RAPPERS NEXT DOOR

For the past year or so, the house next to us – and by next to us I mean our side windows are about six feet across from each other – has been inhabited in part by three young rappers. But far from dooming us to incessant beats and sleepless nights, it’s been quite enjoyable for me. Sure, they practice a lot, but rarely late at night – the one time it happened and my wife was already asleep, I politely yelled out the window and they respected my request. In fact, I quite like their style: funky beats, layered voices, and a socially conscious message. I’ve wanted to go over there and compliment them on their talent, but I just haven’t.

The three of them were riffing on the porch when I came home late tonight. As much as this could’ve been a chance for me to offer an encouraging word, I was weary from twelve hours at work and in the mood for dinner and bed. So I offered an affirming nod and headed to my front door. But one of them called out to me and said, “What’s your name?” Feeling a little nervous and oh so square, I extended my hand and shook hands with all three. I told them I liked their style and to keep it up. One bolted into the house and came back with invites to their next concert. I told them I’d try to make it.

Once I finally got into my house and shed my work gear, I thought to myself that I wished I was younger, so that I had the time and moxie to get to know them better. I’d love to hear the story of how they came together – one white guy, one African guy, and one Puerto Rican guy. I’ve love to talk hip hop history with them. I’d love to just hear their lyrics and learn more about the social change they want to effect with their music. You know what, who cares that I’m bookish and uncoordinated; maybe I will groove with them sometime.

PS If you’re in the Philadelphia area and want to attend their free concert to benefit AIDS survivors, check them out: Soldiers for Culture at the Rotunda at 4102 Walnut Street, July 10th @ 8:00pm.

THERE’S NO PLACE LIKE HOME

I got a chance to be on live TV this morning. NBC has a show called “Live @ Issue” where they bring in politicians, economists, and other leaders to discuss the pressing issues of the day. David Thornburgh, Executive Director of the Pennsylvania Economy League and the person who invited me onto his leadership delegation to Phoenix earlier this month, was asked to be on the show to talk about our Phoenix trip, and he asked me to accompany him.

The half-hour show breezed by, as David and I engaged with the host, Terry Ruggles, in conversation related to Phoenix’s growth, brain gain vs. brain drain, and Philly politics. Just when we were all worked up over hot issues like wage taxes and minority business formation, the half-hour was over and we were being sent home.

I enjoyed the exposure and the dialogue, but left feeling a little conflicted. Some times, the Philly-bashing seemed too much and I wanted to blurt out, “But Philly has a lot going for it!” And other times, the Philly-bashing seemed just right and I wanted to glare into the camera and tell all the politicians here, “Listen up and get your act together!” As I am exposed to more of Philadelphia’s issues, I am simultaneously energized and deflated. The possibilities make my heart beat fast, and the challenges stir up my fighting spirit. But I also sense the frustration of people far greater than I who have given up, and wonder whether this is a fight I have the will and stamina for.

I find myself on orbitz.com and runnersworld.com often lately, searching for cheap fares and looking at recommended urban runs in different cities around the country. I almost wish it was my job to fly into a city for a weekend, run around for a little bit (literally and figuratively), and then talk to people about it. But then another part of me desires to never have to travel, to start a family and walk my kids to school and be home by 5.

Because I’ve traveled a fair amount, it doesn’t take long for me to feel at home wherever I go. And because I love Philadelphia and have planted roots here, I consider it home in every sense of the word. But on another, deeper level, I feel like a man without a home, stranded as it were in a world that will never truly be my home. Remind me, O LORD, that my home is in heaven, where there is no more crime for the conservatives to wring their hands over and no injustice for the liberals to squawk about. And gird me for Your purposes here on earth, that while I have days left in my life and fire left in my belly I might expect great things of You and accomplish great things for You.

WHAT URBAN CHRISTIANS CAN LEARN FROM BUFFY AND SPIDEY

I read a review on Spiderman 2 in Newsweek last night and got to thinking about how parallel Spidey, Buffy the Vampire Slayer, and urban Christians are. The whole premise of the first Spiderman’s box office success, in the minds of modern sociologists, is that as the first post-9/11 superhero, Spidey’s self-doubt and vulnerability resonated with Americans. As Newsweek put it, “Superman is who Americans wanted to be; Spiderman is who Americans are.”

The angst in Spiderman 2 continues, as the boy wonder with supernatural powers is haunted by guilt and burdened with responsibility. His Spiderman thing has caused him to lose the girl who loves him and prevented him from living a normal and happy life.

Buffy the Vampire Slayer is similarly burdened. In the original movie, which of course spawned the wildly popular TV series with Sarah Michelle Gellar, Buffy is torn between the responsibilities her powers and destiny place upon her, and the normal desire of a teenage girl to be, well, normal.

Fortunately, for the sake of the survival of the world, both Spidey and Buffy decide to take on the challenge of playing the role they were destined and equipped to play, and they vanquish the bad guys. But what about us urban Christians? God has given us a great work to do in cities, and great spiritual and material resources with which to fight this fight. At times, the call inspires a swelling of pride in our heart and we feel courageous enough to say yes.

But at other times, we are discouraged and downcast, pining for normalcy rather than choosing the burden of urban discipleship. The fight for justice – be it spiritual, relational, social, economic, political, or environmental – is the side of God, but that doesn’t make it the easy side to be on. Far from it.

It is not unlike how the author of Hebrews describes the great men and women of faith – they too, like Spidey and Buffy, experienced loneliness and opposition and doubt and hardship. But they chose the way of faith, and will forever be known as those “of whom the world was not worthy.”

What about us? We who have heard the call of God in our lives to do great things for Him and expect great things of Him, will we rise up like Spidey, Buffy, and the Hebrews 11 hall of faith? Will we say no to half-lives, normal lives, comfortable lives, in exchange for greatness? I pray so for my generation and myself.

PERSONAL EXPOSITION

I recently applied for an Eisenhower Fellowship, which is a leadership exchange program that sends people to different countries outside of the US to share best practices on topics such as economic development, education, and health care. If accepted, I'd like to go to China to learn what they are doing to make sure their explosive economic growth does not come at the expense of urban decay, social foment, and/or environmental disaster.

A major part of the application is a one-page personal exposition, which I've pasted below. Having written thousands of one-pagers for work, it was surprisingly difficult to write a one-pager on myself. The application asked that you not simply list credentials and accomplishments, a la a resume, but that you really exposit on yourself. So I found myself typing and retyping, cutting and pasting, and I still don't feel satisfied with the final draft. But here it is.

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Below please provide a maximum one-page exposition of your background. Include how your background has led you to your education, practical experience, present responsibilities, and special interests. The purpose of this is to describe who you are as a person. This should not be a listing of personal and professional facts.

Robert J. Clinton’s “The Making of a Leader” examines Christian leaders from the Bible, church history, and the present day, to determine patterns and markers in leadership development. After reading the book in 2001, I challenged myself to look at my own life and chronicle the events and decisions that had shaped my worldview as well as the values and pursuits I held most closely. The end result of this exercise was a twelve-page document that synthesized these personal milestones and life directions. I revisit this document annually, to add the previous year’s significant events and to remind myself of what I hold dearest.

While I am still wildly inconsistent and painfully human, I do strive to line up my actions with my beliefs, and I have found that who I am (background) influences what I choose to do (activities), which then in turn shapes who I am becoming (values). My biography, then, is a series of choices and actions – some good and some bad – which are in part made according to my core identity, and which then in part help make my core identity. I believe in a God who is the Author of my life, and, like any good writer, this Author has made sure that what is being read now is building on what has been read before.

As mentioned above, the full document is twelve pages and counting. Given the space constraints, here is a summary of the key events in my background that have brought me to the present:

* 1973-1991: A stable family structure incubated a healthy outlook on life and gave me a value for working hard and doing things the right way.

* 1991-1995: Going 2500 miles from home to attend Wharton taught me to be my own person and fed me the business principles through which I see all of life. I also became a Christian during this time, and in examining the life of Jesus and taking seriously His call to discipleship, I radically re-oriented my life values and re-shaped my life ambitions. I got involved in a Christian fellowship, spend a summer ministering in Eastern Europe, and decided to say no to investment banks and consulting firms to work for a small non-profit organization in West Philadelphia.

* 1995-1999: Applying my Christian values and spending my post-college years in an urban setting opened my eyes to the personal pains and systemic injustices in cities. I started a youth program at my job and volunteered with the youth group at my church to get in touch with urban people, and read books at a feverish pace to understand urban systems.

* 1999-2002: Marrying my wife and then almost losing her to thyroid cancer was a harrowing experience. I learned that life is precious and there is more to living than professional development and personal accomplishments. I also experienced what I knew in my head to be true, that even in suffering there is a richness of texture and a depth of joy to life.

* 2002-present: I have made choices to expand my perspective and my influence. I assumed greater leadership responsibilities at work and church, participated in my first political campaign, and enrolled in a ten-month course for emerging Philadelphia leaders. In 2002-2003, I took a yearlong sabbatical from my daily responsibilities at work to produce operations manuals and provide consulting to organizations around the world that sought to replicate our work in their communities; I also used the time off to write extensively about my lessons learned as a transplanted urban Christian.

INDIAN BOARDING SCHOOLS

While I was in Phoenix this week, I got a chance to go to the Heard Museum, which celebrates Native American history and culture. Coincidentally, it was the museum’s 75th anniversary so admission was free. Although if I ever return to Phoenix, I will gladly pay the $7 admission.

The most fascinating exhibit to me was the one on Indian boarding schools. Apparently, at the end of the 1800’s and the beginning of the 1900’s, there was a spirited group of American politicians who believed that what Native Americans needed was to modernize from their Indian ways and assimilate into American ways.

These “reformers,” in the name of “saving” the Indians, lobbied for the creation of Indian boarding schools. Having tried this approach unsuccessfully with young men, they turned their attention to small children. The students were taken from their families, sometimes forcibly, and transported hundreds of miles away, making family visits near impossible. Upon arrival, they got their long hair cut and were crammed into dormitories, where they began a military-like existence. They were punished for speaking their native languages, and made to believe that everything about their home culture was bad.

Hearing the accounts and seeing the pictures, I could not help but think of Japanese internment camps and Nazi concentration camps. And all of this was carried out by a group of leaders who considered themselves “enlightened”! Truly, our treatment of the Native American is shameful, and its consequences continue into the present day.

Ironically, the very thing these reformers sought to do – beat the Indianness out of these people – didn’t happen. In fact, bringing children of different tribes together and causing them to suffer through this ordeal together helped further forge a pan-Indian identity. These children, seeing how they were viewed by their “reformers,” began to identify themselves less by their home tribes and more by their shared Indian heritage.

All in all, the Heard Museum was a real eye-opener. I pray all Americans will keep their eyes and hearts open to the plight of the Native American, and that we will never sweep under the rug the terrible atrocities we inflicted upon them in the name of “Manifest Destiny,” “progress,” and racial and religious superiority.

THOUGHTS ON PHOENIX

This week, I spent four days in Phoenix as part of a leadership delegation from Philadelphia. Our assignment was to swap best practices on how to manage city systems and urban growth. The occasion was that Phoenix recently surpassed Philadelphia to become the 5th most populous city in the country. While Philadelphia bleeds jobs and population, Phoenix is exploding, so much so that some of its largest suburbs are now more populous than such older northern cities as Pittsburgh, Minneapolis, and St. Louis.

Everywhere I turned, it seemed there was evidence of the cause and effect of such dynamic growth. Most of the people I met were not originally from Phoenix, but rather had migrated from California (for lower cost of living) or the north (for the sun). We met with the mayor, who was kind and affable, and the city manager, who has literally won “City Manager of the Universe” awards. We also heard from prominent leaders in both the public and private sector, and no matter where we went, we heard the same things over and over again: Phoenix is growing, people are happy, and partisanship and unions haven’t reared their ugly head. Some examples:

* The city manager gave us an org chart of how the city was managed. His box was underneath the mayor’s and above his deputies and department heads. But above the mayor and the biggest box on the page was “public.” Here’s a city that understands, like any successful business, that if you want more customers (i.e. a growing population), you put them first and take care of them.

* Almost everyone we met with was quick to point out that Phoenix is a relatively young city (combating the stereotype that it’s a retirement place – more true in the suburbs), that they have plenty of water (they did infrastructure right fifty years ago and as a result have been able to properly manage the relatively small annual rainfall), and that sprawl is not an issue (population is concentrated around where water is available). While I remain skeptical, I did appreciate the consistency of message.

* Phoenix really took off as a city after World War II, once air conditioning became available in homes. So it’s really only about 50-60 years old. As the city manager pointed out, some parts of it are just now reaching middle-age. So it’ll be interesting to see what Phoenix looks like in 40-50 years, when more things are falling apart and ugly politics have had time to fester for awhile.

* That being said, the political landscape is remarkably tidy. Most elections are non-partisan, in that candidates don’t run under a particular party – in fact, most residents couldn’t tell you what party affiliation their councilperson is. While politics is a contact sport in Philadelphia, in Phoenix most residents are satisfied and most politicians are trustworthy. The city manager has been doing his thing for almost twenty years, and there’s still a twinkle in his eye and an urgency in his voice when he says he wants city management to get faster and better.

* Lest this blog be too pro-Phoenix and anti-Philadelphia, being in Phoenix made me realize how fortunate we are in Philadelphia. Their wide boulevards and relative downtown sprawl make walking around difficult, while Philadelphia is easily walkable. It is difficult to mix the desert lifestyle with an urban feel; Philadelphia, on the other hand, is buzzing at the street level with the best of downtown living. And Phoenix’s youth means it doesn’t have as many aches and pains, but Philadelphia alone can say it was the nation’s first capital and its birthplace.

I really felt like I was taking an executive education course on city planning, in that I learned so much about how cities work by seeing what Phoenix was doing and comparing it with what is going on in Philadelphia. I’m thankful for the invitation to go, and curious to see how these two cities evolve over time to manage their respective challenges and assets. And in 2015, when San Diego overtakes Philadelphia to become the nation’s 6th most populous city, I hope to be sent there!

PHOENIX VERSUS PHILADELPHIA

Today I head off with four other young Philadelphians to Phoenix, as part of a leadership exchange initiative of sorts. With Phoenix having recently passed Philadelphia as the nation’s fifth most populous city, we decided why not seize the opportunity for good PR and knowledge sharing? And so we’re off to the desert for a few days of connecting with political leaders and learning what Phoenix does well, while two weeks later the mayor of Phoenix will be in Philadelphia to do the same.

While I’m keeping an open mind to learning things that I hope we can implement here in Philadelphia, let me go on record prior to the trip and put forth my two reasons Phoenix is on its way up and Philadelphia down in terms of population – one which I don’t think we can do anything about, and one which we are trying desperately to do something about. First, Phoenix is growing because it has physical room to grow. It is now 565 square miles, up from 247 in 1970 and dwarfing Philadelphia’s 135. As more people have moved to Phoenix, the city has been able to stretch its boundaries to accommodate them within city limits. Philadelphia, on the other hand, is boxed in by natural boundaries and by suburban townships that would never dare be swallowed up by its urban neighbors and have to share its social services burden.

But that just explains why one city has room to grow and why one city doesn’t. It doesn’t explain why the numbers are going in different directions. This brings us to number two: taxes. While I don’t think taxes are the sole reason people and jobs leave Philadelphia, and nor do I think that tax reform will be the magic bullet that reverses a decades-long population decline, it is certainly the number one reason with a bang. Yep, I’m talking supply-side economics: all things being equal, residents and businesses will move to where the taxes are lowest. And so until we can make real tax reform happen, we’ll continue to slide in population. (Although if that means another leadership exchange to San Diego, currently at #7 in the US, then sign me up.)

Don’t get me wrong: there is no way I’m going to Phoenix, coming back, and telling my wife, “Honey, we just have to get out of Philly and move to Phoenix.” Philadelphia, in my opinion, runs circles around Phoenix in terms of quality of life. Who can compete with the historical significance, the cultural richness, and the cheese steaks “wit’ fried onions”? And yet we’re bleeding people because eager graduates and young families and the elderly are finding other places more attractive for their needs than Philadelphia. Phoenix may have a completely different situation than here, but hopefully we’ll gain some insights that we can implement here to stem the bleeding, turn around the tax base, and get our city going in the right direction again.

I’M MARTHA

There’s a story in the book of Luke where Jesus goes to the home of Mary and Martha to continue his discourses. As the men gather round Jesus, dutiful Martha plays host. Mary flaunts cultural norms and sits with the men, even at Jesus’ very feet. Mortified, Martha asks Jesus to scold Mary and ask her to get back in the kitchen to help carry the load of being a good host. But Jesus gently corrects Martha, saying Mary is in the right and that Martha’s frantic hostessing is unnecessary. Moral of the story: what’s most important is to be at Jesus’ feet.

Only lately, I’ve turned a critical eye towards Mary in this story. Sure, I understand that being with Jesus is more important than doing things for Jesus. But I guess I can relate to Martha, a little bitter at the Mary’s in life who are free to sit at Jesus’ feet because there are Martha’s in their lives to take care of the dirty work. I can appreciate that people last forever and relationships are more important than anything else in the world. But it seems like the easy and lazy thing, rather than the spiritually wise thing, for Mary to sit with the boys while Martha tends to the cooking, cleaning, and other behind-the-scenes hospitality.

You can probably detect more than a little cynicism in my voice. I guess I’ve got a little edge because I’ve been in situations where others get to play loose and free while I’m stuck worrying about details and logistics. Even worse, while others come off as faithful and spiritual, I look distrusting and calculating. Perhaps I should realize that while Jesus sides with Mary in the story, He probably appreciates Martha’s effort, even if He wants her to know that while her intentions are good she’s got her priorities slightly askew. And so I should know that Jesus does appreciate my desire to sweat the details, and make sure that I don’t turn being responsible into an idol that I strive for ahead of simply being with the One who is truly worthy of striving after.

FIVE WAYS TO JUICE UP YOUR PRAYER LIFE

1. Pray for a whole day. Not on your knees, of course. Take an entire day to be constantly in correspondence with God. Pretend you’re Jesus: every personal interaction is a chance to touch a life, every object you pass a visual aid in a parable, every “interruption” an opportunity to be a blessing.

2. Pray like a little child. There’s a reason Jesus said the kingdom belongs to the little ones. They haven’t lost that sense of wonder about the world, of gratefulness for the littlest of things. When was the last time you let something overwhelm you, whether it is the intricacy of a dandelion or the efficiency of the human heart? When as the last time you spent a moment thanking God for the little things about your loved ones, like the delightful twinkle in their eyes when they laugh or the many ways they show their love to you each day? Perhaps we need a little less seriousness and worry and a little more wonder and gratitude.

3. Pray second, forgive first. In the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus tells His listeners to delay worshipping God if there is an unresolved grievance they need to tend to. Reconciliation is so important to God that He commands us not to worship (!) until we’ve made right with our brother or sister. So before you pray, ask God to search your heart to see if there is anyone you need to make peace with.

4. Pray through the morning paper. There isn’t a square inch on this earth or a second in history that isn’t under Jesus’ lordship. Pray accordingly, then, for world events and local tragedies and business news. Ask God to reveal Himself to people around the world, to do justice and mercy, and to help you be more aware of His omnipresence in the process.

5. Pray with God’s agenda in mind. Before you launch into a litany of man-centered requests – “help my presentation to go smoothly today,” “heal Aunt Patty’s pneumonia,” and even “bless this evening’s choir concert” -- first subordinate your plans to God’s will. For while Jesus taught us to ask for God to “give us our daily bread,” He first taught us to say “Your Kingdom come, Your will be done.”