Charity is merely returning what we have stolen.
We are setting ourselves up for disappointment if our hope is built on anything less than Jesus.
Somehow Jesus’s reputation has survived all the embarrassing things that Christians have done in his name.
We give people fish. We teach them to fish. We tear down the walls that have been built up around the fish pond. And we figure out who polluted it.
Recognizing that something is wrong is the first step toward changing the world.
We know the Church wasn’t born 200 years ago. It’s encouraging to see some of the post-denominational churches actually wanting to reconnect with the story and the prayer life of the larger Church.
There is nothing more sickening than talking about poverty over a fancy dinner.
It doesn’t matter who you are. Everyone has something to offer the movement of justice.
The history of the church has been largely a history of “believers” refusing to believe in the way of the crucified Nazarene and instead giving in to the very temptations he resisted – power, relevancy, spectacle.
This common prayer project has taken years of energy, but we see it not as a way to leave our individual churches, but as a movement we hope to see permeate the larger Church.
The more I have read the Bible and studied the life of Jesus, the more I have become convinced that Christianity spreads best not through force but through fascination.
Christians pretty much live like everybody else, they just sprinkle a little Jesus in along the way.
I engage with local politics because it affects people I love. And I engage in national politics because it affects people I love.
To all my nonbelieving, sort-of-believing, and used-to-be-believing friends: I feel like I should begin with a confession. I am sorry that so often the biggest obstacle to God has been Christians.
We can tell the world that there is life after death, but the world really seems to be wondering if there is life before death.
Someday war and poverty will be crazy and we will wonder how the world allowed such things to exist.
There is real value in these local congregations. For me, a lot of it is the value of the sacraments we share. In neighborhoods like ours, the churches provide stability.
Prayer is not so much about convincing God to do what we want God to do as it is about convincing ourselves to do what God wants us to do.
We’re not church planters. We are community planters and, as we work in our communities, we join local churches.
So if the world hates us, we take courage that it hated Jesus first. If you’re wondering whether you’ll be safe, just look at what they did to Jesus and those who followed him. There are safer ways to live than by being a Christian.