I’m pleased to announce the publication of Together: Thoughts and Stories About Living in Community. The book is available from Nurturing Faith Books, the imprint of Good Faith Media, as well as from Amazon and other online sources. The book is a collection of essays from 10 years of blogging and explores the meaning of community in all its many forms. Find out more about it here: Together
From the Preface:
I never intended to write a book about “community”—what that word means and what living in community means and looks like. With the advent of social media, I was invited by the associate pastor at my church to be one of several bloggers to offer weekly thoughts that would be posted on the church’s Facebook page.
For me it has been a writing challenge, probably coming out of my training and early work as a newspaper reporter where, if I wasn’t assigned something every day, I was challenged and encouraged to find good stories to tell. More important, it’s been a spiritual stretching of sorts. Some readers have called it a ministry. That may be true; that’s for them and now you to decide. But for me, the act of working out my thoughts at a keyboard has forced me to explore what I believe and whether or not I practice what I preach.
In the midst of this, we’ve made an interesting discovery. I say “we,” because my wife LeAnn suggested that I gather some of these writings in a book. She went back and began rereading them all, noting what she thought were the strongest and catego- rizing them by general topic. And that’s when we discovered that an overwhelming and recurring theme in these writings—week after week, year after year—has been community. Not “community” as defined by the census bureau and the chamber of commerce, but rather all the different types of community we live in. That includes family, friends, neighbors, churches, workplaces, towns, states, countries, races, and humankind. At different times we all live and interact in these communities—usually in several simultaneously.
The question then—and what these writings seem to ask—is how do we live in these communities? Are we contributors or detractors? Do we bring good or harm? Are we active or do we watch from the sidelines? What is our role for better or for worse?
The writings that follow pose these questions. Sometimes I suggest answers, sometimes I only hint at answers, and quite often I simply stir the conversation. I do this with personal stories and observations; sometimes the point is obvious, and sometimes it is resting between the lines. My hope in your reading is that you will join the conversation in whatever way you wish. I’m not asking you to go out and join a community. You don’t need to because you’re already a member—of several, in fact. Instead, consider your place in your communities, your roles, what that means to them, and what that means to you.