When I teach the formal curriculum, I have the chance to think about it ahead of time. I can rehearse it. I can illustrate it with self-deprecating humor and humble-sounding personal disclosure. I can try to make it comes out just right.
A bad sermon is like a car wreck – everyone slows down to see what happened.
The miracle of Sunday is that a dead man lives. The miracle of Saturday is that the eternal Son of God lies dead.
One reason why we fail to hear God speak is that we are not attentive. We suffer from what might be called ‘spiritual mindlessness.’
In reality, each thought we have carries with it a little spiritual power, a tug toward or away from God. No thought is purely neutral.
Death is the prerequisite to resurrection, the new life God intends.
At the heart of Christian faith is the story of Jesus death and resurrection.
God has entrusted us with his most precious treasure – people. He asks us to shepherd and mold them into strong disciples, with brave faith and good character.
In the beginning, we’re told, was the word. Every once in a while someone shows up on the planet who is word-obsessed and word-gifted; and the light and darkness get named again. In our day, that someone is Buechner.
There are dozens of references to God in the Scriptures for every one to the figure of Satan. This reflects a sometimes forgotten theological truth that the devil is by no means God’s counterpart. He is a creature, not the Creator.
A boss who interrupts an employee a lot is called an extrovert, whereas an employee who interrupts a boss too often is called an ex-employee.
The harder you strike it, the deeper it goes.
You can only love and be loved to the extent that you know and are known by somebody.
I don’t have a problem with delegation. I love to delegate. I am either lazy enough, or busy enough, or trusting enough, or congenial enough, that the notion leaving tasks in someone else’s lap doesn’t just sound wise to me, it sounds attractive.
Art is built on the deepest themes of human meaning: good and evil, beauty and ugliness, life and death, love and hate. No other story has incarnated those themes more than the story of Jesus.
Churches can become places of cynicism, resistance, and pessimism.
Nobody lives up to the norms that God had in mind when he first created human beings.
The only cure from sin is by maintaining a vision of God.
Skeptics would rather, even at their own expense, appear to be right than take the risk of trusting.
True love is willing to warn, reprove, confront or admonish when necessary.
Failure is not an event, but rather a judgment about an event. Failure is not something that happens to us or a label we attach to things. It is a way we think about outcomes.