We Can Build a Beautiful City: Refuse to Outsource Responsibility (Part One)

This is the first of a four-part series called “We Can Build a Beautiful City.”

I have been preparing for an upcoming vocal performance of a song called “We Can Build a Beautiful City” taken from the Broadway show Godspell. It’s a moving piece of music that has been resonating with an emerging sense of hope that we can build a better future together.

As a Dad to six children and as the CEO of Logos Academy, I constantly wonder what the future holds for our kids, not in terms of their careers or prosperity, but what shape our public life will take and if their individual freedoms will eventually be eroded.

Our rancorous public rhetoric has infected every facet of life, including our houses of worship, schools, nonprofits where we serve, even our families. We are witnessing the resurrection of mass shootings after a period during the pandemic in which mass shootings had seemingly disappeared. Our politics are rife with a division most of us have never witnessed. We are racially divided to the point that people don’t want to talk about race anymore. We are bitter with each other over the handling of the pandemic, masks, and vaccinations. Christian groups are splintered and blaming each other for the decay in national life. Family members are ignoring family gatherings…