On the contrary, I want the kids I love to follow Jesus because I genuinely believe following Jesus is the best kind of life. Eternity aside, I want them to be transformed by the Gospel right here and right now, for their sakes and for the sakes of all the lost and broken people out there who need them to start living as Jesus’ disciples. After 
all, the sooner we all start following Jesus by feeding the poor and freeing the oppressed, the sooner God’s will shall be done on earth as it is in Heaven.
[Bart Campolo]
Is his daddy tony campolo?
Yea is indeed… in fact, I think these thoughts from Bart may in fact be inherited from Tony, as Shane Claiborne quoted Tony Campolo as saying something very similar in his book.
met tony and shane in the states
tony is more controversial than people might think ;p but after six months thinking about it one begins to be convinced hes right.
You met them? When/How?
Tony came to Strathaven and what he said to everyone made me think I wanted to go to Camden New Jersey and work with Urban Promise http://www.urbanpromiseusa.org
So I spoke to him then, and two years later I went. (one year delay thru admin problems, one year delay through lack of faith. Or two years through God’s timing.)
Bet that link means akismet spamifies this. Bet it really does.
Anyway Tony is some executive for evangelical educational alliance or something. Basically he helped found Urban Promise wi Bruce Main. So when Tony was doing a fundraiser at a very crazy church which I found quite disturbing, we went to go help.
The ‘met shane’ story is a bit of an anticlimax, hope youre not too gutted. There were a bunch in the house I was staying in. One girl there was reading his book, and would often quote from it. This was great because a) I found the quotes extremely interesting and challenging especially as I was being quite exposed to a social mission environement b) It meant I didnt have to read the book. I found it really challenging; then my room mate said he was going to visit a friend who worked wi shane. At the same time I’d found out the people next door were camden house and worked with the simple way. So it was too many coincidences and I said could I come wi my room mate and visit.
However, shane didnt really have much time for me reckon he was busy. So it was kind of an anticlimax ;p But I did get to spend the day with AIM ministries (not africa inland mission but ‘adventures in mission’) and meet a kid called rocky who gave me a rock to remember him by (took me ages to work out the connection there) and that was very great.
Not put off I got to spend a day building shelves and making bread with the camden house next door, and another day talking about pet snakes and social action, war and community living whilst eating a soup thing. Took me the whole day to swallow the soup. But it was great.
‘Noone ever crucified anyone for praying for those that are seen as being scum of the earth but for actively associating with them’ – or something.
Ha, not spamed 🙂 That’s pretty cool… I read Shanes book and it challenged me so much, was kind of the climax of a lot of stuff I had been thinking about, especially as I read it just off the back of getting back from Chicago and visiting some big churches. I’d love to do something like that, just get to spend some time in that kind of a community that is so radically different to the way we ‘do’ church here… reading ‘organic church’ reminded me of that spark!