As a convert to Orthodox Christianity, I have come to appreciate the strong connection in our tradition between spirituality and creation. Many of our great feasts, minor celebrations, and daily prayers involve joining prayer, blessing, and the material world. Unlike Western Christians who remember the three kings on Jan. 6, 13 days after Christmas we celebrate Theophany, the feast of the baptism of Christ in the Jordan. Part of this feast includes blessing water in our churches or processing to a nearby pond, sea, or ocean where a priest will toss a cross into the water, transforming the whole body into a holy water font. We annually commemorate our loved ones who have fallen asleep in the Lord by making and blessing koliva -- boiled wheat with fruit, sugar, and spices. The wheat recalls the words of Christ, that "unless a grain of wheat falls into the ground and dies, it remains alone; but if it dies, it produces much grain," while the cinnamon, clove, and pomegranate remind us of the sweetness of the resurrection to come. And each liturgical day begins in the evening with vespers and the chanting of Psalm 102, a hymn of the goodness of the natural world: "The trees of the Lord are full of sap, the cedars of Lebanon which he planted, where the birds make their nests ...."

Because of this intertwining of spirituality and sacred materialism, environmental awareness can be easily encouraged by our spiritual leaders. His Holiness Patriarch Bartholomew I (whom The Guardian has named "The 'pope' of hope" and elsewhere has been called the "green patriarch") in particular has become a leader among clergy who are dedicated to rallying people of faith to care for the environment. He has organized environmentally responsible cruises for political leaders, journalists, and scientists on the Baltic Sea, the Black Sea, and the Amazon river in an effort to use his ecclesial rank to change attitudes and policies related to the environment. The patriarch also gave new significance to Sept. 1, our church new year, by calling for prayer and supplication for the environment on this day.

In his book Encountering the Mystery, the patriarch writes, "In the Orthodox liturgical perspective, creation is received and conceived as a gift from God. The notion of creation-as-gift defines our Orthodox theological understanding of the environmental question in a concise and clear manner while at the same time determining the human response to that gift through the responsible and proper use of the created world. Each believer is called to celebrate life in a way that reflects the words of the Divine [Eucharistic] Liturgy: 'Thine own from Thine own we offer to Thee, on behalf of all and for all.'"

Abayea Pelt is the office manager and receptionist for Sojourners.

When I interviewed Phyllis Tickle for Rising from the Ashes: Rethinking Church, she reflected on the seismic changes she sees occurring in contemporary Christianity. "Evangelicalism has lost much of its credibility and much of its spiritual energy as of late, in much the same way that mainline Protestantism has." Lest anyone find this news so depressing they want to run for cover, Phyllis offers some much needed historical and hopeful perspective. "About every 500 years, the church feels compelled to have a giant rummage sale." During the last such upheaval, the Great Reformation of 500 years ago, Protestantism took over hegemony. But Roman Catholicism did not die. It just had to drop back and reconfigure. Each time a rummage sale has happened, in other words, whatever held pride of place simply gets broken apart into smaller pieces, and then it picks itself up and to use Diana Butler Bass's term, "re-tradition.

As I ride along the religious superhighway, I find I need some new tools to help me navigate this process. For starters, Andrew Jones' blog provides excellent ongoing reflections of the changing Christian landscape from a global perspective, as Proost UK offers worship resources that help refuel me and recharge my batteries. Recently, I caught wind of Tickle's radical yet totally orthodox retelling of the gospel. In The Words of Jesus: A Gospel of the Sayings of Our Lord with Reflections Tickle categorizes the sayings of Jesus into five categories: Public Teachings, Private Instructions, Healing Dialogues, Intimate Conversations, and the Post-Resurrection Encounters.

"Psychologists have demonstrated many times over that what we say is tailored to and informed by the audience to whom we say it. In a sense, in other words, while each of us may be an integer, we have various configurations or arrangements of our "self" that we modify, exchange, and employ according to our perception of those whom we are at any given moment engaging. Jesus of Nazareth, being fully human, followed that same pattern, though once again I had never perceived or even entertained such a possibility until I began listening to Him shift emphases, adapt rhetoric, and fashion varying modes of analogy to fit those with whom He was speaking."

Thanks to Lacey's latest and, unfortunately, last book, The Liberator (a revolutionary retelling of the New Testament), the Inspired by the Bible Experience: New Testament audio CD (nothing says "Oh my God" like Samuel L. Jackson channeling the voice of the Almighty), and Tickle's commentary, I've been immersed in scripture from some rather unique vantage points. Over the past year, instead of trying to memorize scripture and verse, I'm allowing these sweet holy words to fall on my ears and into my mouth. It's like I'm falling in love all over again with this radical love-making, rule-breaking, life-taking Christ.

Becky Garrison is senior contributing writer for The Wittenburg Door. Portions of this posting are excerpted from The New Atheists Crusaders and Their Unholy Grail.  Reprinted with permission from Thomas Nelson, Inc.

I'm always a bit anxious in new worship environments. As I settle into my plastic chair at New Beginnings Lutheran Church, I realize that now is certainly no different. At least, I think to myself, my cell phone won't go off in worship; it was confiscated by the guard before I went through the metal detector.

New Beginnings is a congregation on the inside of the Denver Women's Correctional Facility, and I've come with three others from my own community to share in their worship service. My anxiety is not at all lessened by the praise music - of which I have an almost irrational aversion - coming out of the jam box behind the purple-draped altar. Seriously, I'm sinfully snotty about this issue.

The problem is that, as the women file into the room in their dark green scrubs and black boots, many immediately pick up the song sheets and begin singing along. I've always associated what I call "Jesus-is-my-boyfriend music" with privileged white suburban mega-churches. But here in front of me are women of untold sin and sorrow, worn, unlike many of us, on the outside; singing "Lord I Lift Your Name On High" - singing about how faithful and marvelous God is from the inside of a prison.

I feel moved - and not by the emotionalism of the overproduced praise music. I'm moved again by how God seems to continually show up in ways I find objectionable. Like John the Baptist attempting to talk Jesus out of being baptized, and the disciples scandalized by Jesus' conversation with the woman at the well, and Peter's "God forbid that ever happen to you" at the news of how his messiah would die, I too object. God forbid that God's own redeeming work in the world be done through music and theology I find abhorrent. It's totally annoying and absolutely predictable. It happens every time.

Nadia Bolz-Weber is a Lutheran vicar living in Denver, Colorado where she is developing a new emerging church, House for all Sinners and Saints.  She blogs at www.sarcasticlutheran.com and has a book for Seabury Press coming out this Fall; a theological and cultural commentary based on having watched 24 consecutive hours of Trinity Broadcasting Network and survived.

Last week I shared a snapshot of the new monastics. This week I will look at the mosaics. God is doing something new through a new generation of multicultural church planters.

Efrem Smith, who coauthored The Hip-Hop Church, will be keynoting our conference on the theme of Dr. Martin King's vision of "The Beloved Community." By 2060 the United States will become the first Western country in which Europeans will no longer be the dominant demographic group. We will become a richly multicultural society, and Smith will explain how the church can help us welcome this future.

Smith has planted Sanctuary Covenant Church, compelling evidence that God is doing something new through young people from different races and cultures. They are experiencing something of the richness of God's kingdom not only in their worship but in their life together across race and class.

The emerging church movement tends to be very white and male. But Tommy Kyllonen, a multicultural church planter in Florida, states in Un.orthodox: Church. Hip-Hop. Culture that the emerging church is also the young black male in the hood. It is the second-generation Mexican in L.A. and the child of the Chinese immigrant in Houston. The emerging church is the Puerto Rican female on Wall Street.

Smith tells me that urban hip-hop culture isn't just postmodern but also post-institutional, post-soul, and post-civil rights too. I find that multicultural churches, like the best of emerging and missional churches, tend to be more outwardly focused in mission. For example, Smith's church invests more than 50% of their giving in local and global mission.

As we race into an increasingly multicultural future, all of our largely monocultural churches are going to need to build bridges to the growing numbers of multicultural immigrant and ethnic congregations sharing life and mission. Read more at www.thenewconspirators.com

Tom Sine founded Mustard Seed Associates in 1989. He has worked as a consultant in futures research and planning for numerous nonprofit organizations and speaks at gatherings all over the world with his wife, Christine. His newest book, The New Conspirators: Creating the Future One Mustard Seed at a Time, comes out next month. Discover what God is doing through a new generation of risk takers, innovators, and prophets February 28-March 1 in Seattle. Visit: www.thenewconspirators.wordpress.com

Discover what God is doing through a new generation of risk-takers, innovators, and prophets at The New Conspirators. We have asked these young conspirators, who comprise at least four new streams, to share their stories, dreams, and struggles on Feb. 28-March 1, 2008, in Seattle. These four streams include: the new monasticism, the mosaic (multicultural), the missional, and the emergent. I want to share snapshots of these four streams, starting with the new monastics.

Shane Claiborne will be at our gathering sharing about the new monasticism movement and from his new book, Jesus For President. Over the past two decades, a new Protestant movement very much like the Franciscan order has emerged. Like many in the traditional Franciscan order, they have moved into the poorest urban communities in our world, live in community as families and singles, and care for the poor, often living at the same lifestyle level of the poor around them. A number of them have even developed a rule of life. These include groups like Word Made Flesh, InnerCHANGE, Servant Partners, Servants to Asia's Urban Poor, and Urban Neighbours of Hope (UNOH).

In 2005, a group of several hundred primarily younger people convened in Raleigh-Durham to discuss the need for a New Monasticism movement to more faithfully live out the gospel of Christ in our troubled world. As we met together, I was impressed by the desire of these young people to give more authentic expression to their faith.

Their communities include Rutba House in Raleigh-Durham, North Carolina; Communality in Lexington, Kentucky; Camden House in New Jersey; and the Simple Way in Philadelphia. They are also connected to older intentional Christian communities, including Reba Place in Chicago and the Church of the Sojourners in San Francisco. Together, they have published a book, School(s) for Conversion: Twelve Marks of a New Monasticism, and they run Schools of Conversion for those who want to find their own way forward.

What makes the new monastics distinct from the other four streams is that they have no interest in planting new expressions of church; rather, they are creating new forms of community in which they seek to embody the gospel and reach out to those in need. Shane says, "Our deserts are the inner city and the abandoned places of the empire." This stream offers the most robust critique of modern culture, but also has the strongest voice for social justice and the care of God's creation.

Tom Sine founded Mustard Seed Associates in 1989. He has worked as a consultant in futures research and planning for numerous nonprofit organizations and speaks at gatherings all over the world with his wife, Christine. His newest book, The New Conspirators: Creating the Future One Mustard Seed at a Time, comes out next month.

Far too often, activists do little to nurture their souls. Consequently, they "burn out." Ignoring the need for spiritual revitalization to sustain their zeal on behalf of the poor and oppressed, they wear out and fade into oblivion. Often those who were one-time dynamic spokespersons for social justice while living out countercultural values become exhausted from working hard with very little sense of accomplishment. Becoming cynical, they sometimes say disparaging things about those who still remain in the fray.

It was out of deep concern for the spiritual condition of social justice activists that I teamed up with a young professor from Spring Arbor University, Mary Darling, to write The God of Intimacy and Action: Reconnecting Ancient Spiritual Practices, Evangelism and Justice.

In this book I, along with my co-author, endeavor to present ways to renew the energies of social activists by tapping into spiritual practices of Catholic mystics that we Protestants often ignore. In particular, we focus much of our attention on the Spiritual Exercises of St. Ignatius whose directives can help us move beyond the often shallow and mundane prayer styles that are common among Protestants.

First, we explore what Ignatian spiritual directors call centering prayer. Centering prayer is something I do each morning for at least 15 minutes. During the early hours, I take time to center down on Jesus as I say his name over and over again. I do this until everything else is driven out of my mind and I am almost totally focused on Jesus. In stillness I wait for Jesus to reach out from the cross and absorb into his own body the sins that mark my soul. Then, in the midst of quietude, I wait for the Holy Spirit to flow into me and saturate my personhood. I have learned from experience that "they that wait upon the Lord shall renew their strength" (Isaiah 40:31).

Secondly, I practice Lectio Divina. This is a spiritually informed way of reading scripture in which there is no reliance on scholarly interpretations, such as Bible commentaries. I read some carefully chosen verses, shut the Bible, close my eyes, and wait patiently for the Holy Spirit to tell me what I need to hear from God through what I have just read. There is something mystical in recognizing how verses that I have read many times before speak to me in new ways when practicing Lectio Divina, bringing new meaning that is especially relevant to my existential situation.

Next, there is a practice called "The Prayer of Examen." This I do at bedtime. With my head on my pillow, I reflect on all the ways God used me to do good during the past day. I think of all the things I did that were "honest … just … pure … lovely … of good report … and worthy of praise" (see Philippians 4:8). Only after such "feel-good" self-affirmations am I ready to review the day for a second time--this time remembering the ways in which I sinned and fell short of what I should have been and done. I confess and wait for Christ's cleansing.

Of course, there is much more to the spiritual exercises that have proved so essential in keeping me alive spiritually and revitalizing my "first love" for working for justice and doing evangelism. In the book Mary and I go into these exercises in depth and attempt to show how biblically prescribed and spiritually valid mysticism has motivated leaders such as John Wesley and George Whitefield to proclaim a holistic gospel.

I hope you get this book and find it useful in making spiritual renewal a daily practice. Developing spiritual depth through such exercises will enable you, in accord with the teachings of Jesus, to bring forth fruit, some a hundredfold, some sixtyfold, and some thirtyfold (Matthew 13:8). Without such care of the soul you are apt, as the scriptures tell us, to "wither away" (Matthew 13:6).

Tony Campolo is founder of the Evangelical Association for the Promotion of Education (EAPE) and professor emeritus of sociology at Eastern University.

I would love to live as a river flows, carried by the surprise of its own unfolding.

The Irish writer, priest, and environmental activist, and my beloved friend - John O'Donohue - died unexpectedly and peacefully in the early hours of Friday, Jan. 4, 2008. His witness to peace, his work on the human heart, and his actions for justice make him someone that I want to introduce to readers of this blog who may not already know him.

John's work on retrieving the earthiness of celtic spirituality and helping make sense of it in a postmodern world is so profound that its impact has not yet been fully felt, and it represents something rare in a consumerist culture: a work of art that will outlast its author. He knew that work for justice and peace in the world depends on the inner work we must do to allow our own souls not to become corroded by whatever wounds we have sustained on our journeys.

What many may not know is that in addition to his ministry in the Catholic priesthood, and latterly as a writer and speaker, he was a serious environmental activist, helping to spearhead a small group that successfully prevented the despoilment of the Burren, one of Ireland's most stunning natural landscapes. He put his reputation on the line to save something worth preserving, even being prepared to go to prison to do so; and through building community consensus and taking on the powers that be, won an astonishing David and Goliath victory that resulted in substantial change to Irish law and politics.

John knew that we live in the intersection of the sacred and the profane, and he wanted to nudge us in the direction of understanding that holiness has more to do with being aware of the light around us, and living lives that honour it, than moral puritanism. In the introduction to his book To Bless the Space Between Us, to be published in March, he writes of how, in any given day, some of us humans will experience the shock of being told of the sudden death of a friend. John wanted us to be tender to the fact that the faces of strangers we meet every day all hide secrets that are both divine and tragic. We do not always know who among us is suffering some unnameable torment, nor who is rejoicing at the blessing of a lifetime.

In his activism, as well as his writing and speaking, and most of all, in his life, he wanted people to have shelter from the storms their lives would bring. To those of us privileged to know him, he showed love and friendship of a rare sort; he was the kind of spiritual teacher who revealed mysteries that most of us can't see; he truly lived a life to the full. And at the beginning of this year, which brings the 40th anniversary of the deaths of three other men who sought to embody an extraordinary kind of leadership – Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., Senator Robert F. Kennedy, and Father Thomas Merton – most of all what I want to remember about John O'Donohue is that he taught me that the best corrective to evil is not just to kick against it, but to make something beautiful in its place.

John O'Donohue's books Anam Cara, Eternal Echoes, and Beauty are all available; his latest and final book, To Bless the Space Between Us, will be published in March.

Gareth Higgins is a Christian writer and activist in Belfast, Northern Ireland. For the past decade he was the founder/director of the zero28 project, an initiative addressing questions of peace, justice, and culture. He is the author of the insightful How Movies Helped Save My Soul and blogs at www.godisnotelsewhere.blogspot.com

During Advent, as I kindle the wreath candles that mark the journey to the Bethlehem stable, I return to particular writers that I love and certain music that I can't seem to get through the seasons without. I have Advent habits.

For instance, I often re-read W.H. Auden's For the Time Being. In one portion King Herod weighs the threat to publiic order posed by the birth of the Christ child. Is the collatoral damage of murdering the male children justified in order to maintain security and social stability? If this Messiah survives, ponders Herod, then:

Reason will be replaced by revelation … Justice will be replaced by pity as the cardinal virtue, and all fear of retribution will vanish … The new aristocracy will consist exclusively of hermits, bums, and permanent invalids. The rough diamond, the consumptive whore, the bandit who is good to his mother, the epileptic girl who has a way with animals will be the heroes and heroines of the new age, when the general, the statesman, and the philosopher have become the butt of every farce and satire.

I listen to the San Antonio Vocal Art Ensemble's Guadalupe: Virgen de los Indios CD. The ancient Nahua Indian hyms welcoming the Christ child and extolling the virtues of Mary are haunting - interweaving complex indigenous harmonies gleaned from 400-year-old deerskin musical scores:

The world guards the memory of the life that He gave in the earth, and there in the heavens the presence of Your glory is felt. The vision of happiness, then, exists in the memory of this earth.

It's also an opportunity to keep company with the Bible's holy ones. Episcopal priest Margaret Guenther writes movingly about Anna and Simeon in the December issue of Sojourners. And Ade Bethune's silk screen Icon of the Mother of God reminds me that the saints are keeping watch over me – even in Advent's terrifying darkness.

Rose Marie Berger, a Sojourners associate editor, is a Catholic peace activist and poet.

When I went to check my post office box after Thanksgiving, among the pile of mail waiting for me were review copies of Dinesh D'Souza's What's So Great about Christianity and Mother Teresa: Come Be My Light.

I first picked up D'Souza's bestseller. Throughout this book, he seems to possessed an amazing self-confidence that all the world's problems could be solved if only we would just become Christians. It reminded me of those books I read in my twenties back when I thought I knew all the answers. It's only been within the past few years that I've learned to start asking the right questions.

Yet, I have to admit that a side of me wished that I still possessed that absolute certainty about my faith. This year hasn't been an easy one for me on many fronts. In fact, I don't know where I'd be without my spiritual friends, who sometimes prayed on my behalf when I was too distracted to think straight.

When I picked up Come by My Light, I discovered a stark honesty that caught me off guard. Mother Teresa was not the woman the world thought we knew. As Shane Claiborne noted when I interviewed him for The Wittenburg Door, whenever people ask him about his trip to Calcutta, "they say, 'Oh, you met Mother Teresa,' like she glows in the dark or something."

While rest of the world put her on a pious pedestal, this seemingly simple nun from Calcutta spent most of her ministry wandering in the wilderness. She pours out her personal pain in private letters that she penned to her spiritual director and others in her life. These letters indicate that ever since she began her ministry to the poor, the voice of Jesus that guided her to start this work became silent. This silence continued throughout her entire ministry. She describes the darkness with a piercing honesty that brought me to tears.

Pray for me - for within me everything is icy cold - it is only that blind faith that carries me through for in reality to me all is darkness. As long as our Lord has all the pleasure - I really do not count.

As expected, atheists like Christopher Hitchens use her personal pain as further evidence that God does not exist. Hitchens gloats, "She was no more exempt from the realization that religion is a human fabrication than any other person."

Unlike this anti-God guru, Mother Teresa knew that just because God was absent from her heart, that didn't mean God had abandoned her. With a Job-like sense of determination, she learned to embrace this darkness as a part of her ministry.

Let Him do with me whatever He wants, as He wants, for as long as He wants. If my darkness is to light some soul - even if it be nothing to nobody - I am perfectly happy - to be God's flower of the field.

Just as I'm about to finish this book, Shane Claiborne just happened to arrive in New York City on the first Sunday of Advent. (For a recap of that visit, see "What Would Jesus Buy?") I'm not about to call him a saint because I know he'd just start to giggle and throw paper airplanes at me. This ordinary radical relayed stories of finding hope and healing through his work with those spiritual souls that society has discarded. I couldn't have asked for a better Advent candle to help illuminate my darkness.

During my interview with Shane, he remarked:

Someone asked me after she died, 'Is her work going to live on?' I actually think Mother Teresa died a long time ago when she submitted herself to Christ, and the thing that everyone loves about her was her work, that's Jesus. That's going to live forever. I've been to Calcutta since Mother Teresa died, and there were more people there than were ever there when she was alive. She's sort of like the seed that dies, and fruit is born.

For those who find themselves struggling in the darkness during this Advent season, I highly recommend reflecting on Mother Teresa's words. Through her prayers of pain, I pray that you can be reminded that you are not alone.

Becky Garrison's books include The New Atheist Crusaders and their Unholy Grail: Their Misguided Quest to Destroy Your Faith (Thomas Nelson, January 2008), Red and Blue God, Black and Blue Church, and Rising from the Ashes: Rethinking Church.

As a child I found no joy in an Advent calendar; all those little flaps and doors and bite-size pieces of chocolate signified nothing more than the fact that Christmas was still a really, really long time away. Especially as I got down to the last few doors, just a few days before the big event, time seemed to take on a pace as slow as molasses sucked through a straw. Admittedly, the coming of the Christ child was not what had me wound so tight. It was the portly fellow in the red suit who delivered untold delights on my living room floor that made the Advent season so terribly long. While the object of my desire may have been misdirected, the spirit of Advent was palpable. I was waiting for something big and it was taking a very, very long time to arrive.

How odd that the older we get, the faster Advent seems to fly by. Barely has the Thanksgiving turkey been devoured before we find that we're out of time to prepare for Christmas. There have been several years when I've realized that Christmas was a week away and I'd not yet put up a tree or even hung a wreath on the door. The units of time have not changed over the years; a minute is still 60 seconds, a day is still 24 hours. How is it, then, that Advent speeds past us when once it crawled along?

Perhaps it is because as adults when we want something we can usually find a way to get it without waiting very long at all. When we do have to wait longer than expected – someone decides to write a check for their groceries or the line at the coffee shop is out the door – we get antsy, even angry for the delay.

This past year my husband and I embarked on an adventure in anti-consumerism. To date, we've gone 11 months and three days without purchasing anything new (except for things like toilet paper and shampoo), and through it all I've learned an old but timeless lesson: good things come to those who wait. Unable to run out the store whenever the whim for something new crosses my mind, I've learned to work hard for the things I really want and let the desire for useless stuff just fade away.

Advent should be a time for slowing down not speeding up. On Christmas Day we celebrate a world transformed by the birth of a small child. What if we lived as if the world might be transformed once again? Our faith tells us that how we keep ourselves busy ourselves during the wait is important. We are not called to lives of idle desperation but active hope. Would Advent creep up on us if we truly believed that the world might be so transformed again by something as unassuming as a child born in a manger? How would you prepare your household, your family, and your neighborhood for a gift so radical and promising?

This year I'll try to wait (the active hopeful kind of waiting) as if I believe that my most impossible dreams - a world where no child goes hungry, no sick are left to die, no bombs explode - could be made real. The anticipation will certainly rival anything from my childhood. I'm waiting for something big this year but I've found that God's gifts always surprise.

Amy Ard is a former national field organizer for Sojourners, and her related commentary, "A Simple Christmas," appears in the December issue of Sojourners.

Since the publication of my book, The Practicing Congregation, in 2004, when I first wrote about my research on vital mainline churches, hundreds of clergy groups and church leadership gatherings have invited me to share with them insights on what makes for a good congregation. At every gathering, I include the project's key finding: "Congregations that intentionally engage Christian practices are congregations that experience new vitality."

The sentence combines three components: intentionality, practice, and vitality. Further defining them, I point out that intentionality involves choice and taking responsibility for individual and communal spirituality; that practice is not a program, rather it is a meaningful way of life; and that vitality cannot be measured in terms of numbers, as it means spiritual health and maturity. A vital congregation is one where all people—including the pastor—are growing members of an organic community of spiritual practice.

Inevitably, someone asks: "How does this relate to a Willow Creek strategy for church growth?" Most every pastor knows about Willow Creek and its wildly successful seeker-oriented, market-driven church growth program—and many pastors have labored to recreate such programs in their own churches or denominations.

Until recently, my answer has been, "Not very well. They focus on numbers, on getting people into church, and on 'one-size fits all' programs for the spiritual life. That isn't bad for them; it is their path. And it is different from what my team found in small and medium-sized mainline churches. We found the programs don't make Christians. Practices do."

Now, however, I can answer in the words of Bill Hybels, the founding pastor of Willow Creek, as reported on the Leadership Journal blog. After an extensive study of their congregation (and several similar churches), Willow Creek's leaders concluded participation in programs did not inculcate Christian discipleship and that they had spent "millions of dollars" on programs thinking that they would help people grow—only to find that there was no real increase in parishioners' love for God or their neighbor.

"We made a mistake," says Hybels: "What we should have done when people crossed the line of faith and become Christians, we should have started telling people and teaching people that they have to take responsibility to become 'self-feeders.' We should have gotten people, taught people, how to read their bible between service, how to do the spiritual practices much more aggressively on their own."

Notice what Hybels says is missing: intentionality, practice, and vitality. Or, as the Leadership blog put it, "Spiritual growth doesn't happen best by becoming dependent on elaborate church programs but through the age old spiritual practices of prayer, bible reading, and relationships. These basic disciplines do not require multi-million dollar facilities and hundreds of staff to manage."

To point this out is not "I told you so." Rather, this is a profound development in North American congregational life. When one of the nation's leading programmatic churches says that programs do not work and that their vision of spiritual maturity was "wrong," we best all sit up and take notice.

For more than a decade, a quiet renewal has been spreading across American religion and is changing the way faith is experienced and practiced. Willow Creek's self-doubt is indication of that change.

As I have traveled across the U.S. and Canada, I have found that many congregations—including mainline churches, progressive evangelical communities, and synagogues—are rebasing their life on spiritual practices including prayer, theological reflection, doing justice, generosity, storytelling, discernment, shaping community, hospitality, and leadership. These faith communities have developed a healing sort of grassroots wisdom and have grappled successfully with the very issues that Willow Creek is now seeking to address. Their modest wisdom may be the very thing that mega-churches like Willow Creek need in order to experience a deeper way of life—the maturity in faith that they admit is alluding thousands of their members.

In all of this, we may well feel the Spirit's tug toward a different kind of congregational cooperation. What if we begin to see other faith communities as pilgrims on a journey to God, instead of competitors in a religious marketplace? Can we share with and serve each other as we walk a new—yet very old—road of shaping communal faith as a way of wisdom?

I do not read Bill Hybels' confession as a moment to shout that the emperor has no clothes. Instead, I read it as an invitation to open our collective imaginations—to rethink congregations, form new relationships, and encourage one another on a journey of transformation. We all, even Willow Creek, need friends along the way of learning to love God and love our neighbor.

Diana Butler Bass (www.dianabutlerbass.com) has written on new religious trends in several books including The Practicing Congregation and Christianity for the Rest of Us. This post was adapted from one originally appearing in The Alban Weekly.

The critics of the suburbs say that you and I live narrow lives. I agree. My life is narrow. From one perspective or another, all our lives are narrow. Only when lives are placed side by side do they seem larger. —D.J. Waldie, in Holy Land: A Suburban Memoir

Prompted by the ubiquitous bracelets and bumper stickers, many Christians are asking (or being annoyed by) the question, “What Would Jesus Do?” Thanks to the creative folks at the Evangelical Environmental Network, we’ve also been encouraged to ask, “What Would Jesus Drive?”

So here’s another pithy iteration to ponder: “Where Would Jesus Live?”

If you’re like most Christians concerned about justice and peace, “the suburbs” would probably not appear in your answer. You might say the city, where Jesus could minister to the poor and the oppressed and walk downtown to preach to corrupt politicians. Or perhaps you think of the country, where he and his disciples could raise organic tomatoes and share their free-range chickens with the hungry. But Jesus in a split-level, mowing his lawn on Saturdays and waving to the neighbor kids on their trampoline? Hmmmmmm....

So what about those of us who do live in the suburbs? Are we doomed to live narrow lives of conspicuous consumption, super-commutes, and obsessive lawn care? Or is it possible to be a faithful, broad-minded Christian in a land of housing developments, minivans, and strip malls?

The recent or upcoming publication of several books on Christianity and the suburbs shows that many Christians are ready to begin examining the particular privileges and challenges of the suburbs. While the authors vary in their perspectives, all of them conclude that Christians can live authentic lives of discipleship in the ‘burbs. “The things I am called to practice here in suburbia are the same Christian distinctives of love, witness, mercy and justice that all Christians should embody wherever they may live,” said Al Hsu, author of The Suburban Christian, in a recent interview.

Christians in the suburbs may have more chances now than ever before to practice those works of mercy and justice right where they live: a recent study from the Brookings Institution found that more Americans in poverty now live in suburbs than in cities. And many of them are finding that the suburban communities they now call home aren’t as equipped with services such as public transportation, accessible health care, and job training programs as the cities from which they moved.

This changing economic face of the suburbs may mean that the fabled narrow suburban life might not be quite so narrow anymore. It may remind us to look for Jesus in the suburbs after all....

Valerie Weaver-Zercher is a writer and editor in Mechanicsburg, Pennsylvania. Read more about suburban spirituality in the July issue of Sojourners magazine.

The biblical use of the word "righteousness" is the moral equivalent of what we mean when we speak of holiness. It incorporates such concerns as a passion for justice and a concern for truth along with the need to live an ethically responsible life. It involves reflection in what we do and the Christian moral vision by which we understand who we are. Righteousness is the human expression of holiness embodying a vision rooted in moral perspective.

- James C. Fenhagen

excerpt from "Invitation to Holiness."

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The righteous know the rights of the poor; the wicked have no such understanding.

- Proverbs 29:7-7

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For six years you shall sow your land and gather in its yield; but the seventh year you shall let it rest and lie fallow, so that the poor of your people may eat; and what they leave the wild animals may eat.

- Exodus 23:10-11

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Christ is the true philosopher because he embodies in his ministry the welcoming and caring reception of others so that they might more fully be the beings they are meant to be. Indeed, in the Christlike effort to understand, serve, heal, feed, and reconcile the earth and its communities we show forth the highest wisdom.

- Norman Wirzba
excerpt from the essay "Placing the Soul: An Agrarian Philosophical Principle" in The Essential Agraian Reader: The Future of Culture, Community, and the Land, edited by Wirzba. (c) 2003.

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Religious silence is silence that is undertaken as an act of worship. Whether I hear God or not makes no difference.

- Thomas Merton
quoted in Alive Now! November/December 1990

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The word of the Lord came to me: Mortal, say to it: You are a land that is not cleansed, not rained upon in the day of indignation. Its princes within it are like a roaring lion tearing the prey; they have devoured human lives; they have taken treasure and precious things; they have made many widows within it. ... Its officials within it are like wolves tearing the prey, shedding blood, destroying lives to get dishonest gain. Its prophets have smeared whitewash on their behalf, seeing false visions and divining lies for them, saying, "Thus says the Lord God," when the Lord has not spoken.

- Ezekiel 22:23-28

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Honest, direct confrontation is a true expression of compassion…The illusion of power must be unmasked, idolatry must be undone, oppression and exploitation must be fought, and all who participate in these evils must be confronted. This is compassion.

- Donald P. McNeill et al.
from “Compassion: A Reflection on the Christian Life”

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For the righteous will never be moved; they will be remembered forever. They are not afraid of evil tidings; their hearts are firm, secure in the Lord. Their hearts are steady, they will not be afraid; in the end they will look in triumph on their foes. They have distributed freely, they have given to the poor; their righteousness endures forever; their horn is exalted in honor. The wicked see it and are angry; they gnash their teeth and melt away; the desire of the wicked comes to nothing.

- Psalms 112:6-10

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Why do people think the spiritual life demands withdrawal drom the ordinary? Because they've been taught, at least by implication, that the physical is a block to the spiri