Speakers
More information about our speakers.
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Samuel Rodriguez – Keynote Speaker
Rev. Samuel Rodriquez has been named one of the “7 most influential Hispanic leaders” in America. As President of the NHCLC that represents 16 million Hispanic Christians, Rodriguez boldly proclaims, “We want Hispanics to be the forerunners, and preservers, of our Christian faith” in America. He meets frequently with members of congress, and participates in [...]
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Christena Cleveland – Morning Plenary
Dr. Christena Cleveland has been called “an academic with a pastor’s heart.” As a social psychologist with a hopeful passion for church unity, she works to help church leaders understand why divisions in the body of Christ exist at all, why we naturally tend to congregate with similar others, why we often misperceive dissimilar others, [...]
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Rev. Dr. Earl Miller
Pastor Miller is a distinguished, widely traveled, and respected preacher, scholar, teacher and community leader. Dr. Miller is a dynamic Preacher, a Man of God, and is currently the Senior Pastor and Founder of the Progressive Baptist Church in Saint Paul, Minnesota. In his 18 years as the Leader of Progressive, the church’s membership has [...]
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Dr. Jim Olson
Jim Olson has served as the Senior Pastor of Bethel Christian Fellowship for 20 years. With locations near Macalester College in St. Paul and in NE Minneapolis, BCF is called to be a House of Prayer for All Nations and currently has participants from over 25 nations. We house an Ethiopian/Eritrean and a Bhutanese fellowship [...]
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Colleen Beebe Purisaca
Colleen Beebe Purisaca is an attorney and the Co-International Director of Peace and Hope International (Paz y Esperanza), a Christian human rights organization with offices in Bolivia, Ecuador, Peru and the USA. Beebe has worked on refugee and immigrant issues for over 25 years. She was the Director of Education for The Advocates for Human [...]
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Rev. Terrance Rollerson
Rev. Terrance Rollerson has been in ministry in St. Paul for nearly 20 years. He has been a youth director at various churches, Minister of pastoral care at Park Ave., United Methodist Church; he has been on staff as an area director with Young Life in St. Paul and has been on the board of [...]
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Curtiss DeYoung
Curtiss Paul DeYoung is a Professor of Reconciliation Studies at Bethel University. Prior to this he has served as an executive director of faith-based nonprofits and as a pastor at urban multicultural congregations. He is the author of several books including United by Faith: The Multiracial Congregation as an Answer to the Problem of Race [...]
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Matthew Soerens
Matthew Soerens is the US Church Training Specialist for World Relief, where he focuses on helping churches to grapple with the complex issue of immigration. Matthew previously worked as a Board of Immigration Appeals-accredited legal counselor at World Relief’s local office in Wheaton, Illinois, and prior to that he spent time with World Relief’s local [...]
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Jenny Hwang
Director of Advocacy for World Relief, headquartered in Baltimore, MD. She is also the co-author of “Welcoming the Stranger” with Matthew Soerens.
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Sergio Choy
Sergio Choy, pastor and founder of Maranatha Evangelistic World Ministries in Bloomington, MN for 12 years. Choy has been involved in unity of churches and pastors for most of his time in ministry. Originally from Guatemala but raised in the US, mostly in California, Hawaii and Minnesota. He is happily married to Keren and they [...]
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Jon Kramka
For 30+ years Jon has been involved in holistic ministry efforts through the church, para-church, world missions and various community organizations- his efforts have focused in areas of compassion, justice, reconciliation, evangelism, discipleship, leadership development, urban & ethnic church & nonprofit organizational development and community & economic development. Jon currently serves as the Director of [...]
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Peter Sjoblom
Rev. Peter Sjoblom is the cofounder and vice president of the Chicago Urban Reconciliation Enterprise, a biracial team sharing urban ministry for over 25 years as a church service and consulting organization. Peter is also Director of Congregational Life for the Central Conference of the Covenant Church. Peter’s vision in working with the conference is [...]
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Russell Knight
Russ co-founded the Chicago Urban Reconciliation Enterprise (CURE) in 1986 after spending over 17 years with Youth for Christ in Chicago and with YFC/USA as Director of Minority Affairs. As president of CURE, with roots in youth ministry and leadership development, he also is an avid churchman. This has resulted in his commitment to “The [...]
