Six and a half minutes. That’s all it will take for you to watch this remarkably inspiring TED Talk of one person’s sensitivity and vision that became a gift first to her neighborhood and then to neighborhoods throughout the world. Candy Chang is what I would describe as a community artist. She is, indeed, an artist…and a designer…and an urban planner. But what strikes me most about her is that she takes all these varied skills and uses them to offer gifts to her community, to invite her community to understand, refine, and claim their identity more fully. In this sense, then, she is an artist for her community, a public artist...

For the last several days, I have been participating in the Toronto Preaching Festival, sponsored by the Lester Randall Preaching Fellowship and a number of local congregations. It’s been a marvelous event, and I highly recommend it to folks both north and south of the 49th parallel. One of the speakers yesterday mentioned Frederick Buechner, the Presbyterian minister and author who wrote what I still think is the finest book on preaching ever written. Titled simply Telling the Truth, it’s subtitle is as telling as it is evocative: The Gospel as Tragedy, Comedy, and Fairy Tale. It’s a remarkable book, who lyrical prose, deep insights,...