It’s interesting how one slip of the tongue can fuel an outsized reaction. Because many people are reading the appointments of the Trump administration to mean leadership is being selected with the implicit agreement that their role will be to either downsize or even eliminate the work of those departments (like Betsy DeVos in Education and Rick Perry in Energy), it was no surprise that Mick Mulvaney’s slip that funding for Meals on Wheels through the Community Development Block Program may not be justified sent tremors through the nonprofit world.  It did not matter that he confused things by not making it clear that most of the funding for the 5,000 Meals on Wheels organizations around the country does not come through…

Many ministries and nonprofits have a section on their website for interviews and articles about them in the media. As you can guess, all are positive and speak in glowing terms about the work and impact of the ministry. You might wonder why The Gathering doesn’t have a tab like that. Honestly, it is because most of our press is not what you like to have said, and until now I’ve been reluctant to share any of that. From the start, we have been labeled as shadowy and secretive. Conservative evangelical magazines have questioned our being fully Christian, while left-leaning publications have skewered us for being intent on eradicating every belief but…

On a hill above the lake of Galilee there is a chapel that sits on the site from which Jesus delivered the Beatitudes. As a boy, I had to memorize the whole passage from the Sermon on the Mount in the Gospel of Matthew, so I can still recite most of them. As I sat there going over each one again, I thought how idealistic they are compared to much of the common-sense exhortation we hear today about leadership and how to be a winner. Frederick Buechner put it best for me: Jesus saved for last the ones who side with heaven even when any fool can see it’s the…

As some of you know, I enjoy taking pictures – and then finding something to say.

One of my professors in seminary was Dr. James Fowler, the author of Stages of Faith: The Psychology of Human Development and the Quest for Meaning. I thought of his teachings again this week while remembering a trip with donors to visit ministries in the Dominican Republic. I realized that in much the same way we mature in faith, we tend to grow as givers. We all start at the beginning, and each stage is important and necessary. In fact, we won’t develop fully if we skip a stage. I’ve learned over the years that giving is more of a team sport than an individual pursuit, so I wanted to offer my perspective…