When it came to writing a book on the social gospel and Christian humanitarianism, Ryan Dobson and I decided that it would be important to engage people who were active in the work and ideas -- people who were living out the notion that God has called us to invest in His world for His glory and His mission.

That led me on a journey last year during which I interviewed thirteen passionate, interesting, and highly invested servants.  Some of them you will know (like Tony Campolo, Francis Chan, Franklin Graham) and some of them you might not (like Jim Moriarty, Gilbert Lennox, Brad Corrigan) but all are worth the read.

This series is an effort to introduce them to you.  The full interviews are in the book, but I hope these passages will be engaging and uplifting as you consider what it means to follow the Humanitarian Jesus.

I keep reading about the Emergent Church, apparently a terrible, truth-killing threat to the sanctified and saved. Like Frankenstein ravishing a small European village, to some the Emergent Church is a monster out of control, overwhelming determined clumps of torch yielding villagers. The only problem is, I know enough church history to think the monster may have a point.

Here is my contention: the church has always been emergent. If you look at church history, there is not a single decade that did not include: 1) A committed community that would die to protect what they had grown up in and knew to be true. 2) An equally determined group of people absolutely “called” to do things in a new way, perhaps in an attempt to renew group #1. As they say, “therein lies the rub.”