As a spiritual leader, the stars by which I navigate (in other words, my core values) are transparency, accessibility, whole-heartedness, fearlessness, and joy. As rector of a large parish I’ve found pro-active communication is essential for helping a dozen clergy, lay-leaders of 40+ ministries, and around 1400 parishioners feel connected and honored for the work they do. I believe that each person—including the youngest and the oldest and most frail among us—has been uniquely and richly gifted by God to take part in the work of bringing humanity and Creation toward “shalom”: that sense of fullness and wholeness of mind, body, and spirit that compels you to give of yourself to the world. Following from this, I gauge “success” in my parish by how many people are engaged, energized to lead, and inspired to bring their dreams for the world to bear.

I believe Christianity is a way of life and not a system of right beliefs. I believe God is far more generous than our imagining, and that he is always drawing us out of our comfortable narrowness to be more like him. I believe that the Christian mystics both ancient and modern have much to teach us about the roots of our faith—roots that have slumbered quietly at times and produced green shoots at others. I believe we can spend too much time worrying about the bad things other people do and too little time planting the seeds of compassion and kindness in and around them. In response to the apparent moral degradation of our nation I once preached that God doesn’t need our outrage: God needs our action.

I understand Jesus not only as savior and redeemer of humanity and all creation, but also as healer, teacher, and non-violent resister who challenged the veracity of the institutions humanity had built to serve itself. Jesus spoke truth to power, and the truth he spoke was that the escalating spiral of self-destructive violence and domination we witness is not humanity’s birthright. It is not our destiny unless we choose for it to be. And we indeed choose it any time we find a hundred reasons not to get involved in the struggles of our world; we choose it whenever we confuse our outrage for action; we choose it whenever we respond to violence with violence, anger with anger, shaming and exclusion and judgment with more of the same.

Humanity betrayed Jesus; humanity tortured, mocked, executed, and abandoned him and yet in ancient art it is that very same humanity whose hands Jesus grasps as he rises up from the grave and is drawn toward heaven and the Father. That’s the kind of outward-flowing love to which we all aspire. It’s the kind of love that—through the gift of the Holy Spirit who lives in us and among us—brings us fully alive, and makes us whole.