by Rachel Watson

Sometimes it’s almost as if a chapel speaker holds his listeners by the throat, commanding their attention.

Last week, CU students and faculty members fixed their eyes and ears on guest speaker Dan Kimball, founding member and pastor at Vintage Faith Church in Santa Cruz, Calif.

Kimball’s published works include “The Emerging Church,” “They Like Jesus but not the Church” and “Emerging Worship.”

He is known as one of the leaders of the Emerging Church movement and has popularized the idea of “vintage faith,” returning to the historical message of the Gospel.

He came to speak in chapel at Cornerstone April 14 and 15.

“I grew up outside the Christian world,” Kimball said as he began his message the first day. “I knew nothing about the church except George Washington supposedly went there, because that’s what I heard every time I went.”

Despite his unfamiliarity with the Christian message in his youth, Kimball eventually became a Christian, and said he now has a passion for communicating the truth about Jesus.

To illustrate that everyone has biases, he asked students to pick one of two options on a series of three PowerPoint slides: country music vs. hip-hop, Windows vs. Mac and poodles vs. Chihuahuas.

Students engaged with Kimball, laughing at his delivery of the questions, and participating by answering with a show of hands.

After chapel, senior Amy Van Houten shared which elements of Kimball’s delivery stood out to her.

“I liked his untraditional approach to speaking — and his pictures,” she said.

During the message, Kimball said he used the three PowerPoint questions to show that when people come to Jesus, it should be about him, “not about my biases or my prejudices.”

He cited the example of Christ to direct how we should respond in compassion to unbelievers.

“When he saw the crowds, he had compassion on them, because they were harassed and helpless, like sheep without a shepherd,” Kimball quoted from Matthew 9:36.

“The word compassion means ‘to have the bowels yearn’ … ‘Angst from the gut’,” Kimball said. “Jesus felt that feeling because he knew they weren’t following the one true Shepherd.”

Kimball said one thing he has noticed in ministry is that “the harvest is plentiful,” meaning people are ready to hear the Gospel. He also said he notices most Christians tend to think of missions in terms of going overseas and reaching out to people in Third World countries, which is only part of its meaning.

“Mission fields are overseas AND here in the USA,” Kimball said. “If we were to scan suburban America for a minute, what would we see?”

Christians, he said, need to use a different missions approach for each culture we enter.

The second half of Kimball’s message focused on the dichotomy between the way non-Christians view Jesus and the way they view his followers.

He conducted “Man on the Street” type interviews on the topic in Santa Cruz and showed the video in chapel. He pointed out that when people were asked about Jesus, their eyes lit up and their tones softened. When they were asked about Christians, the light went out and the door closed down.

Senior Katie Vanderwal was particularly struck by the video.

“I thought the contrast between the two views was really eye opening,” she said. “I know there’s a stereotype of the contrast between the way Christians talk and they way they act, but I didn’t realize it was that real and prevalent.”

In the last few minutes of his message, Kimball said the problem is that as our culture has changed, Christians have not learned how to exist within the change and still be effective messengers of the Gospel.

“Instead of engaging the new culture, we make our own subculture,” he said.

Kimble said if we ever want to share Jesus to the 22-year-old unbeliever at the gym, we will have to break out of that bubble.