There are congregations on nearly every corner. I'm not sure we need more churches. What we need is a church. I say one church is better than fifty. I have tried to remove the plural form churches from my vocabulary, training myself to think of the church as Christ did, and as the early Christians did. The metaphors for her are always singular - a body, a bride. I heard one gospel preacher say it like this, as he really wound up and broke a sweat: "We've got to unite ourselves as one body. Because Jesus is coming back, and he's coming back for a bride not a harem.

Jesus did not send us into the world to make believers but to make disciples.

Love has no limits. Compassion has no party. It is the responsibility of every human being and every institution to end poverty and to interrupt injustice.

That is part of our critique of some of the charity and service work is that we can still keep relationships at a distance by creating programs that offer services but we don't really create a reconciled community.

I say let's be idealists. "Faith is being sure of what we hope for and certain of what we do not yet see" (Hebrews 11:1).

We say it is idealistic to think we can continue to live the way we live - with 5% of the world using half the world's resources, with $20,000 a second being spent on war.

When one in three Black men are in prison, those larger systemic injustices become a part of what it means to love our neighbor as ourself. We care about dismantling institutional racism. That begins in relationships when you see injustice happen.