Thanksgiving is done. You know what that means? That right: the day after tomorrow starts that time of year when holiday cheer competes for attention with the marketers; when our desire to remember the Christmas story and the joy of the holiday season is challenged by seemingly inexorable waves of advertising seeking to compel or guilt us into buying the stuff they are hawking.

While in Chicago over the past week, my friend Jared and I had a chance to hang out with Ron Pate, director of the Association Metro Urban Ministry (AMUM) program with SCUPE. Ron’s working on a doctorate in urban development. He’s working on the idea of time banks and coproduction as a basis for community formation and renewal. The idea is you do something for someone else and earn time dollars you can spend to have someone do something for you. That way you meet people in the co...
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You never know who might be sitting a table away in an El Savadorian/Mexican food restaurant in East Boston.

Friday night, Chrissy and I stopped for some dinner before going to a movie (we saw Happy Feet, which was entertaining). Walking in, we weren’t sure whether we were to seat ourselves or wait for the server to seat us, so we asked a middle-aged Hispanic man who was working on a laptop. He said we should seat ourselves, and pointed to the booth next to his table. He was alone.

Fair enough. But there is the implication that quiet and withdrawal are pre-requisites for spiritual health. Many people have bought the notion that it is only in silence and solitude that we can conn...
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I have a confession to make and I hope it doesn't make you think less of me. Ned Flanders and I have become friends. It hasn't always been this way. For years before I began to pastor a church I knew just what the problem was in American evangelical culture, and it wasn't sin, it was church people, it was Ned and his friends. The "frozen chosen" I think I have heard them called...