A war on worshiping consumerism in the sacred halls of Wal-Mart, Target, and Best Buy while the world is swallowed up in the darkness of not having enough food to eat - sign me up!

Paul's point is this: Be strict with yourselves, expecting fellow Christians to obey the demands of Jesus. But don't hold others to the same rules.

At the end of this sabbatical journey, I realize the journey has just started. Experiencing, seeing and understanding some of the things I did on my sabbatical away from Church is not enough. Now is the time to act.

Sabbatical is about rest and recuperation. It is about communing with God in a restorative way. For a lot of church-going people that is not the way they would describe Sunday mornings.

I do not want to go back to Church because life outside of Church is better. It just is.

Identity has long been a theme in religion studies and religious thought and practice. How might something like "digital identity" be shaping and reshaping religious life today?

I decided from the very beginning that during the three months I'm on sabbatical, I will not go to church. I've never done that for more than a couple of Sundays in my whole life. Ever. And it worried me.

Somewhere along the way, Christian outreach became more about personal conversion than about empathy and compassion. One of the biggest turn-offs I hear about Christians is that folks see us as trying to make everyone like us.

Is our communal worship experience supposed to be nothing more than a fashion show with religious music playing, as we two-step down the sanctuary?

I wrote a story a while back about a family in our church back in Pueblo whose baby was due just after we left town. There was a good chance he'd need surgery in utero or immediately after being born.