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We need to ask ourselves why some people are staying poor. What are the economic and political factors that throw so many people in the river? These are justice issues.

S: You say this is important to you, but I’ve read a lot of your books, and I don’t think you really talk about it.

B: I like you, Sara! (laughs) I am writing a book now as a followup to my book The Secret Message of Jesus, and it talks a lot about our responsibility to respond to poverty.

S: What do you think the Church will look like in 20 or 30 years?

B: That’s hard to answer because the church is so incredibly diverse. I hope we will build more relational churches. And we will have a higher degree of concern for people outside the Church.

Will we do it? The answer to that depends on you and me and your readers. If we are faithful, committed, wise, courageous, compassionate and creative, we can make things better. Just think, in 20 years we could do what Bono says and make poverty history. Or…we could start the Third World War. It’s up to us.

For me, I have to wake up every day and decide if I want to keep working at this thing. Lots of people don’t like me. I get nasty e-mails, you know. So I just try to be faithful to God.

Sara Brouillette describes herself as “a book-crazed 16-year-old” and says Brian McLaren’s “sharp ideas and genuine personality made me feel that I had found a long-lost best friend. I wondered where he had been all this time and then I realized I’ve sat with him on a park bench or on the bus on the way to school and I’ve often carried him around in my purse or backpack.”