Lon Allison
Director of the Billy Graham Center and Associate Professor, Wheaton College

SESSION 11: Evangelistic preaching as Art and Preachers as Divine Dramatists.

Lon Allison serves full time as Director of the Billy Graham Center and Institute of Strategic Evangelism. He is a Christian communicator, evangelist, professor, pastor and performing artist, who has published two books: Going Public with the Gospel and That the World May Believe, a brief biography of John R. Mott.

Craig Detweiler
Filmmaker and author, Professor, Fuller Theological Seminary

SESSION 6: The Gospel and the Imagination: A Journey Into the Dark.

SESSION 7: Film Showing, Purple State of Mind with John Marks. Note: There are no recordings of this session.

Craig Detweiler is a filmmaker, author and cultural commentator who has been featured in the New York Times, CNN and NPR, Current Director of Reel Spirituality Institute for the Brehm Center at Fuller Seminary. His first book A Matrix of Meanings: Finding God in Pop Culture was a finalist for the Gold Medallion in Theology and Doctrine.

Trevor Hart
Professor of Divinity, St. Mary's College in St. Andrews, U. K.

SESSION 2: A Suspicion Observed: Christian Responses to the Imagination.

Trevor Hart teaches and publishes in Christian doctrine and systematic theology. He is interested in the contemporary reformulation of the Christian tradition and the engagement of Christian theology with other disciplines, notably philosophy and literature.

Career: B. A. Durham; Ph.D. Aberdeen. Professor of Divinity and formerly Dean of the Faculty of Divinity, St Andrews.
Teaching areas: systematic and historical theology; philosophical theology; theology and imagination; theology and art/literature; theology of Karl Barth; modern christology; God in Biblical and Christian theology.

Visit Trevor Hart's webpage at St. Mary's College.

Charissa Holland
Creative Arts Director, Community Christian Church

SESSION 12: Artists and the Imagination.

Charissa Holland has been a part of Community Christian Church since 2004, and on staff since 2005. She has a BA in English from the University of Illinois and currently on a graduate program at DePaul University, working on an MA in English. Excellence in the arts and developing artists is one of her biggest passions, and she can't imagine not being a part of the mission of Community Christian's vision: helping people find their way back to God. Check out Community Christian's website www.communitychristian.org

George Hunter
Professor of Evangelism and Church Growth, Asbury Theological Seminary

SESSION 13: The Role of "Sublime" Experience in Christian Evangelism.

Distinguished Professor of Evangelism and Church Growth in Asbury Theological Seminary, has authored a number of books including How To Reach Secular People, Church for the Unchurched, The Celtic Way of Evangelism and Leading and Managing a Growing Church.

Visit George Hunter's webpage at Asbury Theological seminary.

John Marks
Former producer, CBS 60 Minutes, Author, Reasons to Believe

SESSION 7: Film Showing, Purple State of Mind with Craig Detweiler. There are no recordings of this session.

John Marks was born and raised in Texas. He is a graduate of Davidson College and has an MA in Creative Writing from the University of Iowa. He then moved to Berlin, where he covered Germany, Eastern Europe and the Balkans for US News and World Report. Those years also resulted in the Pulitzer and Tony winning play, "I am My Own Wife," written by Marks's best friend, and Marks is a featured character in the play. In 1955, he returned to the US to cover pop culture, politics and social issues. After a decade at US News, he became a producer for Morley Safer at CBS News "60 Minutes." He has published three novels, The Walll, War Torn, and most recently, Fangland. REASONS TO BELIEVE is his first work of non-fiction. Marks lives in Northampton, Massachusetts with his wife and son. Marks and Detweiler cohosts Purple State of Mind, an evening of film at the Roundtable. Visit Purple State of Mind's webpage

Chris Mitchell
Director, Marion E Wade Center

SESSION 1: Introduction with Rick Richardson. How does the Gosepl address the deeply felt need in our culture for reenchanting the world?

SESSION 8: How did Lewis and the Inklings engage their culture, integrating reason and the imagination in their gospel communication?

Dr Chris Mitchell serves as Director of Marion E Wade Center at Wheaton College, Wade Center Professor of Christian Thought and Associate Professor of Theological Studies. Prior to coming to Wheaton College he had served as a missionary in Haiti and India. Chris is also an ordained Pastor. Chris received his M.A. from Wheaton College, and a Ph.D. from the University of St. Andrews, Scotland. He lives in Wheaton with his wife Julie. Together they have four children and two grandchildren.

Rick Richardson
Associate Professor, Director of the MA in Evangelism and Leadership, Wheaton College

SESSION 1: Introduction with Chris Mitchell. How does the Gosepl address the deeply felt need in our culture for reenchanting the world?

SESSION 5: Gospel as Myth and Beauty

Associate Professor and Director of the Masters in Evangelism and Leadership Degree at Wheaton College; Rick is also an Associate Evangelist with InterVarsity Christian Fellowship. Rick's books include Evangelism Outside the Box, Reimagining Evangelism, Experiencing Healing Prayer and The Heart of Racial Justice. Visit Rick's webpage for the MA in Evangelism and Leadership Program at Wheaton College.

Robert Smith

Professor of Preaching at Beeson Divinity School, Samford University

SESSION 10: Storytelling and Mythmaking to Engage Culture: Using African American Preaching as a case study

Robert Smith serves as professor of Christian preaching at Beeson Divinity School. Previously he served as the Carl E. Bates Associate Professor of Christian Preaching at The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary in Louisville, Kentucky. A popular teacher and preacher, he received Southern’s 1996 Findley B. Edge Award for Teaching Excellence. An ordained Baptist minister, he served as pastor of the New Mission Missionary Baptist Church for twenty years before returning to complete his Ph.D. He is a contributing editor of a study of Christian ministry in the African American church, Preparing for Christian Ministry, and co-editor of A Mighty Long Journey. His research interests include the place of passion in preaching, the literary history of African American preaching, Christological preaching, and theologies of preaching. At Beeson, Smith teaches Christian Preaching and other electives in homiletics. He received Beeson Divinity School’s "Teacher of the Year Award" in 2005. He and his wife, Wanda, are the parents of four adult children.

Read Schuchardt
Assistant Professor of Communication, Wheaton College

SESSION 4: What are the Communication Scholars Telling Us About the Role and the Source of the Imagination?

Read Mercer Schuchardt is Assistant Professor of Communication at Wheaton College. He is the founder and publisher of Metaphilm, a film interpretation website at www.metaphilm.com. He earned his Ph.D. at New York University's Media Ecology program under the advisement of the late Neil Postman with a dissertation on the
Medieval Catholic Symbol System and Contemporary Corporate Iconography. He and his wife Rachel homeschool their six children.

Visit Read Schuchardt's webpage at Wheaton College Communications Department.

Kevin Vanhoozer
Research Professor of Systematic Theology, Trinity Evangelical Divinity School

SESSION 3: The Drama of the Christ: The Gospel as Thing Done and Word Made.

Research Professor of Systematic Theology at Trinity Evangelical Divinity School. Some of the books he authored include Biblical Narrative in the Philosophy of Paul Ricoeur, Is There a Meaning in This Text? and The Drama of Doctrine: A Canonical-Linguistic Approach to Christian Theology. Go to Kevin Vanhoozer's webpage at Trinity Evangelical Divinity School.

Visit Kevin Vanhoozer's webpage at Trinity Evangelical Divinity School.

Ralph Wood
Professor of Theology and Literature, Baylor University

SESSION 9: GK Chesterton as Imaginative Witness to the Gospel.

University Professor of Theology and Literature at Baylor University; his major book, first published in 1988 and still in print from the University of Notre Dame Press, is entitled The Comedy of Redemption: Christian Faith and Comic Vision in Four American Novelists (Flannery O'Connor, Walker Percy, John Updike, and Peter De Vries).

Visit Ralph Wood's webpage at Baylor University.