Answering the Tough Questions

5) Teens and Sexuality

6) Living in the Tension Gatherings

We also interviewed six LGBT people from around the country, coming from all different theological, social, and political perspectives, so you can get to know them and where they’re coming from by hearing their stories from their perspectives.

We filmed in a dozen locations around Boystown and the city of Chicago, and we’re just really proud of how everything is turning out.

You can pre-order from Amazon here (DVD), here (Participant Guides) and here (Combo Pack).

Here are a few pics from our time filming. I’ll be posting many more from all of our different locations and our different interviews soon…

Looking forward for you to all have a chance to engage with it. Please feel free to post this anywhere you want to start spreading the word!

Much love.

www.themarinfoundation.org

Tomorrow, Sunday, August 28th, I will be preaching both services (9:30am and 11:00am) at Restore Community Church in Liberty, MO – right outside of Kansas City, MO. If you’re around the area, feel free to stop on by as I’d love to meet you. They meet at the Liberty Community Center. I will be preaching on the Ideal and Poverty of Community.

Much love.

www.themarinfoundation.org

While at Wild Goose Festival, the Odyssey Network asked me, and a few others, some questions regarding an analysis of the intersection of sexuality, LGBT issues and the emergent church. Here is what they found…

Do you think progressive Christianity today must stand with the LGBT community, otherwise they will be nothing other than a new form of fundamentalism?

Much love.

www.themarinfoundation.org

This video is from InterVarsity Press’ Likewise line, which my book is published under. They did a video featuring a bunch of Likewise authors including myself, Shane Claiborne, Jonathan Wilson-Hartgrove, Margot Starbuck, Sean Gladding and others…

What do you think of my little clip about reconciliation?

Much love.

www.themarinfoundation.org

Recently I had the opportunity to speak at a new, more progressive, Christian festival called Wild Goose. Here is a summary of our time there (including interviews from Brian McLaren, Doug Pagitt, Jay Bakker, Phyllis Tickle and myself), and it will air on the Odyssey Network today. Check your local listings, but just in case you don’t have the Odyssey Network, you can see the segment above

Much love.

www.themarinfoundation.org 

If you’re in or around Chicago, I’ll be preaching (Psalm 118:8-17) at First Evangelical Free Church. The service starts at 10am. The address is:

5255 N. Ashland Ave
Chicago, IL 60640

For those not in Chicago, I’m sure they will be recording it so when it’s posted I’ll post it as well.

Much love.
www.themarinfoundation.org

Two years ago today (Martin Luther King Jr. Day) I spoke on Capitol Hill the night before the Inauguration of President Barack Obama.

The event was an official Inauguration event, a series of government sponsored events that led up to the actual Inauguration ceremony of our country’s 44th President. This event consisted of two representatives from each of the major faiths that make-up America, to speak about something that reflects the essence of Martin Luther King Jr and the current state of our country.

It was a huge honor to be there, not just because I had the opportunity to speak on Capitol Hill during such a pivotal time in our country’s history, but because the other evangelical representative speaking was Dr. Vincent Harding, the former speech writer for Dr. Martin Luther King Jr! Here and here are two of Dr. Harding’s recent books. After MLK’s assassination, Harding worked closely with Coretta Scott King to preserve MLK’s legacy, including being the first Director of the only official MLK museum, the King Center, in Atlanta, GA.

I was humbled to find out that the talk that I gave that night (above) impacted the director of the Smithsonian Museum, who was in attendance that evening. Later, I received a document from the Smithsonian asking for my permission to archive my talk in our country’s history depository. Needless to say, I signed it and what you hear above will always be a part of our country’s history. To date, speaking on Capitol Hill with Martin Luther King Jr’s speech writer, leading to my talk being archived in the Smithsonian, the night before the Inauguration of President Obama, has been the biggest honor of my life.

It’s still amazing to me that any of this stuff has even happened. I was just a kid who moved into Boystown with my best friends because I loved them and wanted to seek the truth, because what I heard from the Church world about LGBTs and what I heard from LGBTs about the church world never matched up to any experiences I had in either community. Let’s keep this bridge building movement of reconciliation rolling…

Happy Martin Luther King Jr. Day.

Much love.

www.themarinfoundation.org

I am currently in Spokane, WA speaking at Whitworth University. Here is my schedule:

TUES:

11:45-12:40 Speaking to Student Leader Training Initiative

12:45-1:40 Q&A lunch with students

1:45-2:15 Teaching Jesus and Bridge Building to a class on Bible Education

3:55-5:15 US Cultural Studies class: Answering the Tough Questions on Sexual Identity

5:30-6:30 Q&A dinner with students

7-8:30 Evening Lecture open to the public (Weyerhaeuser 107)

WED:

8-9:30 Speaking to a group of local Spokane pastors

10-11 Meeting with a student

11:45-12:45 Q&A lunch with students

1-2 Meeting with Whitworth’s President

2:30-3 Conference call with Whitworth partners

4-4:45 Interview with the Whitworthian Paper

5-5:30 Speaking to the Student Government on Practical Bridges on Your Campus

8-9:30 Q&A evening with students

THURS:

11am Speaking at Chapel (open to the public)

12 Leave for the airport

I pray that it’s going to be a powerful few days.

Much love.

www.themarinfoundation.org

I am giving a lecture tonight at Northern Illinois University in DeKalb, IL starting at 8pm. It’s closed to the public, sorry about that. But I will see if I can get an audio recording or something after the fact and post it. As always, non-Christian college campuses are some of my most favorite places to teach because it’s like an intensified mini-world all wrapped up in one enclosed location! I’m really looking forward to tonight.

Much love.

www.themarinfoundation.org

I will be speaking tonight at Calvary Church in Naperville, IL starting at 7:30pm. It is open to the public, so if you’re around I’d love to see you. I will be speaking about the way Jesus engaged his own very politically driven culture and how that applies to us today.

Much love.

www.themarinfoundation.org

What many people don’t realize is that the Salvation Army is way, way more than just people who at Christmas stand outside with a bucket and ring a bell asking for change. All around the world the Salvation Army has formed very intentional, and deeply incarnational groups of people planted in areas literally all over the globe that need to see what Jesus looks like in a hands and feet type of way.

No frills. No fluff. Just everyday faithfully living a life of service to a local community of people.

That is the number one reason I love the Salvation Army, and the work that they do, so very much. It’s also the reason why I’m so humbled by them continuing to ask me to teach at their training institutes all over the place. If there is a legacy I would like to leave, a big part of it is one of spurring on others to really understand the need to incarnationally do life in the places the Lord has led you to. Life is about faithfulness, and showing that faithfulness starts and ends with living in the place you yearn to be faithful to.

From today until August 9th I will be teaching three times a day to a national gathering of Salvos (at a dude ranch/camp in Midlothian, TX where it is currently 105 degrees as I write this) from all over the country. My everyday schedule is as follows:

10:45-12:15pm Sitting on a Panel trying to answer questions that come our way about the Bible in general, and its implications to our lives today

1:30-2:30pm A week long core class on Building Bridges within the LGBT Community

7-8pm A week long elective on Studying the Bible and Integrating Study into Our Everyday Spiritual Lives

It’s going to be a great week.

Much love.

www.themarinfoundation.org