The Radical Experiment

I live in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, and have been following your ministry at Brook Hills for some time. You really caught my attention with your sermon at the Southern Baptist Convention earlier this year. What you are doing with this "Radical Experiment," which i just stumbled upon, is so timely for me and my family and our journey towards a more radical (or maybe just more biblical) walk with Christ in every aspect of our lives. Things kind of came to a head recently after a trip we took...

I recently took my family of five for a 2-week vacation. Soon after we planned the trip, I sought out a way for us to be generous and in some way give ourselves away while we were on this vacation. i borrowed some terminology from the Desiring God ministry of John Piper and called my little project, "Packing Hope."

Through various providential connections, there was a christian orphanage in one of the cities we were going to be in, so we raised money and hand-delivered to this orphanage over $500 worth of clothes, toys, art and craft supplies, etc. it was not $500,000, but it was something we wanted to do since we have a burden for orphan care.

The experience, while positive, was also extremely troubling.  Your "Radical Experiment" has helped bring into greater focus where we need to be going and what we need to be doing as a family in 2010 to not continue on auto-pilot and just let life happen, which will almost certainly lead to the "trivial, self-serving, comfortable, middle-class, ordinary untroubled American life," which causes me to tremble. Instead, we must pursue another path - a Gospel-centered, Christ-exalting, me-humbling, sin-destroying "alternative to the individualism, selfishness, and materialism of the American Dream (even the so-called Christian version)."

Let the Radical Experiment and crazy choices begin...