Little movements of communities of ordinary radicals are committed to doing small things with great love.

There are some things to die for but none to kill for.

Jesus is challenging that when addressing "who is your neighbor" and he has a lot of hard things to say about family, "unless you hate your own family you are not going to be a disciple." He is challenging the limits of our compassion and our love as if someone's kid suffers it should be as devastating to us as if it were our own kid. That is what the early church said.

I found that the death penalty  -  and I'm not a hot-button issue person, you know, I'm not a single issue person  -  but what I think drew me to the death penalty is because it raises some very deep, fundamental questions like: Is anybody beyond redemption?

Karl Barth said it well: "We have to read the Bible in one hand... and the newspaper in the other." Our faith should not cause us to escape this world but to engage it.

I am convinced that if we lose kids to the culture of drugs and materialism, of violence and war, it's because we don't dare them, not because we don't entertain them. It's because we make the gospel too easy, not because we make it too difficult. Kids want to do something heroic with their lives, which is why they play video games and join the army. But what do they do with a church that teaches them to tiptoe through life so they can arrive safely at death?

We know the Church wasn't born 200 years ago. It's encouraging to see some of the post-denominational churches actually wanting to reconnect with the story and the prayer life of the larger Church.