"What we forget," my professor said, "is that at the end of the day, the philosopher closes his office door and goes home—and just is, despite how he thinks he ought to be. He plays with his kids and eats his dinner and sleeps in his soft bed."

For entrepreneur Hans Hess, better food and cleaner transportation aren't just ways to make money—they're means to serve both God and humanity.

The Christian, whatever her context—rural, suburban, small town, and so on—should embrace the ascent of cities. These grandiose claims for the self-importance of cities and their residents are precisely what those who live elsewhere instinctively rebuff. But consider the stakes involved: Pragmatically, as the cities go, so goes the rest of culture, for good or for ill—what happens there will soon become everyone's problem or opportunity.

Our task is not only to see the industrial town as it "is," in all its brokenness and fragmentation, but also to see it as it "could be," to imagine a different town in light of God's redemptive work and purpose. Unfortunately, too many of us live in the world as "is" and haven't developed the imagination to see God's hand at work in shaping what "could be." Frontiers need people who have the eyes to see and ears to hear a new reality of a Kingdom that is "already, but not yet."

We have appreciated the ways our suburban home has served as a reminder of our commitments to ministry, community, and vocational coherence. It gives daily evidence of the ways we have sought to live out an incarnate faith by binding ourselves to real places and real people, imperfect as they may be.

Once we know God, the primary calling He has for any of us is to be his man or woman in our own little corner of the world.

As a teenager, even one about to be married, I didn't give much thought to domestic life except as a place to work against sexual stereotypes and bring my budding 1970s feminist agenda to bear. Thinking of cooking as an important skill to possess never occurred to me. I never thought about how much it could figure into the flourishing of human life and be used in the service of others.

How much of our view of "the good life" comes from the films we watch?

A glance at recent non-fiction releases by Stanley Hauerwas, John Bowen, Aaron Belz, Jonathan Merritt, and more.

Comment recently received this request by email: "This summer I am . . . on the side trying to figure out what to do with my life, particularly regarding seminary and/or graduate school. One thing I am trying to take into serious consideration is not only gifts, but also where there is great need, inspired be an article you wrote ["Asking big questions" by Gideon Strauss, Comment, July 14, 2006].

"As I have been reflecting on where the greatest need is, I wondered where the actual needs and (when I think about graduate school & study) questions are? So, it seemed there might be a place for a forum for an issue of, say, Comment to seek out wisdom from various Christian leaders/scholars who might tackle the question, 'Where are the world's needs and hurts? Where do we need to focus the life-giving news of Christ as we think about our callings?'"

With that in mind, Comment put together this symposium to answer these questions on loose geographic and vocational lines.

Faithful fashion in an over-consuming culture.

We want our home to tell people who we are, who and what we love, and where we've been.

Did you know Comment publishes five times more content online than in print? Here's a look at our most popular online articles from July-September 2010.