We have often done well knowing the mind of God in our churches today. We have not done as well knowing His heart. We have largely become a church that pursues insights, principles, and theological...

If your motive is in any way to promote greatness for yourself, you’re in the wrong calling.

Time and again I hear how important the darker environment is to those at our vintage-faith worship gathering. Attenders feel they can freely pray in a corner by themselves without feeling that everyone is staring...

Somehow we American pastors, without really noticing what was happening, got our vocations redefined in the terms of American careerism. We quit thinking of the parish as a location for pastoral spirituality and started thinking...

Leadership potential is in everyone; we all have it, but we all don’t know it until we have a direct individual encounter with the Holy Spirit of God. The principal source of leadership influence is...

Just like the way you date in relationship and become convinced before you give a partner your heart, you got to date your PASTOR to know he can be your MENTOR before you give him...

The church is not a brick-and-mortar structure. The church is made of flesh & blood. Followers of #Christ are the church.

One example is the familiar parable of the prodigal son (Luke 15:11-32), which in some ways might be better called the parable of the elder brother. For the point of the parable as a whole...

You alone in Europe are not ancient oh ChristianityThe most modern European is you Pope Pius XAnd you whom the windows observe shame keeps youFrom entering a church and confessing this morningYou read the prospectuses...

live as temporal, serve as eternal

Non servirò ciò in cui non credo più, si chiami questo la casa, la patria o la Chiesa: e tenterò di esprimere me stesso in un qualunque modo di vita o di arte quanto più...

It is my trade,” he said. “I work for the bean family, and every day there are deaths among the beans, mostly from thirst. They shrivel and die, they go blind in their one black...

Now, there are things I like just fine about church, and I don’t just mean making money. The notion of getting together as a community to remind ourselves why we shouldn’t behave like animals is...

Unless a person can give reasons, there is, literally, no reason why anyone else should take that person seriously. But without reasons, all we are left with is emotional blackmail. We sometimes call it ‘moral...

So, yeah, my people figured that maybe there’s something at the back of it all, a creator, a great spirit, and so we say thank you to it, because it’s always good to say thank...

A church that does not provoke any crisis, preach a gospel that does not unsettle, proclaim a word of Godthat does not get under anyone’s skin or a word of God that does not touch...

Each of those churches shows certain books, which they call revelation, or the Word of God. The Jews say that their Word of God was given by God to Moses face to face; the Christians...

I grew up in the church. I was raised in the church.

I cannot think why we should be astonished at all the evils which exist in the Church, when those who ought to be models on which all may pattern their virtues are annulling the work...

Consistently, [Yves] Congar emphasized the distinction between Tradition and traditionalism. The latter was an unyielding commitment to the past. The former was a living principle of commitment to the Beginning, a process that required creativity,...

Church and family are both primary influences designed by God for a purpose and when they work together, they are orange. Both are systems comprised of imperfect people—that’s why God desires to use them as...

The medieval Church believed that the resurrection of Christ marked a new time for all of humanity.

I realized I was going to get through this disappointing service, and anyway, you have to be somewhere: better here, where I have heard truth spoken so often, than, say, at the DMV, or home...

Persecution is an enemy the Church has met and mastered many times. Indifference could prove to be a far more dangerous foe.

I am accountable.I am correctable.I am transformable.Presenting myself a living sacrifice to God. By the love of God.By the word of God.Completely supplied in Christ Jesus.Unto all good works.

{Wells discussing his experiences with Christianity}I realised as if for the first time, the menace of these queer shaven men in lace and petticoats who had been intoning, responding, and going through ritual gestures at...

Hypocrisy versus authenticity among men is not always so black and white, and as is righteousness, humility is often self-proclaimed. The Church is most definitely supposed to be a hospital for the spiritually, emotionally, mentally,...

It’s been said that men think only about sex and food. And some men, like my uncle Lester, think about sex with food. Needless to say the church has ordered him to cease bringing his...

We get called dishonoring for pointing out the garbage in the church, yet nobody ever seems to think it’s dishonoring that somebody put the garbage there in the first place.

Whose little boy are you?

Mystical experience needs some form of dogma in order not to dissipate into moments of spiritual intensity that are merely personal, and dogma needs regular infusions of unknowingness to keep from calcifying into the predictable,...

A true dreamer is one who knows how to navigate in the dark”.

The top 10% of the people who are most creative, constructive and thoughtful, do not have much to do with churches. To them the canons of reason come first, making faith secondary and questionable.

If Christianity was only about finding a group of people to live life with who shared openly their search for God and allowed anyone regardless of behavior to seek too and who collectively lived by...

God’s voice is usually nothing more than a whisper, and you have to listen very carefully to hear it. But other times, in those rarest of moments, the answer is obvious and rings as loud...

Plantie is a very strong Protestant, that is to say, he’s against all churches, especially the Protestant: and he thinks a lot of Buddha, Karma and Confucius. He is also a bit of an anarchist...

We are being called to a new and deeper passion: to those who live under the shadow of the cross and those most in need of compassion. Then we become mothers of God, sisters and...

If heaven really exists: then, technically, living is an activity that believers keep themselves busy with — while they wait for their death.

I don’t care what it looks, I don’t care what it feels like, I believe God.

And another thing is that I think as a church whenever we become politically driven, we alienate at least 50 percent of the people that God called us to reach with our political orientations.

The only group large enough to handle,” the world’s biggest, “problems is the network of millions of local churches around the world. We have the widest distribution, largest group of volunteers, local credibility, the promises...

a place where the person you least want to live with always lives.” His definition applies equally to the group that gathers each Thanksgiving and the group that congregates each Sunday morning. (p. 64-65, Church:...

No Temple made by mortal human hands can ever compare to the Temple made by the gods themselves. That building of wood and stone that houses us and that many believe conceals the great Secret...

The husband is the head of the wife just in so far as he is to her what Christ is to the Church – read on – and give his life for her (Eph. V,...

She gives me the finger and turns back around. “Did you see that?” I flinch at the gesture. “That is completely illegal in here.

I see no reason why church services have to be standard. I’ve discussed this with the man who used to be a pastor here at the Methodist Church in Sebastopol. I told him I saw...

And in the Incarnation the whole human race recovers the dignity of the image of God. Henceforth, any attack even on the least of men is an attack on Christ, who took the form of...

Our musical artistry and leadership of people need to work together to create an environment that welcomes participation instead of causing disengagement.

It is wonderful how much time good people spend fighting the devil. If they would only expend the same amount of energy loving their fellow men, the devil would die in his own tracks of...

It is better to go skiing and think of God, than go to church and think of sport.