Generosity

The path to restoring function to the family in a citizen society, not a consumer society, is quite simple. It begins with five questions.   1. What functions can we put back into the hands of young people?  Whether they are our kids...

When family members do not work or live well together we sometimes call the family dysfunctional. We prescribe professional help for the family or advocate for social policies that would support it—child care, parental leave, extended unemployment insurance, debt...

I’m attending an amazing conference in San Antonio titled “Our Abundant Communities: Neighborly Nourishment in the Wilderness.” Here are my notes from Peter Block’s session titled “Art Calling Out Empire.” (The following notes are close to being quotes but there is...

My recent book, Missional: Joining God in the Neighborhood, argues that forming a mission-shaped life in our time involves the recovery of neighborhood. Congregations must be re-imagined around the location of their members in neighborhoods. This requires us to...

If you have a deeply troubling personal problem, where do you turn?  To a cleric? A psychologist? A counselor? A therapist? Each is a hired professional with different approaches to our dilemmas. But suppose they didn’t exist. Where would you...

We are slowly surrounding our lives with electrical “inputs” called Internet, Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, TV, etc.  As a result, many people have unwittingly entered a new land where there are no trees, chirping birds, sunsets, stickball, group singing, people...

Bridget and I have gone from knowing about two of our neighbors in February 2010 to about 25 of our neighbors in February 2011.  Two of the new neighbors we met are R.L. and Martha, a couple in their...

In a neighborhood, people are empowered by the work they do together.  Often, they use this power to confront institutions and advocate for the neighborhood’s self-interest.  In this kind of action, power is understood as our ability to get...