I just got done presenting at the TACT Conference (THEOLOGICAL AND CULTURAL THINKER’S GROUP) in Los Angelos – I LOVE LA!!!.  It was sunny but cool, and someday I would love to live in CA.  One conferee wanted to know what three books I would recommend as good places to start in learning about Spiritual Formation, another wanted to know what I was reading currently.  My three books?  The Great Omission by Dallas Willard, Surprised By Hope by N. T. Wright, and The Imitation of Christ by Thomas A Kempis (any edition will do but the one with  a great introduction and reflective questions by Father Dennis Joseph Billy is a good one to start with).

What book am I reading right now? Christianity and the Social Crisis In the 21st Century by Walter Rauschenbusch (an update edition with brief commentary after each chapter by authors like Tony Compolo, Stanley Hauerwas, Jim Wallis and others) is what I am reading now.  A few years ago Dallas told me that Rauschenbusch was one of the few thinkers who combined a fervant personal faith in Jesus for formation with social action.

Although credited with starting what some Fundamentalist’s and many Evangelicals called a perversion of the Gospel, or the “Social Gospel”, this author actually woke up the church to its neglect of the implications of the Gospel for our involvement what is now called social justice and very much on the frontline of young Evangelical concerns.  The book I have recommended was published on the 100th Anniversary of the first book’s publishing.  In a year when the Evangelical vote is being courted heavily by both Obama and McCain, this book can provide some help “purple” thinking to balance the extreme reds and blues.

Sara Palin, VP running mate of McCain, was quoted in the Wall Street Journal as believing in the Second Coming of Jesus and therefore the “end of the world”.  This caused some to question her ability to commit to solve environmental issues like global warming.  In the opening skit of Saturday Night Live actress Tina Fey played Palin saying global warming was only “God hugging us close”.   This parody of Evangelicals misses the growing concern of Evangelicals as represented by the National Association of Evangelical’s (NAE) Leith Anderson who have issued statements on the need to do take seriously issues such as the environment and the plight of the immigrant.   Yet so many churches are only conscious of abortion or traditional marriage as issues. Rauschenbusch was also concerned with Christianity’s neglect of addressing social problems due to an End Times mindset that put all earthly transformation after Jesus’s Second Coming so that Evangelicals would consider any social change as what one preacher called, “rearranging chairs on the titantic.”

What does our living for Jesus and work for social justice have to do with the new heavens and the new earth?  N. T. Wright thinks we will be “surprised by the hope” that the new heavens and earth are the same ones we live in now and so how we live has everything to do with what they will turn out to be in the future.  Dallas read and taught us at the last session of TACT from Romans 8…that the whole creation is groaning…waiting for the children of God to deliver the creation from its bondage.  This is all shaping my thinking as I consider my responsibility to vote in November.

In that light…what concerns, questions, issues are important to you as you decide how to vote and now does that relate to how you follow Jesus and walk that out in your everyday life (I’m NOT asking who you will vote for but what you are thinking about as you are weighing the candidates and positions)?

I look forward to keeping up with those I met in LA last week, students I teach or have taught at Denver Seminary, pastors and wives at retreats like the one coming up in Estes Park for the Rocky Mountain Evangelical Free Church District  through this website and blog.  I am not fully launching it until a year from now and you will help me test it by telling me how it works for you.