To readers in the 1950s, Holden Caulfield’s angst came out of thin air. Published in 1951, J. D. Salinger’s The Catcher in the Rye was prescient in predicting 1960s teenage anxiety. The fact is, angst does come out of thin air. It’s the product of a relatively recent phenomenon called adolescence that asphyxiates youth rather…

“We love these values. They really work.” When vice presidents at AES, an energy company, praised the firm’s values, founders Dennis Bakke and Roger Sant turned pale. Bakke and Sant know what works might not be practical. In fact, practicality was historically a two-sided coin. Americans assume practicality is one-sided – what works. This however…

Americans enjoy relatively good health care, a bountiful food supply, and secure borders. What’s rarely recognized is that these three accomplishments, along with the rest of the greatest success stories in human civilization, used an identical approach. So it’s odd when faith organizations ignore this when seeking to change the world.

Tiger is missed. The Professional Golfers Association is facing uncertain times. Golf is individualistic; so when one individual, in this case Tiger Woods, is absent, PGA attendance dips 50 percent. Individualism however is not exclusive to golf. It is endemic to American culture. It is why the American church approaches culture-making as a game of…

by Mike Metzger & John Seel The NFL’s fall season finally finished last night—in February. Now eyes turn to NBA basketball, a winter sport that wraps up in June. But a sports-saturated society is not necessarily a negative. An extended basketball season, for example, provides an elongated glimpse of shalom. That’s because shalom means leading…

In 1983, General Motors unveiled “a new kind of car company.” Saturn was GM’s five billion dollar gamble in innovation. They lost their wager. This year, Saturn is being shut down. An accurate assessment of human nature would have predicted this. Almost 100 percent of the time, when a company tries to innovate inside their…

Bill Russell has few friends. By design. Oh, the retired Boston Celtics star is friendly, very friendly. In fact, he’s one of the friendliest people on the planet. You’d never know he hardly has any friends—unless you try to “friend” him. That’s what Frank Deford tried to do in 1969, and he never forgot how…

Bill Russell has few friends. By design. Oh, the retired Boston Celtics star is friendly, very friendly. In fact, he’s one of the friendliest people on the planet. You’d never know he hardly has any friends—unless you try to “friend” him. That’s what Frank Deford tried to do in 1969, and he never forgot how…

Before the rebuilding begins, there are lessons to learn. The human and emotional toll of the earthquake in Haiti is almost unfathomable. The images flashed on the television can’t in any way depict the gritty mix of heartache and heroism, faith and fatalism that has marked this tragedy. In the coming days and weeks, a…

In the 1960s, five provocative books, including The Death and Life of Great American Cities, braved stiff headwinds. They challenged core assumptions of city planners and business leaders. Forty years later, those winds are shifting. Today, another group of books are challenging the core assumptions of the contemporary American church. Braving stiff headwinds, it remains…