Two nights ago I posted an article on Christian music that included this quote from Joe Bob Briggs: "Christian music is bad songs written about God by white people." My friend Steven Garber at the Washington Institute messaged me back with a piece he Steve Turner and Charlie Peacock had done at the Art House in Nashville. It began with the question “Can you sing songs shaped by the truest truths of the universe ” but in a language that the whole world can understand?” In the course of our back and forth” Steven passed along this observation from writer Walker Percy "Bad books always lie. They lie most…

  There has probably never been a time like today in our country for both the creation of wealth and non-profits and social entrepreneurs.We sometimes think this trend is new but it is an ancient pattern.Often you see this pattern go together “and at other times one follows the other. One of the reasons for the founding of monastic communities was that a generation of young people was turning away from the excesses of their wealthy parents.During the 12th and early 13th centuries there was something of an explosion of both wealth and the formation of informal orders within the Catholic Church. One of those” the Franciscans grew and spread…

  This should probably be a letter to the editor of the Huffington Post or maybe a comment on the article by this same title written by Ken Wytsma this week. Ken is the president of Kilns College in Bend Ore. ” where he teaches courses on philosophy and justice. He is also the founder of The Justice Conference—an annual international conference that began in 2010 with a few hundred participants and will have several thousand attending in Philadelphia this year. It's not the only conference focused on the topic of justice” but it is one of the best examples of the momentum the issue of justice has reached. The…

  I’ve never followed the career of Lance Armstrong but for some reason decided to watch his sessions with Oprah this past week. What I saw was disturbing: arrogance pride narcissism deceit betrayal out-of-control desire to win bullying disloyalty ” disgrace and the emotional disconnect required to isolate himself from the guilt of his own judgments. Yes” there was remorse and the realization of what he had done but it has still not become sin for him. He used words like “sick” and “flawed” when the one word he needs to understand is “sin.” But there is nothing in his background that would lead him to that ” and I…

One of the most watched events of 2012 was Nik Wallenda's tightrope walk across Niagara Falls. In so doing he became the first man to walk over the falls in 116 years and the first ever to walk right over the falls. If you saw it you probably remember the mist-obscured image of his dropping to one knee fist-pumping ” and running to the end of the rope into the arms of his family. It was a great moment of personal victory. I've not seen any leadership books so far based on

  One of the most watched events of 2012 was Nik Wallenda's tightrope walk across Niagara Falls. In so doing he became the first man to walk over the falls in 116 years and the first ever to walk right over the falls. If you saw it you probably remember the mist-obscured image of his dropping to one knee fist-pumping ” and running to the end of the rope into the arms of his family. It was a great moment of personal victory. I've not seen any leadership books so far based on

  Thirty years ago I convened a small group of friends from around the country and they became the “Dream Team” charged with thinking about the future of The Gathering. We spent two days filling up newsprint sheets and hanging them on the walls of the hotel conference room. We followed all the usual steps of brainstorming and strategic planning. We asked great questions and speculated about customers values niches and brands. Still just one thing remains for sure in my mind – our common desire that we not become an “elite” group or what one team member called “a Bohemian Grove for Christian donors.” In the years since we…

  I have been teaching from Hosea for the last several weeks and also reading John Wesley’s Sermon #50 on the use of money. It is in this sermon that Wesley develops the now famous three-point formula for the right perspective on wealth.  It would have been relevant for Israel then and is certainly so for us today.  Israel had become so caught up in the pursuit of wealth ” and men had so perfected the art of financial deceit that they are described as literally loving fraud – not just wealth but the deceit itself. Getting wealth in legitimate pursuits no longer appealed to them.     Here is…

  There has only been one article written about The Gathering since we began in 1985 – and that one had a negative slant.  It was titled “Hush-Hush: What Makes Christian Philanthropy Christian?”  This was the opening paragraph: “Two years ago they gathered at the swank Four Seasons in Seattle. Last year they gathered in Cancun. Next week to the Ritz-Carlton Philadelphia they will doubtless come again bringing their checkbooks with them for a Nov. 1 and 2 conference. ‘They’ are scores of wealthy believers looking for ways to use their earthly riches to advance the heavenly kingdom. In a good example of upper-class understatement their organization is called simply…

  Every year we take small groups of Gathering participants on trips outside the country to visit work being done by people who are involved with The Gathering. Earlier this year we went to Cuba and decided we would do something inside the United States in December.  We had read about Portland through a series of articles in Christianity Today titled "This Is Your City" that had featured innovative cooperation of government corporate church and civic organizations. As one of the participants put it "This is what the church looks like in Babylon when it seeks the peace of a city in which it is in exile and not in…