The world is a big place and each of us is pretty small. What can one person do to make a difference? What can I do to change the world? I'm just one person, but one person working with other persons can be successful in changing a community, a nation, and even the world.

God wants us to be successful and the divine measure of success is not dollars made or power accrued, but how those dollars are invested in the lives of people. Success is how they're spent to change oppressive structures and to bring hope and joy to others. Success is the measure of how power is used to bring justice in the form of access to education, opportunity, and health care for people denied it through circumstances beyond their control. Poet W.H. Auden wrote:

God may reduce you, on Judgment Day

      to tears of shame,

Reciting by heart the poems you would have written,

      had your life been good.

                        (W.H. Auden, epilogue, Elegy to Louis MacNeice, About the House(1965), 23)

Our faith is meant to challenge us to write those poems, sing those songs, do those deeds, and touch those lives that are ours to write, sing, and accomplish. There is no one else to do what we can do. The stakes for our living are incredibly high. You and I have a tremendous opportunity to make a difference in at least a small corner of the world. Our faith communities have an opportunity to change the world by changing how we do church and how we are synagogues. We have the chance to model a pretty radical sense of inclusiveness, freedom, and passion for life's journey.

We can change the church and change the world by making things happen for the cause of justice. One great way to do this is for one faith community to join with others and work together to have a larger, louder voice in the work for justice, peace, and equity. That's where faith-based community organizing comes in.

Many churches and synagogues are poised to be effective engines for justice, but we're not there yet. Sometimes we give in to our fears and fatigue, and forget that communities need their faith communities to be engaged, organized, and effective. Our congregations need each of us to be involved. That means living our lives as fully as possible, both discovering and living in response to God's invitation for our lives. We need each other so that we can know God is with us.

So, what can one person do? Quite a lot! Wake up to the Spirit's presence in your life. Large or small, make your voice heard throughout your metro area and around the world. If you want to move toward being more than you have been, to move your congregation, your faith community, toward being more than it has been up to now, talk to your pastor, your rabbi, your congregational leaders one on one. Let them hear your dream and you hear theirs. And if you're not sure what your dream is, then talk about that! This is not an easy journey, but we will only fail when we fail to try! God has blessed me in beginning to clarify and realize my dreams and beginning to make a tangible difference in the world outside my congregation. May God bless you in realizing your dreams.

Thanks for continuing to bless me as we journey together.
  
Jack Price

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