I have taken a long hiatus from this. But I see the benefit to blogging. To process the day. To remember what God is doing around me, through HtW and I. No promises...but I want to make this a regular event. Hope some benefit comes from it...if even just for me. 

 We started the Teacher's College this week. An unceremonious start to a new era in our work - bringing what we have learned to scale. It could seem scary, taking on more - committing to more families, kids, smiles and disseminated thoughts. I once said to Patrick (VP comm.) - let's go big or go home. He was a bit taken back, but my perspective was and is that this work isn't worth sleepless nights unless it really reaches the masses. I hear Mother Theresa when she says she looks at the individual, not the masses - but that doesn't work for me. If I wanted to help the individual I would sponsor a kid, donate my clothes, etc. Which are all good things to do, and in fact if we all did that, I wouldn't have to look at the masses. But were not, so I do. 

Earlier this year, Fast Company reported a surprising outcome of the economic downturn: more people were volunteering.  Perhaps this is understandable because as more people were out of work, they had greater opportunities to lend their now abundantly free time to causes that they deemed worthy. Interestingly, the category that had the highest percentage of volunteers was those who were engaged in some type of religious charitable work. More than any other option, when people chose to spend their time on helping, they choose to do so with an organization who's mission was not limited to this temporal life.

Perhaps the economic downturn was to blame for this as well. Perhaps, as times our tough, people want to invest their time in something that is of seemingly higher value. When I worked for a church curriculum publisher, we found that sales of Sunday School material went up when the economy went sour. Persummably the less people could count on money, the more willing they were to turn to God. 

I wrote this article as a guest post for Josh Griffin's blog More Than Dodgeball.  You can read it there at this LINK.  Or you can read it below.

The Call to Cause 

This year alone Corporate America will spend 1.6 billion – yes billion – on marketing programs all designed to convince you and I that they care about cause.  Pepsi pulled their Super Bowl ads this year and invested the money in the Refresh campaign.  Chase and Target ask their consumers to help allocate millions of dollars each month to charity.  Virtually every brand you use has some charity affiliation – all because now more than ever – cause matters.  Teams, bands, clothing, restaurants, movies, and stars all align themselves with causes hoping that we will do that same.  Whether you know it or not Cause is Calling You.

Right now if I asked you what a white or yellow wrist band meant, I bet most of you would answer ONE and LIVESTRONG.  Not so many years ago it was WWJD that banded our wrists, but if popular behavior is any answer, these days What Jesus Would be Doing is wearing a wrist band or a lapel pin or a facebook badge.  We are living in an era when “doing good” isn’t just something for the few social activists in the crowd or the people looking to bolster their college applications or resumes – it is the expectation of everyone – everywhere – including the church.

This is a re-post of a former essay. Let's just say I liked it when I wrote it the first time, and I still do. It forced me to articulate new thoughts, which is exactly why I love to write.  So, here it goes to the top of the rotation. 

If you follow ConversantLife somewhat regularly, you’ll notice a trend lately toward anti-consumerism (including some of my own posts). It seems the right thing to be—a lover of God and humanity more than a lover of things, a Christ follower who chooses abstracts like love and peace over crass commercial objects. I’ve been feeling the vibe myself. Christians, you know, can be very anti-establishment when it suits us.

All the talk of philanthropy and anti-consumerism has gotten me thinking. I’m sure lots of other people have thought about these things longer than I have. I’ll bet I could find a hundred books debating the virtues and vices of capitalism. I am not a student of economics, so pardon any embarrassing gaps in my understanding, but here’s a simple layman’s exploration.

When you write a book for a big publisher, you inevitably lose control of parts of it. Humanitarian Jesus is no exception to that rule.  But I never knew that when I finally agreed to the publisher’s sub-title, “Social Justice and The Cross” I might be making an enemy of Glenn Beck and other conservatives who view the words Social Justice as a profane attack on all things American and I suppose for that matter Christian (if you don’t know what I am talking about click this link).

While the book doesn’t come out until May 1, I have given a few copies to close friends and family and to my surprise one of the reactions has been, “Oh wow, have you heard what is going on with those words ‘social justice’?  I mean, it is a really big thing right now.  What do you think about wealth redistribution?”