We cling to words like drowning men to straws. But still we drown, we drown.
An 'almost gospel' doesn't raise a corpse.
For too long, we’ve called unbelievers to “invite Jesus into your life. ” Jesus doesn’t want to be in your life. Your life is a wreck. Jesus calls you into his life. And his life isn’t boring or purposeless or static. It’s wild and exhilarating and unpredictable.
When we adopt—and when we encourage a culture of adoption in our churches and communities—we’re picturing something that’s true about our God. We, like Jesus, see what our Father is doing and do likewise (John 5:19). And what our Father is doing, it turns out, is fighting for orphans, making them sons and daughters.
Before we're Americans, we're Christians. And so we have to be informed by a certain moral sense, which means that we need to speak up for moral principle and for gospel principle regardless of who that offends.
The church is not built on the rock foundation of geniuses and influencers but of apostles and prophets.
We have to be the people who stand up and say look, vigilance is good and prudence is good. But a kind of irrational fear that leads itself to demagogic rhetoric is something that we have to say no - no, we're not going to go there.
Art has to be reflective of our society.
A man who behaves poorly in a Community will not do well in a parish.
Boom, boom, foom, poom! He just ran right at 'em!
People who don't like cats haven't been around them. There's the old joke: dogs have masters, cats have staff.