The My neighbor bicycled past me as I walked the two blocks to the church office. I wasn't too surprised when he ignored my greeting. He had never been too cheerful.

Across the street from the high school, he got off his bicycle and began to pick up several pop cans that littered the sidewalk.

How nice, I thought, as he put them in the basket hanging from his handlebars. Then he walked the bicycle across ...

When the Baker family moved to the outskirts of town 20 years ago, they intended to escape the roar of the greased streets and the smell of the crowd. They happily exchanged a teeming suburban neighborhood for a two-acre parcel hemmed by walnut trees and a creek.

For eight years, their oasis of obscurity remained unthreatened. But then a rapidly growing bedroom community began its inevitable crawl ...

Our inner-city church in Indianapolis offered many ministries to the poor: a soup kitchen, a sports ministry, free Thanksgiving turkey dinners. A back-to-school program gave out shoes, coats, and book bags.

We were proud of our reputation as "the church that stayed," instead of fleeing to the suburbs. Nevertheless, something was wrong. None of our outreach programs were leading people to faith in Jesus ...

One Monday morning at staff meeting, Jerry, our pastor of student ministries, told us that it had happened again. A high school student had invited a friend to the church youth group, and the friend was planning to come, until he found out it was at a "Baptist" church. Then he backed out because he felt his parents would disapprove.

This had become an ongoing problem. Nassau County, just outside of ...