This past Thursday about twenty of us who are connected through up/rooted got a chance to hang out semi-informally with Brian McLaren. Brian was in town for a conference at Willow Creek, and agreed to come and dialogue with us for a few hours. Brian spent about an hour sharing his heart and his hopes with us on a number of topics, including the impending decline of the Religious Right, his passion for new churches and new models of being the church, his hopefulness in regards to the future of the mainline Protestant church, and his interest in exploring the intersection of the gospel of the kingdom with the various atonement theories that for years we have wrongly assumed were the sum totality Jesus' gospel message. There was some time for interaction and a good time was had by all.


Here's the gang that gathered with Brian. Brian is on the bottom left. My pastor from LifeSpring, Fran Leeman (second from the right on top) was also able to join us, as were several other friends from Evangel (Conte, Karen, and Karen).