"When you begin to think outside the box, you often become some other "leaders" lousy follower. That usually costs something" (Andy Rayner)

"Our guardian angels are bored." (Mike Foster)

It's where I feel I'm at these days. “In the second half of life, it is good just to be a part of the general dance. We do not have to stand out, make defining moves, or be better than anyone else on the dance floor. Life is more participatory than assertive, and there is no need for strong or further self-definition” (Falling Upward. Richard Rohr.120).

Saturday, October 6, 2018

We Despise Them For It

"Here is a book that is against just about everything we believe in. I say that as a Methodist Bishop who ought to know what we believe in. Method is are those Christians who believe in trying to follow Jesus and attempting to be the church without letting any of that get in the way of our being successful. In other words, we methodists are just about everything that every anabaptist lives in fear of becoming.
I say thank God that the Anabaptists were run out of Europe so that they took up residence in Indiana and elsewhere. God has sent them into the Wilderness that is Contemporary American culture in order to keep the rest of us honest about Jesus, or at least to make us feel guilty. Here, as elsewhere, they have exercised and influence upon the extended Body of Christ far out of proportion to their numbers. They have been salt, light, yeast, and on unassimilatable lump in an otherwise comfortable and accommodated Christendom.  God bless them for their witness, though most of the rest of us despise them for it."

- William H. Willimin. Bishop, The North Alabama Conference of the United Methodist Church, Birmingham, Alabama

Forward written in : Becoming Anabaptist: The Orgin and Significance of Sixteenth-Century Anabaptism

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