I just got back from the Christian Community Development Association’s annual conference, which was hosted in Raleigh this year. It’s hard to overstate the significant role that CCDA (www.ccda.org) has played in my life. It started over 13 years ago, when I was just beginning to feel the call to start River City Community Church. I had a vague notion of the kind of church I hoped we’d become someday, but I didn’t have many concrete examples to draw from. That changed with CCDA, where I was introduced to hundreds of ministries across the country that represented holistic, Christ-centered, amazing communities. Each year since I have looked forward with tremendous anticipation to the conference where I inevitably experience God in powerful ways and catch up with what feels like my extended family.
At front and center of the CCDA movement is Dr. John Perkins. I wrote a whole chapter on him in my book 10:10, and if you don’t know his story it’s worth checking out (see a bio of him here). Each morning of the conference he leads a Bible study, and here are some of my favorite quotes from Dr. Perkins there:
“As family goes, so goes our communities. As our communities go, so goes our society.”
“We need to pray for revival. We need the Spirit of God to come upon us in a powerful & pervasive way.”
“We need to avoid the mistake of past revivals, which was to separate faith & deeds.”
“Past revivals often led us with a dichotomy: spiritual salvation was divorced from social salvation. Many were converted to a fundamentalist version of Christianity that accommodated slavery, bigotry, & poverty. But we must not make the opposite mistake and separate works from faith. We need redemption. We need God’s spirit.”
“Salvation means we are delivered as whole beings: body, soul, and spirit.”
“What is the good news of the Gospel? That we can be born again by love into a new family – the family of God.”
“The family of God experiences the love of God together, & then does the work of God together here on earth.”
“The work of Justice is fundamentally redemptive. We are redeemed by God & then are invited to join the redemptive work of God.”
“Born again people pray to do Gods will: ‘God, not my will but yours be done. What are you trying to accomplish & how do I participate?’”
“Isaiah is the Old Testament model of uniting personal & social redemption. He 1st has a powerful conversion experience. Then he writes the blueprint of ministry. In Is. 61 he says: ‘The Spirit of the Lord is upon me…’”
“I get asked all the time: ‘What’s the relationship between the Gospel & reconciliation.’ My answer is always the same: ‘the Gospel IS reconciliation fool. Read 2 Cor. 5!’” -Dr John Perkins
“If you feel called to ministry & don’t feel called to the poor, you may not have been actually called.”
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drdanielhill.com 
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