So heart-breaking to hear of the passing of Tony Campolo who helped give The Speak Network Lots support and help over the years including supporting our very first Pray and Postcard 1998!
He was supporting on our council of reference and as Honorary President for many years! He came and spoke at SPEAK gatherings in 2007 and 2011 in person and online in 2017.
Rest In Peace Tony Campolo life well lived
Glad Shane Claiborne carrying on mantle at Red Letter Christians!
It meant so much to us that he believed in our work! Here is a video of him addressing our gathering in 2017 which he did online (as we couldn’t afford to bring him over at the time)! But later in the video he offered to come for free in future! Such was Tony’s energy and generosity!
https://youtu.be/h1gc3G7z02I?si=RP7HnvwucUNZHziB
EAPE and Red Letter Christians supported us many times over the years financially and practically. Tony funded for 2 SPEAK representatives to go over the USA twice. Once in 2000 to 2001 new years for the Urbana IFES conference where we hosted workshops and networked with USA students and we met the founders of SPEAK BRAZIL. He also funded for 2 of us to go over to training conference in fundraising in 2011 where we met people like Shane Claiborne and others from the simple way. We also met up with his son Bart over the years at train stations who advised us on fundraising ideas in 2010. We met up with Tony many times at others gatherings where he was speaking including Greenbelt 2012 where he also gave SPEAK a big plug and we would also do various video interviews some of which we have posted others we need to dig out and work on and post. Tony features in our celebrating 25 years of SPEAK we made 6 months ago and also in our history of SPEAK section of this site.
He was such an important part of our journey.
“The Kingdom of God is a Party!” -Tony Campolo (25.2.35-19.11.24) In our grief, we remember that you are celebrating today like never before. You are one of a kind and we miss you already, Tony!
To read Tony’s obituary, visit The Campolo Center page:
https://www.eastern.edu/student-life/scholarship-cohorts/campolo-center-ministry/about-tony-campolo
To hear his sermon “The Kingdom of God is a Party” visit:
https://youtu.be/EUO5YTwH57w?feature=shared
Here are some memories from Tony and the Network more coming:
We did our first stall at the Greenbelt Music Festival in 1998 and then another one in UCCF Forum in September 1998. While at Forum the funding for the first set of Pray and Posts had run out due to popular demand of all the Christian unions wanting to use them!! At the time we were doing a campaign on rights of refugees and asylum seekers in the UK. We printed the first batch from SPEAK students money from working their summer jobs. So we had lots of people there asking for them to be mailed later who we had met at Forum. We had 4-5 months earlier met Tony Campolo at the Event Living Waters near Norwich in April 1998. We were committing to sending people from all across the UK Pray and Post cards which we didn’t have the money for! Louise phoned home the day after the first batch of cards ran out.. to find that someone called Tony Campolo had send a cheque for £1000 which would pay for the first mailing!! We had asked Tony to join our council of reference a few months earlier in April 1998. This was very exciting start and meant the world to us in earliest of phases.