One of the things I love about working in a downtown church is the way it brings me into relationships with poor people. I love this not because I believe I am of much value to them beyond what I…
What it’s like to live on less than two dollars a day
There’s no milk in the fridge, not much food in the cabinet, aside from Ramen noodles. And were it not for the kindness of extended family, one family would be living on the streets. This family, like more than a million American families,…
When wielding power can be healing
“Money and power.” That’s what the gentleman who telephoned me from Mississippi said. The pressure on his home state and on my home state of North Carolina for recent legislative and gubernatorial actions, viewed widely as discriminatory, are all about…
Are evangelical churches abandoning the working class?
As cycles of unemployment, poverty and death have set in on many working class communities across America, are churches overlooking their responsibilities to help alleviate the pain and suffering of plighted working class families?
Florida ministries changing lives — one child, neighborhood at a time
Brian was 10 years old when he first enrolled at Touching Miami with Love, an organization sharing Christ’s great love through literacy and educational ministries. Yet, Brian couldn’t read. Although he had struggled with dyslexia for most of his life,…
Dirty money in the Appalachian church
Six years after a deadly coal mine disaster, where are we now?
Going to bat — the only way humans thrive
I can’t think of many times in my life when I have felt as if no one would go to bat for me. In fact, whenever I tell the story of how I came to faith and later discerned a…
When religious groups do what the government won’t
Are faith-based programs for the poor a problem when there’s no secular alternative?
What Dave Ramsey gets wrong about poverty
Dave Ramsey is rich. And he makes his living telling other evangelical Christians how they can get rich, too.