Julian DeShazier / JKwest

As a national speaker, advocate and emcee, Julian “J.Kwest” DeShazier has appeared on ABC, CBS, FOX, and Dr. Maya Angelou’s “Oprah & Friends” radio program. J.Kwest is also an Emmy Award-winning musician, featured in the video “Strange Fruit,” a commemoration of the Billie Holiday song and a meditation on racial violence. In 2012 he and his group, Verbal Kwest, appeared in the OXFAM and Bread for the World-produced documentary The Line, providing a critical voice against poverty and violence in the US. The Chicago native and graduate of Morehouse College and the University of Chicago is also pastor of University Church, which most recently worked on a campaign for a trauma center on Chicago’s South Side. J is an adjunct professor at the University of Chicago Divinity School and McCormick Theological Seminary, and is a regular contributor to Sojourners and Huffington Post publications.

jkwest.com/   LISTEN

Nannette Banks

Rev. Nannette Banks is a world traveler, people and poetry lover who believes in the power of worship and the sacraments to liberate and set free all who are marginalized and oppressed –for the table was set in the presence of (my)the enemy! She is also the voice of This is what happens Wild Goose Video.

Currently, she is an itinerant preacher and  serves as the Director of Alumni/ae and Church Relations at McCormick Theological Seminary in Chicago.

Shawna Bowman

Shawna Bowman is a Presbyterian Pastor and a Theological and Liturgical Visual Artist. She pastors a quirky and radically gracious community called Friendship Presbyterian Church that meets in the Norwood Park Metra Station in Chicago IL.  Shawna works with churches, faith communities and not-for-profit organizations to help them tell their story through visual arts. She also paints, builds and invites others to encounter God through art-making during worship and other events. Shawna is passionate about empowering others to integrate visual-arts in their spiritual and worshiping life. She teaches workshops and leads retreats in order to provides space for artists to integrate their spiritual and creative selves as well as learn how to incorporate the arts in their worshiping communities.

You can find Shawna’s work and words at artforgodsake.com and her sermons and lectionary reflections at shawnabowman.com. Her church is also on the web at fpcchicago.org.