How can congregations best respond to the overwhelming number of public crises that confront us today-mass shooting, terrorist attacks, hurricanes, flood, wildfires, tornadoes, even the debilitating effects of chronic and deep-rooted problems like racism and community violence? In Baptized for This Moment, Lutheran Bishop Steven Bouman offers a Christian alternative to the cynicism and division that drive today's public discourse and describes in practical detail ways congregations can create spaces to lament, develop living liturgies, build public mission tables, and engage space to lament, develop living liturgies, build public mission tables, and engage with others in discovering the transformative power of the grace that is always all around us. Excerpts from Baptized for This Moment: Everyone who draws breath has ground zeros in their lives. How easily our lamentation may turn to anger, to xenophobia, to talk to walls, to racial and religious profiling. The Church is constantly called to persevere in Hebrews 10: 24-25 "Let us consider how to provoke one another to love and good deeds, not neglecting to meet together, as is the habit of some, but encouraging one another." We Christian cannot avert our eyes from desolation not let the short attention span of today's culture move us on too quickly from the small and large disasters that traumatize our fragile world. Our lamentations are not the isolation and depression of wounded entitlement or private grief, but the community at the foot of the cross moving outward in solidarity and love toward the sorrow of the world. Here must be the first response of the church in the face of any of the tragedies we now find afflicting us: Show up, Listen, Tell stories. Pray. Book jacket.