This project seeks to explore a question with which I have wrestled, both personally and professionally, for some time: How do we live faithfully with abundance? Or, to put it differently: How do those of us who live in relative wealth (even when it doesn’t feel like it), delight and give thanks for what we have, while still making ethical, faithful choices about how we live?

I plan to reflect on these questions during a 3-month sabbatical in the spring and summer of 2014, ultimately forming a response that would be shaped into a book proposal. I envision a book that wrestles with these questions from a practical perspective, particularly in the lives of families with children. Others have explored these questions from a theoretical and scriptural vantage point. I plan to explore what such practice actually looks like in real life.

My project will have four parts: 1. Ample time for reading, writing, and reflection, away from the daily demands of congregational ministry; 2. Interviews and conversations with people who wrestle with similar questions and have found their own faithful ways of living; 3. A visit with Disciple missionaries in Nicaragua to be exposed to a ministry context in a part of the world where wealth is much differently defined; and 4. Intentional time in community with writing colleagues as I reflect and begin to shape a response.