October 15, 2017
Cities are fundamental to God's design and plan for the world. Although the Bible starts in a garden, it ends in a city. We saw the Word revealed in the big cities of the era through willing disciples who, you'll notice, were not sent to the Gobi desert to preach to the sand, they were sent to metropolitan areas like Antioch, Phillippi, Corinth, and Nineveh. Although there is deprivation and need everywhere, in cities where people live in close proximity we can actually weigh the problems because of the negative critical mass of issues and need. Here is where we can do the most good...
October 5, 2017
In 2007, Oprah Winfrey opened a $40 million school to educate 152 girls on a 22 acre site outside of Johannesburg, South Africa. Its 28 buildings offer the best educational environment, the best beds and even 400-count percale sheets, tested by Oprah herself. To me it is interesting that Oprah decided to build a school in Africa after years of effort to support schools in the U.S. Why the move? Simply put: It is harder here. I remember an interview where she told a reporter, that the students in schools here wanted to know if she'd be giving them Air Jordan tennis shoes or electronics of some kind. That wasn't the response she was looking for...
September 24, 2017
INDIANAPOLIS, Ind.: Indianapolis metropolitan police said a man died after a shooting in downtown Indianapolis early Thursday morning, marking the city's 100th murder of 2017. Police found the victim with gunshot wounds on the sidewalk beneath the underpass at South Meridian Street just north of South Street. He was identified as Johnny Woods, 34...
September 14, 2017
Jesus often spoke in parables--stories like The Good Samaritan taught us to cross the road to help others. As everyone knows, this wasn't a story about a man walking across some asphalt, it is a story about stepping over differences, labels, and beliefs to fulfill the commandment to love our neighbors as ourselves. But the body of Christ is made up of humans and religion itself is a human construct, full of fleshly pride and sometimes full blown hubris. We take this Word and focus on what we decide are the important parts and negate the areas we don't like...
September 2, 2017
All told, the greater Houston area is huge, encompassing more than ten thousand square miles--bigger than New Jersey and inhabited by 12 million people. So the job of trolling to find and save thousands of people in snake- and even alligator-infested waters is not only ambitious, it is risky. Yet hundreds of people are rushing in to do what they can to help. Yes, there have been the valiant first responders who have done an amazing job. But there are also "just folks" with a boat...
August 22, 2017
For a few minutes on Monday, the solar eclipse took our eyes off our problems, ourselves, our plans and we looked to the sky.
None of us were afraid, however. We knew what was happening. It had been explained ad nauseam on every electronic portal available. But for the Syrians, during the first recorded eclipse on earth in 1345 BC it was a shock. A historian of the time noted that the sun had been "put to shame." In general, ancient people believed eclipses were signs of of something evil to come: A plague, a war, the death of a king, or worse yet, that the sun was dying. In fact...
August 13, 2017
Pastor John Girton, Jr. and his wife left Indianapolis nearly 20 years ago, living in various cities. Although the news reports he would read about his hometown reflected growth, economic development and prosperity, what he found when he moved back seven years ago was that those stories weren't entirely true. "I noticed Indy was two cities. It was the one I saw on television and the other was crumbling streets, countless vacant homes, high homicide rates and escalating unemployment, among other ills." Most importantly, he saw a community that was invisible...
August 1, 2017
There's an ad that runs on PBS for a river cruise company. It features the company owner, Torstein Hagen in some kind of amazing glass dome as he waxes nostalgically over a roaring fire promoting his cruises. He emotes: "I've learned that time is the only scarce commodity..." In fact, Jim and I went on one of his cruises. It was not one of my better ideas. It doesn't take a genius to know that two people who'd rather work than chat up strangers will not be thrilled with the experience of being (more or less) jailed on a small vessel with 200 of them for a week...
June 19, 2017
As a young kid you could have called me racist. I didn't like white people. I didn't trust white people. I didn't want to be around white people. And I was an angry young man. But when Christ came into my life, my whole world changed…
June 7, 2017
One of the things I've learned over the years is that people stand where they sit. When my husband and Unite Indy co-founder, Jim, (a white, Massachusetts native, transplanted to Indiana many years ago) sat down with Brishon Bond, (a black Indianapolis businessman and member of Black Lives Matter) to go head to head on some commonly used racial terms, there was bound to be some disagreement...
