Pepperdine Bible Lectures 2015 Guests

I’m thrilled with the “guests” (translation: Christians who aren’t from our particular tribe) who will be presenting at the Pepperdine Bible Lectures. Here are a few of them—and why I wanted them to join us.GENE APPEL is the senior pastor of the Eastside Christian Church in Anaheim. When we met in 1998, Gene was the minister for the Central Christian Church in Las Vegas. Out of his own personal brokenness, a dream was formed and Central became one of the fastest growing churches in America. From there, Gene moved to Willowcreek Community Church for several years before moving to Anaheim. He’ll be speaking at our leadership session on Tuesday afternoon.NADIA BOLZ-WEBER grew up at the Eastside Church of Christ in Colorado Springs before becoming a student at Pepperdine. When I read her book Pastrix and after hearing her on NPR, I wanted to know more. So I asked if I could hang out a bit when I went to Denver. I joined a small group for morning prayers that she led, and then we went to a coffee house. This was not Starbucks in Abilene, however! As she says, people may think she’s “out there,” but in her world she’s considered a soccer mom. How true! Our quick visit turned into three hours. During this time I realized that she was the de facto pastor of most of the people in the coffee shop, whether they attend any church or not. She is a powerful communicator of the gospel, and I’m so thankful that she’ll be returning to Pepperdine to present on Thursday morning.CHAP CLARK, one of the authors of Sticky Faith, is professor and chair of youth, family, and culture at Fuller Theological Seminary. He’ll be presenting as part of the Boone Center for the Family track. (What a great partnership I’ve enjoyed with Sharon Hargrave, the executive director of the center!)DAVID KINNAMAN is the president and majority owner of the Barna Group, based just up the coast from us in Ventura. In his 19 years at Barna, he has supervised or directed interviews with more than 400,000 people. Many will be familiar with his books unChristian and You Lost Me.MARK AND DEBBIE LAASER have blessed the Christian community as leaders on the subject of sexual addition. Their session on “Sexual Integrity in a Fallen World,” will also be in the Boone Center track.SCOT MCKNIGHT has been a good friend ever since he spoke at one of our Zoe conferences in Lubbock. “We” (in Churches of Christ) have been blessed by his user-friendly New Testament scholarship. And he has felt a special affinity to our heritage. I’m hoping to baptize him before the week is over. Ok, not really. But I might at least give him some kind of honorary membership. (Actually, now that I think about it, who is in charge of giving those in our tribe? Randy Harris maybe?) He’s our lead scholar as we study through James. It was a great blessing last fall when he Skyped in with our keynote speakers to lead us through the book.JASON RUSSELL is one of the cofounders of Invisible Children. While in Africa many years ago, he promised a boy named Jacob that he’d help end that decade-long war; and when he returned home he launched the now infamous film. He’ll be one of the guests in a session hosted by Mana Nutrition.DAVE STONE is the senior pastor of the Southeast Christian Church in Louisville. Dave, a popular speaker all over the country, will be joining Jeff Walling in a morning session at Firestone Fieldhouse.Finally, I want to mention how glad I am that KENT BRANTLY is going to join us (though he’s certainly not a “guest” as defined above). I was his minister when he was a college student, and the spiritual passion that people all over the world now know about was there even then.We’d love to have you join us in Malibu on May 5-8. Registration is here.[youtube]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2r0Dx-dg1Ng[/youtube]