On March 1-4 of 2011, church and community leaders involved in what it means to live in and care for the city gathered in Chicago, IL for the 2011 Congress on Urban Ministry. We will gather again in 2013, to collaborate and conspire towards a new vision for the city by tackling the toughest urban issues with context-driven theology and cutting-edge theory.
Building upon a 30+ year history of addressing social ills in solidarity with “the least of these”, the Congress tackles the tough and relevant issues of our time.
Our outstanding cadre of plenary speakers for the 2011 Congress included:
Shane Claiborne,
Renita Weems,
Walter Brueggemann,
Obery Hendricks,
Mindy Fullilove,
and Congress co-chair James Forbes and Michael Pfleger
July 27th, 2010 at 7:28 pm
I will definitely be attending — but I’m also interested in submitting a proposal for a workshop, if such are still open. I’m the coordinator of the Personal Essentials Pantry at Zion Church ELCA in Madison, WI, a pantry that focuses not on food but rather on all the other stuff one needs that food stamps don’t cover and that food pantries have a hard time supplying — the essentials of personal and household hygiene. As one of the lead agencies of this type in the country (we’ve only been able to find about 8 other agencies, and we know that we directly inspired at least four of those), we’ve done a good deal of thinking about and exploring of the factors that lead to this very important area being so drastically overlooked. We’ve also looked at why control of product distribution is so very different in this area from the control needed for food pantries, and developed a software package (public domain, open source software) to help address the situation.
July 27th, 2010 at 8:36 pm
This sounds wonderful Christine! We love this sort of out-of-the-box thinking which addresses real needs. I will make sure to send you a workshop request for proposal when they become available near the end of September. Is there a website for the pantry or just for the church?
October 27th, 2010 at 4:27 am
Where is the schedule for the Conference to be found? Specifically, what time does the conference begin on March 1 and end on March 4? This is critical for making travel arrangements. Thanks.
October 27th, 2010 at 3:17 pm
Thanks for the inquiry and heads up Byron! We will certainly add that information to our website, pronto. For now, let me jot the starting and ending times to you:
7pm – Tuesday, March 1 – Opening Plenary session
3pm – Friday, March 4 – Closing Plenary session
January 6th, 2011 at 6:23 pm
would like to attend urban ministry conference in March.
Iam founder and leader of Discipleship Missions INTL based in Uganda with 500 branch churches