May 2012
1 post
4 tags
“If I understand the teaching of the New Testament on this matter, I understand...”
– Lesslie Newbigin, Truth to Tell: The Gospel as Public Truth p82 (via newbigin)
April 2012
2 posts
5 tags
CHURCH SHOPPING
“Church shopping is the spiritual equivalent of speed dating; me-focused and loaded with unfair expectations outside of relationship.”
Caesar Kalinowski
via @CaesarKal
5 tags
“True spirituality is not a superhuman religiosity; it is simply true humanity...”
– Richard Lovelace
Dynamics of Spiritual Life
via Of First Importance
March 2012
15 posts
7 tags
“Individual growth toward love and wisdom is slow. A community’s growth is even...”
– Jean Vanier, Community and Growth (1979)
4 tags
LOVE THE ONES YOU'RE WITH
……………………………………………………………
Came across a great site this morning in my interweb ramblings: Screenshots of Despair. One particular post (see above) got me thinking about my tendency to romanticize community and to desire for it to work a particular way, to look...
5 tags
“Until one is committed, there is hesitancy, the chance to draw back—...”
– Goethe
“There’s no such thing as “independently wealthy” at the King’s table.”
– @john_starke
4 tags
“Ask me not where I live, or what I like to eat, or how I comb my hair, but ask...”
– Thomas Merton
My Argument with the Gestapo
From Alan Hirsch’s facebook post
“Christians need to be different enough to make a difference…”
– Dezi Baker via @CMAResources
4 tags
PATIENCE, GRASSHOPPER
“There are long stretches of darkness and invisibility and silence that separate planting and reaping.” - Eugene Peterson
“To act on the light one has is almost the only way to more light.”
– C.S. Lewis
via @CSLewisU
“Movement is a work of the Holy Spirit. Multiplication is a work of obedience.”
– @chankilgore
7 tags
CULTIVATE ZEAL!
“Beware of crushing zeal. Seek it. Cultivate it. Try to blow up the fire in your own heart, and the hearts of others – but never, never crush it. Beware of throwing cold water on zealous souls, whenever you meet with them. Beware of nipping in the bud this precious grace when first it shoots. If you are a parent beware of crushing it in your children – if you are a husband, beware of...
4 tags
“It is utterly vain to say, as I constantly hear men say, that we desire to see...”
– Roland Allen
The Spontaneous Expansion of the Church: And the Causes That Hinder It
via @sdesocio
4 tags
“There are two kinds of people: those who live the adventure, & those who...”
– @Neil_Cole
3 tags
BEHOLD, I SEND YOU OUT...
“If you want to find lost sheep, go where the wolves are.” @Neil_Cole
“He died not for men, but for each man. If each man had been the only man made,...”
– CS Lewis
via @CSLewisU
6 tags
GOSPEL-ADVANCEMENT > SELF-SERVICE
Sometimes we have people come and hang out with us and our missional community, and they really like things for a while. They enjoy having meals with us, talking about faith, praying together, and so on. Then we start talking about really digging in— rooting out our idols, taking up our cross daily, reaching out and discipling people— and things change. It goes something like this:...
February 2012
16 posts
“In my deepest wound, I see your glory, and it dazzles me.”
– St. Augustine
“Spirit, lead me in my next step.”
“Don’t invite Jesus into your life. Your life’s a wreck. Jesus...”
– Russell Moore
@drmoore
9 tags
OBJECTION!
“People try to persuade us that the objections against Christianity spring from doubt. The objections against Christianity spring from insubordination, the dislike of obedience, rebellion against all authority. As a result people have hitherto been beating the air in the struggle against objections, because they have fought intellectually with doubt instead of fighting morally with...
6 tags
“Make obedient disciples. Then you will see churches multiply.”
– George Patterson
via @Neil_Cole
8 tags
WHERE ARE THE RISK-TAKERS?
“Where are the young men and women of this generation who will hold their lives cheap and be faithful even unto death? Where are those who will lose their lives for Christ’s sake — flinging them away for love of him? Where are those who will live dangerously and be reckless in his service? Where are his lovers — those who love him and the souls of men more than their own reputations or...
“And forgive us our trash baskets as we forgive those who put trash in our...”
– Overheard from a kid in church
5 tags
MOTIVES
The great nineteenth-century preacher Charles Spurgeon once told the story of a humble gardener who presents a bunch of carrots to his king because he so loves his sovereign. The king rewards his love with a plot of land so that the man can continue to grow produce and bless his kingdom. A court official sees this and thinks: ‘An acre of land for a bunch of carrots - what a deal!’ The next day...
5 tags
THE OFFENSE OF WORKS SALVATION
Tim Chester, in his book You Can Change, imagines a scene that illustrates how ridiculous it is when we think we can do anything to merit God’s love.
Imagine being there at the cross, with Jesus in his final moments. He struggles to speak, but he utters a phrase clear enough for all to hear— “It is finished.” You then raise your hand and say, “Actually, Jesus, not...
4 tags
CITY CHURCH
HT: http://jrwoodward.net/2012/02/church-isle-by-scott-mutter/
“What would the US be like in 100 years if we stopped training our kids to leave...”
– @caesarkal
6 tags
MAY ALL YOUR PLANS BE THWARTED
“Research shows that 2% of your church is half way interested in mission.”
– @alanhirsch
via Caesar Kalinowski on Facebook
6 tags
WHOSE GLORY?
“To maintain the posture of ‘To God be the glory’ is to ask ourselves at every point (in preparing sermons, Bible studies, lectures, articles or books, etc.) why am I doing what I am doing? Am I doing the present task to bring attention to myself and to honor myself or to bring attention to God, Christ, the gospel, and to honor the Trinity? Am I doing what I am doing to make a...
5 tags
WORD AND SPIRIT
“I find myself wanting to live life with the people of my community, where I can preach-along with the other preachers of our community-but not allow that to become an act of speech making. Instead, I want it to be a living interaction of the story of God and the story of our community being connected by our truth telling, our vulnerability, and our open minds, ears, and eyes-all brought...
5 tags
JOURNEY WITH JESUS
“Our lives are not problems to be solved but journeys to be taken with Jesus as our friend and finest guide.”
@HenriNouwen
via Mike Sandefur on Facebook
January 2012
8 posts
5 tags
“Let’s feel no pressure to change quickly. Odd thing for a pastor to say....”
– @rayortlund
“Grace cannot prevail until our lifelong certainty that someone is keeping score...”
– Robert Farrar Capon
4 tags
“96% of church growth is due to transfer growth instead of churches striking into...”
– Mike Breen
via @JonTyson
5 tags
READ THE GOSPELS!
“The doctrines on which our discipleship rests are clearest in the epistles, but the nature of discipleship itself is most vividly portrayed in the gospels.
Some Christians seem to prefer the epistles as if this were a mark of growing up spiritually; but really this attitude is a very bad sign, suggesting that we are more interested in theological notions than in fellowship with the Lord...
6 tags
“One of our fundamental misunderstandings of spiritual maturity is thinking that...”
– Mark Batterson
“The Circle Maker”
4 tags
CONVERSIONS THAT COUNT
“The only conversions that count in the kingdom are those confirmed by a life of discipleship.”
~Craig S. Keener
via @alanhirsch
4 tags
“If you can’t reproduce disciples, you’ll never reproduce leaders. If you can’t...”
– Neil Cole
Organic Leadership, p. 250
4 tags
STEPHEN COLBERT, GOSPEL WITNESS
In 1974, when Colbert was 10, his father, a doctor, and his brothers Peter and Paul, the two closest to him in age, died in a plane crash while flying to a prep school in New England. “There’s a common explanation that profound sadness leads to someone’s becoming a comedian, but I’m not sure that’s a proven equation in my case,” he told me. “I’m not bitter about what happened to me as a child, and...
December 2011
6 posts
“Real leaders are people who help us overcome the limitations of our own...”
– David Foster Wallace (via livesent)
“God loves you so utterly & completely that he has given himself for you in...”
– T.F. Torrance
via @ScottyWardSmith
The Missionary Spirit
“Christians receive the Spirit of Jesus, and the Spirit of Jesus is the missionary spirit.”
~ Leslie Newbigin
3 tags
“The meaning of marriage begins in the giving of words. We cannot join ourselves...”
– Wendell Berry, from the essay “Poetry and Marriage” (via ayjay)
“In God’s kingdom the presence of the greatest does not depress the small.”
– JRR Tolkein
Essay on Fairy Stories
4 tags
WatchTHE MISSIONAL NATURE OF THE BIBLE
November 2011
6 posts
1 tag
“The radical conversion of the heart, the U-turn of the mind which the New...”
– Lesslie Newbigin, Foolishness to the Greeks (via dgerm)
“A consumer based ministry sees new believers as clients needing their services....”
– @JesusLabs