Speakers and Panelists
Featured
Preston Sprinkle (Ph.D.) is an international speaker and a New York Times bestselling author, who’s written a dozen books including People to Be Loved: Why Homosexuality Is not just an Issue. Preston currently serves as the president of The Center for Faith, Sexuality & Gender, an organization that equips Christians to engage questions about faith, sexually & gender with theological faithfulness and courageous love. Preston also hosts the popular podcast “Theology in the Raw” and posts regularly on his YouTube channel “Preston Sprinkle.”
Jackie Hill Perry is an author, poet, bible teacher and hip-hop artist whose latest album, Crescendo, released in May 2018. Since becoming a Christian, she has been compelled to use her speaking and teaching gifts to share the light of the gospel of God as authentically as she can. She is the author of Gay Girl, Good God: The Story of Who I Was, and Who God Has Always Been and the bible study “Jude: Contending for the Faith in Today’s Culture”. At home she is a wife to Preston and Mommy to Eden and Autumn.
Francis Chan has been a pastor for over thirty years. He is a New York Times bestselling author of several best- selling books including Crazy Love and Letters to the Church. He and his wife, Lisa, have been married for nearly 30 years and co-authored You and Me Forever. Currently, Francis and his family split their time between ministry and church planting in Northern California and Asia.
Thabiti Anyabwile is one of the pastors for Anacostia River Church (Washington, DC) and the president of The Crete Collective, a church planting and revitalization network focused on vulnerable and neglected black and brown neighborhoods. He has served as an elder and pastor in churches in NC, DC and the Cayman Islands. After a few years as a practicing Muslim, Thabiti was converted under the preaching of the gospel in the Washington DC area. He and his wife, Kristie, have three children. Thabiti is the author of several books, including The Life of God in the Soul of the Church; The Gospel for Muslims; What Is a Healthy Church Member?; The Decline of African-American Theology; and The Faithful Preacher. He blogs at The Front Porch. https://thefrontporch.org/
Chris Date is a well-known evangelical Christian representative of a global movement known as Rethinking Hell (http://www.rethinkinghell.com) and a recognized specialist in the areas of Hell and Conditional Immortality (a.k.a. annihilationism). He's co-editor of Rethinking Hell: Readings in Evangelical Conditionalism (Cascade, 2014) and contributing co-editor of A Consuming Passion: Essays on Hell and Immortality in Honor of Edward Fudge (Pickwick, 2015), and he's a contributing co-editor with Paul Copan of an upcoming two-views book with IVP Academic.
Dr. Derwin L. Gray is the founding and Lead Pastor of Transformation Church, just outside of Charlotte, NC. He is also the author several books, including best seller, “The Good Life” What Jesus teaches about finding true happiness. You can follow him at @derwinlgray on Instagram, twitter, and Facebook. As well as www.derwinlgray.com
Eli Bonilla Jr. is the father to two beautiful children; Novalee Grace and Ezekiel Eliezer Rafat, and husband to the legendary Alexis Gabriella Bonilla. He is an emerging leader in the Next Gen space. He serves several national networks in varied roles. He is the Next Gen Regional Co-Chair for North America with Empowered21, and he also fills the position of National Millennial Director for the National Hispanic Christian Leadership Conference (NHCLC). His full-time responsibilities are with OneHope as a Masters Fellow as a part of the Office of the President.
Dr. Ed Uszynski currently serves as Senior Content Strategist for Family Life Ministry and as a Oneness and Diversity Consultant for Athletes in Action, with whom he has been training staff and ministering to college and professional athletes since 1992. He has an MA and M.Div. from Trinity Evangelical Divinity School and a Ph.D. in American Culture Studies from Bowling Green State University. He and his wife Amy have four children and live in Xenia, OH. Ed is also an expert in CRT and has some super nuanced and wise thoughts about race relations in America.
Evan lives in San Diego, CA, with his wife Sandy and their five kids. Evan holds a M.Div. from Western Seminary, has recorded four albums, and has written songs sung in churches all over the world. In 2013 Evan and Sandy were invited by John Mark Comer to relocate to Portland, OR, to lead worship while being trained for church planting. In 2017 they made the move back home to plant Park Hill Church, where Evan is lead pastor.
Gregory Coles is the author of Single, Gay, Christian (InterVarsity Press, 2017) and No Longer Strangers (InterVarsity Press, 2021). He holds a PhD in English from Penn State and lives in Idaho's Treasure Valley, where he works as a writer and speaker. Greg is a Senior Research Fellow at The Center for Faith, Sexuality & Gender and curates most of his creative activities at gregorycoles.com.
Sandra Richter is the Robert H. Gundry Chair of Biblical Studies at Westmont College. Richter earned her PhD from Harvard University’s Near Eastern Languages and Civilizations Department and her MA in Theological Studies from Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary. She has taught at Asbury Theological Seminary in Wilmore, KY, Wesley Biblical Seminary in Jackson, MS and Wheaton College in Wheaton, IL. Due to her passion for the "real space and time" of the biblical text, she has spent many of those years directing an Israel Studies program focused on historical geography and field archaeology.
In the Church, Richter is best known for her work, The Epic of Eden: A Christian Entry into the Old Testament (IVP 2008) and a number of DVD curriculums stemming from the project (Zondervan and Seedbed). She has just published Stewards of Eden: What the Scripture has to Say about Environmentalism and Why It Matters (IVP, 2020).
Tony Scarcello is a pastor, speaker, podcaster, and the author of the book, Regenerate: Following Jesus After Deconstruction, where he recounts the story of his battle with his sexual identity and faith crisis, only to discover a Christ big enough for all of our stories. He is also the host of the Regenerate Podcast, a podcast dedicated to having the critical conversations required to regenerate our faith. He regularly speaks at churches, camps, retreats, and conferences. Tony lives in Springfield, Oregon with the girl of his dreams, his wife Kelsey.
Johana-Marie Williams is a writer, artist, and historian focusing on Black women's health and religio-spiritual experiences and is passionate about reaching those who have been hurt by the Church through visceral examples of fullness of life offered by the Gospel in marginalized contexts. Her current projects included papers on the history of Black midwives in Florida and on the intellectual history of post/transhumanism among Black women writers in speculative fiction.
Street Hymns is a musical artist, apologist, speaker, and battle rapper from Arlington Texas. As a part of a team of Christians that have infiltrated the Battle Rap culture, Street and his team “The Horsemen” represent Christ in a world that is entertained with aggression and vulgarities. He has a Bachelors Degree in Biblical Studies from Dallas Baptist University and has dedicated 8+ years and counting to working with, mentoring and discipling youth.
Tinika Wyatt is a singer, songwriter, children’s book author and Marriage and Family Pastor alongside her husband, Jason, in San Diego, California. She has contributed to three volumes of The Ethnos Project, a musical collection of multilingual worship through global partnership, and was most recently featured on the “Urbana 18 Live: Faithful Witness” and “InterVarsity Live! Worship, Volume One” albums. Her purpose is to use her voice primarily to connect people to Jesus Christ and secondarily to amplify the voices of others for the sake of understanding and reconciliation.
Gerry Breshears has been professor of theology at Western Seminary since 1980. In addition to teaching and lecturing at a number of colleges and seminaries around the world, he speaks in many churches and is a pastor to pastors as well as being part of The Bible Project. He works with a wide variety of people and issues in the pastoral side of his life. Gerry and his wife, Sherry, have two sons, Donn and David, and a daughter, Cyndee, and four wonderful grandchildren. He is an elder and a member of the preaching team at Grace Community Church of Gresham, Oregon.
Jon Tyson is a pastor and church planter in New York City. Originally from Adelaide Australia, Jon moved to the United States over two decades ago with a passion to seek and cultivate renewal in the Western Church. He is the author of Sacred Roots, A Creative Minority, The Burden is Light, and Beautiful Resistance. Jon lives in the Hell’s Kitchen neighborhood of Manhattan with his wife and two children. He serves as the Lead Pastor of Church of the City New York. Learn more at church.nyc
Kyla was born in BC, Canada. Being raised in a Christian home, she gave her life to Christ at an early age. At age 5, she began struggling with gender identity, dysphoria and same-sex attraction. In 2011, she fully transitioned from female to male. After living 6 years as male, God revealed Himself to her in a powerful way, and has since fully de-transitioned and is living as female in pursuit of Jesus. She has a passion for sharing the Gospel, teaching youth, speaking, and blogging. She travels, sharing her testimony in both Canada and the USA. She has been a contributor for The Center for Faith, Sexuality and Gender in films and panels. Her deep desire is to make Jesus known and give a Biblical voice to the Trans* conversation.
Kyla is part of her local Church, Gospel City Church in Coquitlam, BC. You can follow her on Instagram @kylagillespie.14
My name is Kimi Katiti. I’m an interdisciplinary artist originally from Kampala, Uganda and currently living in North Hollywood, California. I skate, draw, paint, create music, and recently started posting opinion videos on YouTube which have gained over 1M views in the last 5 months.