This is a guest post by Sam Riviera. He spends most of his time and energy caring for others in his community so that through his life and actions they might see Jesus. On Grace Ground, he has written a series of post providing practical advice for being the church in your community.
If you would like to write a guest post for this blog, check out the guidelines here.
“Someone’s knocking on the front door. You’d better answer it,” my mother told my father.
“No one we know comes to our front door,” my father replied. “Besides, it’s almost dark and it’s Sunday.”
The knocking continued and grew louder. Finally my father answered the door. I saw the expression on his face before I saw who was at the door. I immediately knew trouble was standing at our front door.
“Well aren’t ya’ gonna’ invite us in?” several voices asked almost in unison.
A few moments later a carload of my mother’s relatives poured into our living room. They were just returning from a big family get-together at my great grandmother’s – the big get-together they had every four years on the Sunday before the presidential election.
The Pope Is Gonna’ Be Runnin’ The Country
The year was 1960. The date was November 6, two days before the country would decide if John Kennedy or Richard Nixon would be our next president.
We attended most family functions, but never the political ones.
My father came from a political family. His father had been a career politician. Spell that D-e-m-o-c-r-a-t. My father married into a very conservative, religious, rabidly Republican family that equated their politics with their religion. They knew about my grandfather, the D-e-m-o-c-r-a-t. (Good Christian folks shouldn’t say dirty words like Democrat, so they spelled it out.)
Since John Kennedy, both a Democrat and a Catholic (gasp!) would be on the ballot in two days, the family had decided to send a delegation to convince my father to vote for Nixon, since they assumed he was planning to vote for Kennedy.
This is a guest post by Richard Morgan. Two of his goals in life are to love his wife and two kids, and spend time in the Word of God almost every day. He writes at 
It is easy to have faith that God will supply all of my needs when I still have a good paying job. It is easy to have faith that I will wake up tomorrow when my health is good and so I make my plans as if I will be here for tomorrow. It is easy to have faith that posting this blog will not get me thrown into prison.
This is a guest post by Joey Espinosa. He and his family live in Allendale, SC, one of the most impoverished areas in the country. A former chemist-turned-pastor, he and his wife now work with at-risk children and families. You can read about their experiences at 
It’s been said that the only people that like change are babies with dirty diapers. I get that. I loathe change. I love the feeling of security I get from sameness, like the blankie I carried everywhere when I was 4 years old.
Philip Wood is an Anabaptist, Mennonite, coffeeholic, writer, and ornithologist. He is also a candidate for the world’s most impractical man. He describes himself as a bear of little technical brain and unlikely to produce a useful pot. However, he might occasionally come up with a good idea. He also believes trees should count as facebook friends.
I’m writing from the UK. London to be precise.
These things should not be.
I love to study Scripture, but I sometimes wonder if the effort is worth it. Some days I become more and more convinced of the impossibility of understanding Scripture.
In the Parable of the Talents, a master gives money to three of his servants and instructs them to invest the money while he is away. We know the rest of the story.
One of the biggest things holding people back from attempting the risky endeavor of changing the church to look more like Jesus is the fear of mistakes.