Rob Eiben

Rob Eiben has always been interested in the so-called "big questions". He first attended MIT to study EECS but was distracted by both Philosophy and Theology. When money ran out at MIT, he and his new wife Kris went to LIFE Bible College East in Virginia to study for the ministry. During that time he earned a M.A. in Theology from Regent University. He started teaching at LIFE East in Hermeneutics and Biblical Languages and pastoring at the campus church. But Regent and some of his students had caused him to question the very foundations of the church. Meanwhile, the ugly politics of the ministry caused him to see the hypocrisy inherent in church leadership. He resigned from teaching and returned to programming, something he had always enjoyed.

Yet, with the help of friends he had made in the ministry he started designing a church that would avoid the problems he had himself encountered in ministry. So he began a program leading to an M.A. in Philosophy at Virginia Tech (to be completed in May 2005). Philosophy gave him the tools to better critique the failure of the church to live up to the claims of Christianity. Why was God so simple and yet Christianity so hard? Did the church represent God to the world? Why was the church, which should be a place of safety and healing, becoming for many a place of hatred, pain, and lies?

During this learning process, he finally started experimenting with his place as an artist, especially through photography and poetry. His friends had opened his eyes to different ways of thinking and his studies started providing answers on the failure of the church. Now he hopes to create a church for the next thousand years, one which speaks to his generation and which will (at least for a while) avoid the error into which the current church has fallen. With Kris by his side as his strength and foil, he knows the journey will be difficult. But nothing important is ever easy.

Love. Freedom. Diversity. This is the Revolution.