Keep your balance.

In a recent newspaper article about the late Robert Runcie, the former Anglican Archbishop of Canterbury, his wife, Rosalind, talked about her need for diversions such as music, gardening, and fund-raising, saying, "Too much religion makes me go pop."

The question of how much religion is too much may seem, well, irreligious. But it's a question we all struggle with as Christians and Catholics. People can become so absorbed in parish activities, church issues, or even spirituality that they lose proper perspective on the rest of life, on how the rest of the world is living. "Church people" such folks are sometimes called, as if their minds had been taken over by some alien force.

We all know religion should be an important--indeed the most important--part of our lives, but we can't always find its proper relationship to our selves, families, jobs, and communities. Sometimes an intense religious outlook separates us from others. In our cover story, "Just do it: How practice makes Catholic"), Father Robert Barron seeks to find how best to situate religion in our lives by seeing Christianity as a path to holiness, a set of habits and practices that become part of our mind and body. Like any discipline, however, one must first enter into faith as an apprentice, Barron writes, and only by constant practice does it become real.

Two articles this month deal with changes in parish leadership. Likening the arrival of a new parish leader to a stepparent assuming authority in a new family, Dolores Curran ("Four things parishes deserve from a new pastor,") outlines four "habits of highly effective parish leaders" that will help smooth the transition for both leaders and followers. And Tim Unsworth ("Changing pastors shouldn't be like a blind date,") looks at what does and doesn't work in the process of appointing new pastors. He shows how inviting laypeople into decision-making not only makes for finding the right pastor but also for a better-running parish.

In the Testaments column ("A tough sell,"), Alice Camille takes on one of the most difficult passages in the gospels, Jesus' command to the rich man to sell everything for the poor and follow him. "Does Jesus expect this from us as well?" Camille asks. Her answer will help you make sense of this challenging story.

This month's issue invites Catholics to find some balance of life and faith, to put religion in the center of our lives without it consuming us, to know our roles, to participate in parish decision-making, and to find the middle ground between giving it all away and giving nothing at all.

Archbishop Runcie described his marriage as a "union of delight with duty." Our faith lives should be the same.