New! Youth in Missions Leader Fact Sheet
Bart Campolo is a veteran urban minister and activist who speaks and writes about grace, faith, loving relationships and social justice. Bart is the leader of The Walnut Hills Fellowship, a local ministry in inner city Cincinnati. He is also founder of Mission Year, a Christian ministry which recruits committed young adults to live and work among the poor in inner-city neighborhoods across the country, and executive director of EAPE, which develops and supports innovative, cost-effective mission projects around the world. Born and raised in suburban Philadelphia, Bart graduated from Brown University in 1985. From 1986-1989 he worked with young people in South Minneapolis, where he met and married his wife, Marty. In 1989 Bart and Marty moved to West Philadelphia to found Kingdomworks, the urban ministry which later became Mission Year, and to begin raising their children, Miranda and Roman, who are now teenagers. In 2005, after nearly two decades of organizational leadership, the Campolo family moved from Philadelphia to the Walnut Hills neighborhood of Cincinnati, hoping to love their neighbors in a more personal way as part of an inner-city faith community. News of the Walnut Hills Fellowship can be found online atthewalnuthillsfellowship..org and Bart’s popular and provocative blog, can be found at
http://www.bartcampolosblog.com/.
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Jonathan Wilson-Hartgrove is an author, New Monastic, and sought-after speaker. A native of North Carolina, he is a graduate of Eastern University and Duke Divinity School. Shortly before the United States began bombing Iraq in 2003, Jonathan and his wife, Leah, traveled there as members of a Christian Peacemaker Team determined to tell Iraqis that American Christians did not all support the war. Their experiences became the subject of To Baghdad and Beyond (Cascade Books: 2005), which describes the couple’s conversion to the “new monasticism.” Jonathan is an Associate Minister at the historically black St. Johns Baptist Church, and is engaged in peacemaking and reconciliation efforts in Durham, North Carolina. The Rutba House, where Jonathan lives with his wife Leah, their son JaiMichael, and other friends, is a new monastic community that prays, eats, and lives together, welcoming neighbors and the homeless. Jonathan directs the School for Conversion, an alternative seminary that hosts courses around the country. He is Editor of the New Monastic Library Series(Cascade Books) and Associate Editor of the Resources for Reconciliation Series(InterVarsity Press). An evangelical who connects with the broad Christian tradition and its monastic witnesses, Jonathan is a leader in the new monastic movement and conversations about Christianity in the 21st century. Writing as both a grassroots intellectual and popular theologian, Jonathan connects with a broad audience, engaging them personally on a wide spectrum of challenges facing the church today.
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Eddie Willis and The Narrow Path are incredibly gifted and spiritually uplifting worship leaders. Eddie is the pastor at the Wesley Foundation at Delta State University.
Lisa Yebuah was born in Nashville, TN, but claims Summerville, SC, as her hometown. She is a graduate of Wofford College and Duke University Divinity School. Her travels to Haiti and South Africa, along with her seminary studies of the Rwandan genocide fueled her desire to make the Wesleyan model of "love of God and love of neighbor" tangible to United Methodists in the local church. She currently serves as the Minister of Community Witness at Edenton Street United Methodist Church.
A native Mississippian,
CJ Rhodes was born to Attorney Carroll Rhodes and the former Doris Williams in 1982. His parents divorced when he was six and he lived with his mother in Hazlehurst, where he received his grade school education. CJ was a gifted, though relatively shy, student whose interests in the arts and love for nature attracted him to writing, drama, ant farming, and drawing. In high school CJ renewed the student government by composing a new constitution. He later became the first student representative on the school board and also wrote for the Copiah Courier sports section. Most memorable during these years to CJ was his call to the ministry at the age of eighteen. After months of performing MLK speeches in churches and schools, CJ sensed God calling him to preach the Gospel. After graduating in the top ten percentile of his high school class in 2000, CJ entered The University of Mississippi to study International Studies (with a concentration in Latin American culture and Spanish).
While at Ole Miss CJ was involved in the Chancellor’s Leadership Class, led the college chapter of the NAACP, facilitated diversity conversations, and served in the Associated Student Body and helped to create and later directed the Department for Minority Affairs. Midway into undergraduate tenure CJ changed his major to philosophy. He preached frequently and was a much sought after public speaker. CJ continued to be dedicated to issues around justice and volunteered with the William Winter Institute for Racial Reconciliation and other groups dedicated to a more just and free society. His race relations efforts were often highlighted in the news, including state and national media.
CJ worked a number of jobs, including substitute teaching and contemporary abolitionist work, after graduating from Ole Miss in 2004. Two years later he entered the prestigious Duke Divinity School in Durham, NC, as a Dean’s Scholar and Fund for Theological Education Fellow. His leadership and preaching gifts were recognized in his last year by being selected by professors and students to be the 2008 orientation preacher. Professors, staff, and students have affirmed his promise for ministry and leadership. He is a much sought after preacher, writer, and mentor.