There is a difference between feeding someone and eating dinner with them. If every Christian at home just made room for the stranger we would end homelessness overnight.

I'm a Tennessee boy. I grew up in East Tennessee most of my life, then came up to Philly to go to college and fell in love with this city, and particularly, my neighborhood on the north side of Philadelphia.

When it comes to the big issues like immigration, everyone has a role. The government has a role. The church has a role. Every Christian has a role.

There is extreme poverty in Appalachia, where I was, and increasingly poverty is not just an urban thing.

As my friend said that when people say the church is full of hypocrites, he says we always have room for more.

We're not church planters. We are community planters and, as we work in our communities, we join local churches.

We have to use our discontentment to engage rather than disengage - our hope has to be more powerful than our cynicism.