When the phone rings in the office before 8:00 a.m., it’s usually someone from two or three time zones east of here. The 7:15 call this morning was no exception. It was Bill Ehlig from Houston, Texas. He’s coauthor of What Every Church Member Should Know about Poverty and six months ago I didn’t know him or the book. He moderated the discussion of his book during November in the Barclay Press online Conversation Café.

Bill doesn’t have as many physical and mental barriers between himself and poverty as I do. So things happen to him that don’t happen to me (i.e., running into a 16-year-old he had previously counseled who is now panhandling in the grocery store parking lot). Poverty has many faces and Bill sees them closer and more personal than I do.