Last night I was invited to talk about the challenges of Christian philanthropy to a group of Gathering participants and friends from around the Bay Area in California. As I’ve mentioned in a previous blog “Friends Not Trends ” I’ve pretty much stopped thinking about trends in giving but taking a few minutes to share what makes Christian giving challenging is different. There are many similarities that foundations and individual donors share with all givers. Structure,  tax laws and governance – as well as basic giving disciplines – are common to all. However, there are some issues we address as Christians that are unique and important. Theology matters. For some,…

Growing up in the South there was a refrain we would sing not having any idea what it meant – but it was memorable: “My hope is built on nothing less than Scofield notes and Moody Press.” While simplistic, it was certainly a succinct way of defining our theology when accompanied by millennial charts and dispensations. Today we might be singing “My hope is built on nothing less than Keller tweets and IV Press.”  Times have changed…but it took years. Last week I wrote about the powerful combination of dispensational theology and parachurch organizations that produced the historic surge of post-WWII American missions. A generation later, we are seeing a…

A few years ago I had a conversation with Roger Thurow while he was writing his book Enough: Why The World’s Poorest Starve In An Age of Plenty. His first question to me was, “Why is it that evangelicals are just now becoming involved in social justice issues?” Roger’s impression was that the only thing millions of evangelicals cared about was evangelism and any interest in issues of poverty hunger disease and orphans was relatively new.  As we talked, I realized that his perspective was probably common.  After all, the largest and most visible ministries and organizations were those focused on evangelism. While World Vision, Samaritan’s Purse, and a few others…

  A recent telephone interview study by the Barna Group presented a series of 20 “agree-or-disagree” statements to 1 008 self-identified Christians to determine “whether Christians have the actions and attitudes of Jesus as they interact with others or if they are more akin to the beliefs and behaviors of Pharisees ” the self-righteous sect of religious leaders described in the New Testament.” Here is a sample of statements Barna used to describe Christ-like actions and attitudes: “I listen to others to learn their story before telling them about my faith.” “I see God-given value in every person” ” regardless of their past or present condition.” “It is more important to…

Our guest blogger this week is Ben Smilowitz. In his first year of law school Ben saw the bungled response to Hurricane Katrina and realized a need existed for someone to demand public accountability and provide an open line for survivors ” emergency workers and volunteers to report gaps during disasters…so he started the Disaster Accountability Project. DAP has become the leading nonprofit that provides long-term independent oversight of disaster management systems. His perspective is valuable, and The Gathering wants to share his thoughts with you. The recent natural and man-made disasters in Boston” Texas the upper-Midwest China Iran/Pakistan and Bangladesh underscore the importance of disaster planning. Although costly effective…

  "You never get over it. It's been 20 years since we lost her and we think about her every day." A couple of years ago at The Gathering ” we had a panel of four parents who had lost children. We didn't do it to be sensational or dramatic. We did it because a number of families in The Gathering have children who have died. Some of these children have been young” and others were older like the couple I quote above who lost a daughter early in her marriage. No one really wanted to do the panel and honestly I felt a twinge of guilt about asking them.…

Years ago I taught Crime and Punishment to high school seniors and the main character Raskolnikov describes the moment before he murdered the pawnbroker: “I saw clear as daylight how strange it is that not a single person living in this mad world has had the daring to go straight for it all and send it flying to the devil! I…I wanted to have the daring…and I killed her.” Scholars who study fundamentalism describe the process that moves a person wrestling with internal conflict to a sense of clarity that can sometimes be lethal. When everything that was confusing – even contradictory – is suddenly clear, there is a rush of…

Brennan Manning the author of “The Ragamuffin Gospel ” died this week after many years of declining health. We never met and unlike thousands of others, I’ve not read the book. But in the last several months a number of his quotes have been sent to me by friends. He wrote a good deal about the dangers of thinking less of yourself than God does. But he also wrote about “thinking more highly of yourself than you ought” as Paul said in Romans. Because I have been watching the effects of younger ministry leaders being constantly pressured to build larger and larger “platforms” for their brand and message,” I remembered…