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
“One who cannot cast away a treasure at need is in fetters.”
– Aragorn
“The church cannot live when the heart of God is not beating within her....”
– Erwin McManus
5 tags
“I know that you say you would die for your wife, and I believe you. But if that...”
– Joe Thorn, Note to Self
via My World
7 tags
DISCIPLESHIP AND THE GOSPEL
Great quote from my friend from seminary, Jonathan Dodson:
“Contrary to what some might think, discipleship is not the engine of the church. The gospel is. Without the gospel, both discipleship and church fail. Without the driving force of the gospel, discipleship devolves into self-help religiosity motivated by conservative pietism. The church is reduced to a glorified non-profit in which...
September 2011
12 posts
“If you want a religion to make you feel comfortable, I certainly don’t recommend...”
– ~C.S. Lewis (via @darrinpatrick)
“We always treat guests as angels - just in case.”
– ~ Brother Jeremiah, Egyptian monk, 4th Century (via @pastorharv)
“Best 2 discipleship ?’s I know. Jesus asks both of them “Who do...”
– @dukerevard
4 tags
“I believe it to be a grave mistake to present Christianity as something charming...”
– Dorothy Sayers
via @The_Inklings
“One of the biggest differences between me & God is He doesn’t believe...”
– @STimmis
“If people aren’t accusing you of living with sinners too much then you...”
– Jeff Vanderstelt
“God is not interested in 10% of your money, he’s interested in 100%.”
– @STimmis
“If grace marks our relationship with God, it’s grace that should mark our...”
– @STimmis
5 tags
“Make obedient disciples. Then you will see churches multiply.”
– George Patterson
6 tags
“Every church needs to be able to answer two questions. One, do we have a plan...”
– Dallas Willard
4 tags
BUILDING FOR THE FUTURE
Are we spending our energy on building for the future or on propping up the terminally-ill past? Steve Addison offers a thought-provoking post asking just this question.
___________________________
A Monument to Lost Causes and Missed Opportunities
2 SEPTEMBER, 2011
By STEVE ADDISON
When Saffie the Wonderdog and I take our morning walk, we head out along the creek at the bottom of our...
“If you hold to my teaching, you are really my disciples. Then you will know the...”
– Jesus John 8.31-32
August 2011
6 posts
6 tags
STUDY JESUS
“Do you want to know what God looks like? Look at Jesus. ‘No one has ever seen God,’ and God in all of His transcendent splendor we still cannot see until the last day. But the Word became flesh; God became a human being with the name of Jesus; and we can see Him.
That is why Jesus later says to one of His own disciples, ‘Don’t you know Me, Philip, even after I have been among you such...
3 tags
“Jesus promised his disciples three things, that they would be completely...”
– GK Chesterton
HOSPITALITY, HOBBIT STYLE
“His house was perfect, whether you liked food, or sleep, or work, or story-telling, or singing, or just sitting and thinking.” - The Hobbit
1 tag
“You think you’re after love, but what you’re really after is the...”
– Tim Keller
6 tags
OUT OF THE FORSAKEN LAND
“Far above the mountains in the west, the night-sky was still dim and pale. There, peeping among the cloud-wrack above a dark tor high up in the mountains, Sam saw a white star twinkle for a while. The beauty of it smote his heart, as he looked up out of the forsaken land, and hope returned to him. For like a shaft, clear and cold, the thought pierced him that in the end the Shadow was a...
July 2011
1 post
5 tags
HOW TO TELL IF YOUR CHURCH IS DOING ITS JOB
Original here
June 2011
9 posts
3 tags
QUOTES TO BUILD A LIFE ON
Ray Ortlund shares the top ten quotes that have informed his faith and ministry. These are gems. Enjoy.
#10
“We must not pass too harsh judgment upon ourselves or others when God doth exercise us with bruising upon bruising; there must be a conformity to our head, Christ, who was bruised for us (Isaiah 53:5), that we may know how much we are bound unto him. Profane spirits, ignorant of God’s...
“When the Greeks got the Gospel, they turned it into a philosophy; when the...”
– Richard Halverson
“Skill may win in the short run, but true character (faith, hope, & love)...”
6 tags
A FRIEND OF THE POOR, THE BROKEN, THE SINNER
Are you friends with people who are broken, poor, struggling? I’m not talking about going to work at the soup kitchen once a month or giving change to a guy at the intersection— Jesus was called a friend of sinners, he spent time with the poor and broken, and brought new life to them. As his followers, as people who are being formed in the image and life of Jesus, do we do the same?
...
THE QUANDRY OF THE PAID PASTOR
It is difficult to get a man to understand something when his salary depends upon his not understanding it.
~ Upton Sinclair
via @alanhirsch
“If you’re approaching Him not as the goal but as a road, not as the end...”
– C.S. Lewis
“Taking up your cross does not mean dealing with the difficulties of life. It...”
– D.A. Carson
“You cannot evangelize people you hate.”
– D.A. Carson
1 tag
THE GOSPEL PROMISE IN THE OLD TESTAMENT
Therefore say to the house of Israel, Thus says the Lord GOD: It is not for your sake, O house of Israel, that I am about to act, but for the sake of my holy name, which you have profaned among the nations to which you came.
And I will vindicate the holiness of my great name, which has been profaned among the nations, and which you have profaned among them. And the nations will know that I am the...
“Some young studs asked me how to live missional. My reply “It was said of...”
– @bobbycapps
May 2011
13 posts
4 tags
LEAVE ROOM FOR THE SPIRIT, FRIENDS
“The average church has so established itself organizationally and financially that God is simply not necessary to it. So entrenched is its authority and so stable are the religious habits of its members that God could withdraw Himself completely from it and it could run on for years on its own momentum.”
~ A.W. Tozer
Quoted in Keith Giles’ book This Is My Body: Ekklesia As God...