To create a community where faith matters not just in theory but in reality, faith has to be a public value, not just a private one.

Jeff Chu's pilgrimage across America to discover his own place as a gay man in the Christian church as well as attitudes about being gay and Christian across denominations is at once timely, smart, poignant, disturbing, inspiring, and maddening. It's essential reading for anyone who cares about the rights of the LGBTQ community to be treated as equal citizens at every level, including the religious-which means it should be essential reading for everybody.

The girl I am now, this girl-she survived. I just needed a little help getting here.

Yet little by little, I was also becoming the girl who was learning to live with this, all of it, letting it weave together with everything else, the good and the bad, as life moved forward, because thats what life did, regardless of whether we were ready for it or not.

Elizabeth Drescher makes a convincing case for why digital social media and Church not only go hand in hand, but how new technologies can help us reclaim traditions from the past in updated ways for today.

Why is it that when we lose something big, we begin to lose everything else along with it?

It's difficult to stop trying with the one you love. You always hope that this next time might work, might change everything for the better.