2018 Annual Fall Conference

Annual Fall Conference:

Guests will include Peggy Campolo, Pastor Danny Cortez, Stan Mitchell Gwen Fry and others.

Admission is free, a love offering will be taken at each session.

We will be awarding the Peggy Campolo Carrier Pigeon award to Pastor Danny Cortez.

Peggy Campolo

Peggy Campolo, who we lovingly refer to as our Patron Saint, was the inspiring force behind the creation of Open Door Community Church. As a friend of Pastor Randy, she counseled him when he was fired from his job as an associate pastor at a local church because he chose to be honest about his long time loving relationship with his spouse, Gary. At the time, Pastor Randy felt he had nowhere to go where he would be welcomed in to worship. Peggy told him that if he felt that way, there must be many more people who felt that way as well. She suggested the idea of founding a church where everyone would be welcome, and the seed for Open Door Community Church was planted.

Peggy has long preached her ministry of inclusiveness, and she has worked hard to bridge the gap between the misunderstood and the misinformed.

As Open Door Community Church approached its 2007 Annual Fall Conference, we decided to honor Peggy’s work with an award that would not only honor her, but would, in her name, honor the work of someone every year who exemplifies her ideals of inclusiveness and equality.

Pastor Cortez

Pastor Cortez says “,My name is Danny Cortez and I am married to my wonderful wife Abby. I’m the father of four children. I’m a pastor, chaplain and artist.

I was raised in a Catholic family but I became “born again” when a stranger shared a Christian tract with me while I was in high school. I got involved with Calvary Chapel in Downey, CA during my formative years. In that church, I became interested in apologetics and became an avid student of Walter Martin and Josh McDowell. I also became heavily involved with Campus Crusade for Christ at Long Beach State. Through Campus Crusade for Christ, my interest in world evangelism grew as I participated in several missions opportunities.

After graduation from Long Beach State, I went on to prepare for ministry at Talbot Theological Seminary at Biola University. I became a youth pastor at a Southern Baptist Church in La Puente, CA. The church sent me in 1997 to plant what is now New Heart Community Church in Whittier, CA.

As I pastored this multi-ethnic congregation, we began to see God’s care for the oppressed. We started a ministry called My Refuge House that sought to care for those exploited in the commercial sex trade. I also took on the role of hospice chaplain and continued to discover the presence of God among people who are often overlooked. Ministry in hard real life settings began to expose many areas in my theology that was too rigid in a world that wasn’t black and white. But I began to see that God was present outside of my theological maps. God became bigger and much more beautiful.”

New Heart was dismissed from the Southern Baptist Convention for becoming an inclusive space for LGBTQ+ people.   He recently started Estuary Space (www.estuaryspace.org), a non-profit that helps people and churches navigate through the complexities of faith and sexuality.  He.serves as a board member of Q Christian Fellowship (formerly The Gay Christian Network) He helped establish the Union of Affirming Christians, a gathering of faith leaders addressing public policy.He’s been active with NQAPIA to help API families towards acceptance of their Queer family members.  He also co-founded My Refuge House, a non-profit that restores survivors of commercial sexual exploitation (CSE) and abuse. He serves regularly as a hospice chaplain.

He earned is M. Div. at Talbot Theological Seminary, La Miranda, Ca.  and is a graduate of Arrow Leadership,  BC Canada.  He and his wife Abby and their 4 Filipino children live in the Los Angeles area.

Stan Mitchell

Stan Mitchell, who was awarded the 2015 Peggy Campolo Carrier Pigeon Award, is Senior Pastor of Grace Point Church in Nashville Tn. Pastor Mitchell has been to Open Door in 2004, 2015, and 2017. He has become a leading voice in progressive Christianity.  He recently made news by announcing that his evangelical congregation would now move to full inclusion of LGBTQ folks saying in part

“Our position that these siblings of ours, other than heterosexual, our position that these our siblings cannot have the full privileges of membership, but only partial membership, has changed,” he said, as many in the congregation stood to their feet in applause, and other sat in silence. “Full privileges are extended now to you with the same expectations of faithfulness, sobriety, holiness, wholeness, fidelity, godliness, skill, and willingness. That is expected of all. Full membership means being able to serve in leadership and give all of your gifts and to receive all the sacraments; not only communion and baptism, but child dedication and marriage.”

With those words, GracePointe became one of the first evangelical megachurches in the country to openly stand for full equality and inclusion of the LGBTQ community, along with EastLake Community Church near Seattle. The results of the conversation, he told his congregation, were not unanimous or exhaustive, but they were sufficient.

Jay Bakker    NOTE:  JAY HAS HAD TO CANCEL DUE TO ILLNESS

Gwen Fry