I attended the January series at Calvin College with William Garvelink today. He’s currently the U.S. ambassador to the Democratic Republic of Congo. He used to work for USAID and has spent most of his career in humanitarian efforts. If you’re interested you can read more about him, USAID and Congo at [...]

Bill McKibben is the writer of The End of Nature and Deep Economy.
After hearing him talk I can say that McKibben has an infectious affability to his speaking. He manages to infuse just the right touch of self-depreciation in his speech in order to sugar-coat his interesting ideologies. Ideas like communities establishing local [...]

I just returned from the first of Calvin’s January Series talks. You can find more information on the January series here. Andy and I will be attending these throughout the month and writing up our experiences. Anybody else attending these?
Today’s talk was given by Michael Mandelbaum the author of a book called [...]

Today’s January Series speaker was Peter Okaalet of MAP International, and the subject of his presentation was a grave one: the AIDS crisis in Africa. Still recovering a bit from Gerard Straub’s moving presentation about poverty, I braced myself for another emotionally traumatic experience. But as with Straub’s speech, I was pleasantly surprised to find [...]

I just got back from hearing Gerard Straub speak at Calvin College’s January Series. Straub is an author and filmmaker with a single overriding passion: raising awareness of global poverty. That’s what he talked about today.

I drove over to Calvin College again this afternoon to attend today’s January Series lecture by N.T. Wright, a Church of England bishop and scholar whose latest book, Simply Christian: Why Christianity Makes Sense, makes the case for the Christian faith in a spirit reminiscent of C.S. Lewis’ Mere Christianity. The auditorium was packed—I underestimated [...]

Note: Every January, Calvin College hosts a series of lectures called the January Series. The invited speakers hail from a wide variety of backgrounds and viewpoints, but generally have something significant to say to the Christian and academic community. Over the next few weeks, I’m going to be attending several January Series lectures, and hope [...]