I went to the little church in the country after ten years in the city. And part of my dream was to sit on people's front porches with glasses of iced tea, and all that happened. I was able to send birthday cards to everyone in the parish and able to know everyone who was there on Sunday by name. And that was what I'd been looking for.

If churches saw their mission in the same way, there is no telling what might happen. What if people were invited to come tell what they already know of God instead of to learn what they are supposed to believe? What if they were blessed for what they are doing in the world instead of chastened for not doing more at church? What if church felt more like a way station than a destination? What if the church’s job were to move people out the door instead of trying to keep them in, by convincing them that God needed them more in the world than in the church?

Most of us like thinking we are God's only children...At least one of the purposes of church is to remind us that God has other children, easily as precious as we. Baptism and narcissism cancel each other out.

Salvation happens every time someone with a key uses it to open a door he could lock instead.

The tradition piece is so embedded in me I don't know that I can see it any more, but the community piece is one I've been in danger of losing.

We're children of God through our blood kinship with Christ. We're also sons and daughters of Adam and Eve, with a hereditary craving for forbidden fruit salad.

Contrary to popular opinion, Christians are not nice polite people who never get angry with one another. Those are not the virtues of God's people. Our virtues are truth-telling, kindness, forgiveness and yes, even anger-as long as it is the anger that is part of true love-through which we move closer to one another and to the God who has shown us how it is done.