Chinese Have Come For The Gospel In Canada

"God is sending the nations to Canada, as international students. Over 500,000 of them this year in 2019. He is sending them here because he knows we are here. So we don't have to travel anymore."

We look to China. And the Chinese in Canada are right here looking at our backsides as we look to China. They are right here. 

Corner Happiness

Happiness

Is Just Around

The Corner.

Too Bad The

World is Round.

No Time Except Africa

"You know back in Africa not everyone has a watch, but everyone has time. And then I came to North America and everyone has a watch, but nobody has time."
- Dr. Yaw Perbi. Ghanaian in Canada

65% Of Canadians Don't Want To Go To Your Church

65% of Canadians are "Uninvitable" to church.
Do you know what I mean by "uninvitable"?
Even if they like you, trust you, and respect you, they don't want to go to your church.
65%
So we need to continue to do church well. Don't hear me wrong. I am not saying we are doing everything wrong. We need to do "Come and See" really well. We need to be welcoming, we need to have great solid... teaching that is inspiring, we need to look after families.
But 65% of Canadians do not want to come inside of a church.
But 89% say they are interested in discussing spiritual topics."

- Danny MacKay

Saving Money To Be Scoundrels

"As I get older, you know, I shan’t be a pretty object. The wenches won’t come to me of their own accord, so I shall want my money. So I am saving up more and more, simply for myself, my dear son Alexey Fyodorovitch. You may as well know. For I mean to go on in my sins to the end, let me tell you. For sin is sweet; all abuse it, but all men live in it, only others do it on the sly, and I openly."

- Fyodor Dostoevshy. The Brothers Karamazov 

Kingdom Needs No Stage

"I began to notice where the kingdom really thrives, and it is rarely on a stage."

- Wayne Jacobsen

Church School Is Out You Graduated

"My counsel for you is simple and straightforward: Just go ahead with what you've been given. You received Christ Jesus, the Master; now live him. 7 You're deeply rooted in him. You're well constructed upon him. You know your way around the faith. Now do what you've been taught. School's out; quit studying the subject and start living it!"

- Colossians 2:6-7 (MSG)

Church School Is Out You Graduated

"My counsel for you is simple and straightforward: Just go ahead with what you've been given. You received Christ Jesus, the Master; now live him. 7 You're deeply rooted in him. You're well constructed upon him. You know your way around the faith. Now do what you've been taught. School's out; quit studying the subject and start living it!"

- Colossians 2:6-7 (MSG)

Why Do We Teach A Religion To Follow?

"The church in the West is not withering for lack of knowledge, but for a lack of knowing him and being transformed by him. We teach Christ as a religion to follow that is empty and futile, rather than helping people live it with freedom."

- Wayne Jacobsen. Beyond Sundays 

Sermons Without Ambiguity

"Sermons give the mistaken idea that there is a well-crafted answer to every question, but that’s only because we set up the question to fit our answers. The sermons can unwittingly intimidate people from engaging others with real questions because real conversations don’t happen in outline form."

- Wayne Jacobsen. Beyond Sundays 

Different Pulpits

"God makes himself known to them? I’ve come to value the time in cars and homes with people far more than I do standing on a stage, and I see far more impact from it as well."

- Wayne Jacobsen. Beyond Sundays 

Sermons Limited?

"So, I’m not saying that sermons have no value, only that the value is limited. They can provide valuable information and inspiration, but their impact on spiritual transformation is fairly weak, and all the more so as people get used to hearing the same voice each week. They may find it informative, inspirational, even entertaining, but at the end of the day it cannot show them how to live. For that they need a more mature friend with whom they can share their experiences, questions, and even doubts as they explore their own connection to God. Listening to sermons, even taking notes and trying to live out the application, is probably the worst way to discover how to live inside the love of the Father and to follow him. I’m convinced that ninety percent of teaching and preaching occurs in a conversation where questions are being asked, doubts considered, and difficult realities contemplated."
- Wayne Jacobsen. Beyond Sundays 

Jesus Never Said Worship.....

"Fr. Richard Rohr recently wrote, “Christians have preferred to hear something Jesus never said: ‘Worship me.’ Worship of Jesus is rather harmless and risk-free; following Jesus changes everything.”

- Wayne Jacobsen. Beyond Sundays 

Who Builds Church? Who Adds To It!

"It is Jesus’ job to build the church and the Spirit’s task to show us our place in it."

- Wayne Jacobsen. Beyond Sundays 

Community

"Having community is a way to live. We have to make time for friendships, space for new people, and learn to love people simply as they are, not how we would like them to be."

- Wayne Jacobsen

The Trinity Dance

"Real community has to be found at its source—inside the Trinity itself. Father, Son, and Spirit share the most breathtaking dance of community in the universe."

- Wayne Jacobsen. Beyond Sundays 

Superior Denominations?

"We think identifying the particular tribe of Christian someone belongs to will tell us a lot about them. Are they Calvinist, Catholic, charismatic, Bible thumpers, high church or fundamentalist? The truth is, it tells us very little about people. It is an overly simplistic way to profile people with our stereotypical view of any group, while it tells us nothing about them as individuals. It doesn’t tell us how deeply they are connected to Jesus, or whether they are thriving on their spiritual journey or withering away in despair. While the question causes some to swell with pride in their particular movement, others are apprehensive for the judgment their answer might incur."

- Wayne Jacobsen. Beyond Sundays 

Fake Church Maps

"For the thirty-one million Christians in America who are following Jesus but no longer attend a formal congregation, answering that question is a dilemma. If you say you don’t, many will question the sincerity of your faith, convinced that all true Christians belong to a local congregation. They make no room for a vibrant faith and an engaging experience of church life without the institutional map."

- Wayne Jacobsen. Beyond Sundays 

Busy Dying

"Get busy being born 

or get busy dying."

-Bob Dylan - 

The Right Pleasure

"I don't always know the right thing to do, Lord but I think that the fact that I want to please you, pleases you."

- Thomas Merton

Gospel Of The Worst

"What is the good of our gospel if it does not have space for even the worst among us?"

-Tony Kriz. Aloof

2 Foot Travel Rule

"Overseas, we learned the “two-foot square of the planet principle." We learned it from policemen and we learned it from black market moneychangers. Here is how the principle works. Everybody wants to be the ruler of something, even if it is just a two—foot square parcel of the planet. They rule that square with absolute autocratic power, and they will not release you from their two foot domain until they feel you have acknowledged that power."

- Tony Kriz. Aloof 

When God Seems NOT Near

"Mother Teresa once wrote to the Rev. Michael van der Peet:

"Jesus has a very special love for you. As for me, the silence and the emptiness is so great that I look and do not see, listen and do not hear.""

Tony Kriz. Aloof 

On HIS Mission But Not At His Side?

"It felt like the master had loaded up my spiritual backpack with all the supplies, resources, and weapons I might need and then pushed me out of the dojo and into the frontier to work and fight on his behalf, but not by his side. I was now and agent of the Masters Mission, but not a companion in the Masters life."

- Tony Kriz. Aloof 

See The World - Not Seen By The World

"Climb the mountain

not to plant your flag, 

but to embrace the challenge, 

enjoy the air and behold the view. 

Climb it so you can see the world, 

not so the world can see you". 

- David McCullough Jr.

Kings Claims

"Kings claim the right to throw spears."

- Gene Edwards. A Tale Of Three Kings 

Sing The Songs

"He sang the ancient hymns of his forefathers' faith. While he sang he wept -

- Gene Edwards. A Tale Of Three Kings

Paint-By-Number Christianity?

"Sometimes I wonder if I have relegated my God-life to paint-by-number when the Spirit wants to dance me through the Louvre."

- Tony Kriz. Aloof

Church Size Is The Devil

"And size is the great depersonalizer. Kierkegaard’s criticism is still cogent: “the more people, the less truth.”

 

The only way the Christian life is brought to maturity is through intimacy, renunciation, and personal deepening."

- Eugene Petterson. MEMOIRS. letter to a pastor. 

Don't Be A Churchy Manipulator.

"You’ll increasingly find yourself disconnected from obligation and the ability to be manipulated by guilt or fear. You’ll be able to be around others, even those who disagree with your journey, and not be influenced by their angst. It’s a tough lesson to be sure, but one that will reap great rewards. If we try to force others to our own conclusions, we’re playing the same game of conformity and manipulation that they are. Love doesn’t press; it entreats."

-Wayne Jacobsen. Beyond Sundays 

Church Conformity Virus And Blackmail

"There are congregations and pastors secure enough to let people have their journey, and if they no longer fit in, still treat them with kindness and generosity. However, I don’t get email from people leaving those fellowships. I get it from those who are either harassed as someone who has rejected God, or ostracized as if they were some kind of virus. The latter is part of their attempt to get you to admit you’re wrong and come back. In their minds they do it for your own good. This is how they “love” you, by withholding their friendship until you conform again."

- Wayne Jacobsen. Beyond Sundays 

Tribal Church "Innies" and "Outies"

"But once again, we risk being divided into “innies” and “outies” and falling into the false dichotomy our flesh so craves. Whether you go to “a church” or whether you don’t is a distinction without a difference. What matters is whether people are following Jesus and being transformed by his love. What I hope comes out of this study of the so-called “Dones” is those inside and those out recognize that the church is bigger than most of us would dare to believe, and that his church takes expression wherever people engage each other with his love and purpose. For those who claim that attendance at a local congregation is mandatory to be part of his church, I hope they reconsider that false idea. Being part of his family is about following him, not belonging to an institution. Over the last twenty years I’ve found incredible followers of Jesus both inside them and outside. I hope this research draws all those into a conversation where in and out becomes less important than loving and affirming his kingdom, however it takes shape in the world. But it will take a significant number of voices across the Christian landscape to fight for a better conversation than those we usually have. I am convinced that people who truly know Jesus will want to reach across this divide, not exacerbate it. We don’t need identifying labels, especially ones that make us feel superior to others in the family. When Jesus becomes more important to us than finding identity in any particular tribe of it, then the conversations that most express his kingdom will grow in the world. Instead of demanding that others conform to our view of the church, we will recognize her in the most surprising places as we find connection and fellowship with those who know the Jesus we know, even if they don’t follow the rituals we follow. Then we won’t need labels to divide us. Brother, sister, and fellow saint will be more than enough identity for each of us, and loving each other in a mutual celebration of Jesus himself will allow his church to flourish where we live."

- Wayne Jacobsen 

My Superior Church

“Dones,” when it was discovered that there is an increasing number of people living outside traditional “church” institutions who continue to grow in a relationship with Jesus and connect in meaningful ways with others. The Dones is the most recent label attached to them. They have been called revolutionaries, outside the box, free-range Christians, or the de-churched. Such labels serve the media’s need to talk about trends among specific groups and for others to market products inside those trends, but they really aren’t helpful to the work Jesus is doing in the world. Our fallen nature constantly seeks to find identity and safety inside a tribe, and labels are important to keep “my group” separate from “their group.” It works for sports teams, gangs, and even religious groups. Labels so easily polarize humanity into adversaries, and especially with religious ones where we conclude that our group is not just different, but closer to God. So, it’s not surprising that labels either flatter or denigrate, depending on which tribe is talking. Sadly, most of this conversation about the Dones is either insiders talking to insiders about outsiders, or outsiders talking to outsiders about insiders. For insiders, terms like “dechurched” or “church refugees” may seem fair, but actually perpetuate the myth that religious institutions are the only reflection of Jesus’ church in the world. That is as unfortunate as it is untrue. Using “church” only for religious institutions is no minor slip. Most religious leaders want people to believe it so they won’t consider leaving, too. Even many of the so-called Dones talk about having “left the church.” Likewise, those outside want to claim the titles that make them seem freer, more grace-based, or more powerful than their counterparts in more traditional settings. After George Barna published Revolution in 2006, those outside of traditional structures quickly latched on to it as evidence that they were more spiritually committed, and instead of opening a dialog for the whole family, it only expanded the divide. “The Dones” will do the same thing if people wear it as a merit badge of deeper spirituality, while others use it to question the sincerity of their faith. Any title you wear, be it pastor, bestselling author, or Done, will do more to separate you from others than it will help you recognize the incredible family that Jesus is building. Claiming a label works against his prayer that his Father would make us one. The community of the new creation levels our humanity—from hierarchy and from our narcissistic notions of being in a better group than others."

- Wayne Jacobsen. Beyond Sundays 

Community Development A Shot in the Dark Sometimes.

" I was in Kalambayi and my job was to bring development. But where do you begin here? There was so much poverty and sickness. Even I was sick. The riddle was too complicaed. "You are never as far away from home as when you get sick in a foreign country."

(Mike Tidwell. The Ponds of Kalambayi, pg 24).

Is God An Active Agent Of Life?

"Generally, what I find is that the ordinary people who come to church are basically running their lives on their own, utilizing 'the arm of the flesh' - their natural abilities - to negotiate their way," he says. "They believe there is a God and they need to check in with him. But they don't have any sense that he is an active agent in their lives. As a result, they don't become disciples of Jesus."

-(Dallas Willard in Christianity Today)

Where Prayer Has Been Valid

"......You are here to kneel
Where prayer has been valid. And prayer is more
Than an order of words, the conscious occupation
Of the praying mind, or the sound of the voice praying."

- T. S. Eliot. Little Gidding

Communisms Goals

-Communist Manifesto- 1888
"Nevertheless in the most advanced countries, the following will be pretty generally applicable.
1. Abolition of property in land and application of all rents of land to public purposes.
2. A heavy progressive or graduated income tax.
3. Abolition of all right of inheritance.
4. Confiscation of the property of all emigrants and rebels.
5. Centralisation of credit in the hands of the State, by means of a national bank with State capital and an exclusive monopoly.
6. Centralisation of the means of communication and transport in the hands of the State.
7. Extension of factories and instruments of production owned by the State; the bringing into cultivation of waste-lands, and the improvement of the soil generally in accordance with a common plan.
8. Equal liability of all to labour. Establishment of industrial armies, especially for agriculture.
9. Combination of agriculture with manufacturing industries; gradual abolition of the distinction between town and country, by a more equable distribution of the population over the country.
10. Free education for all children in public schools. Abolition of children's factory labour in its present form. Combination of education with industrial production.....

- Friedrich Engels. The Comminist Manifesto. 1888

Christ Outside Time

"Paul is a foundational teacher for what became Christianity. Yet he hardly ever quotes Jesus. Paul never met Jesus. He did, however, encounter the risen Christ.
After all, the Jesus that you and I participate in, are graced and redeemed by, is the risen Christ who is no longer confined by space and time."
Richard Rohr 

Lost Because of Our Ears

"One thing is absolutely definite: not everything that enters our ears penetrates our consciousness. Anything too far out of tune with our  attitude is lost, either in the ears themselves or somewhere beyond, but it is lost."
- Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn. The Gulag Archipelago. VOL 1. 

A Church Without Control

"As we come to see his church as a reality outside of human control, then you can embrace her reality however she takes shape in the relationships and connections around you."

- Wayne Jacobsen. Beyond Sundays 

New Way To Live Not Create A Better "THING"

"It is my hope that those who are done with religious institutions don’t go off and create their own, but learn to live differently in the world."

-Wayne Jacobsen. Beyond Sundays 

Is Institutional Church Dying?

"Does that mean the church is failing? Only if we look at our human attempts to manage it. What you’ll discover is that Jesus’ church was never meant to be an institution, but a growing family who is learning to walk with him and who is learning to share his life and love with others. Real community flows from friendships, not meetings, which is why Jesus spent time with the people in his life in more informal settings."

- Wayne Jacobsen. Beyond Sundays 

Meeting Expectations of Others Is Not Transformation

"Following ritual and rules that others demand of you is still following law, even if we call them “New Testament principles.” God doesn’t transform us through obligation or meeting the expectations of others. The reason why many of us grew frustrated in religious settings is because they made promises they couldn’t fulfill. The harder we tried, the emptier we felt. God has been inviting you to live in a new creation where his love transforms us in the deepest part of our soul."

- Wayne Jacobsen. Beyond Sundays 

This Sundays Sacred Spaces

• snuggled in your bed ... 
• jogging with your best friend ...
• wooded paths just coming to life in the early morning sun....
• the empty back roads ...
• having breakfast with friends ...
• giving thanks for life and family and the day.....
• In the garden, your knees pressed to the damp soil, smelling the leaves just popping up through the ground....

These places are all sacred. They are waiting sanctuaries for God to be seen and heard and experienced. They are common cathedrals, fully saturated with the presence of the Divine."

- John Pavlovitz

The Kingdom Is Not A Where

"But this kingdom He speaks about is not a where but a when. It is the state of the world when people acknowledge God; when God is honored and worshipped and respected—the Kingdom is present."

- John Pavlovitz -

• POSTJOHN PAVLOVITZ

Leaders of Institutions Are Not Automatically God's Direction.

"So how do we respond to spiritual authority? It is helpful to separate institutional authority from spiritual authority. They are not the same thing. If you are part of an institutional system, then yield to its way of keeping order or you’ll only be a destructive source of division and chaos. When you can no longer follow along or feel it is compromising your own life with God, then you need to leave and see what else he has for you. Just because someone has authority in a system, that does not mean they have authority from God."

- Wayne Jacobsen. Beyond Sundays 

What Elders Really Are About

"There are elders, teachers, prophets, and apostles who are gifts to help us know God better and learn his ways. Just know that the real ones don’t carry the title on their business cards and are not building an institution in their name. At almost every stage where God has shifted my thinking, he put me alongside some older men and women who could encourage his work in me and provide warnings when I was being sidetracked. Those who are wise, gently honest, and without the need to control your response are great gifts. We need more of these genuine elders scattered in the body of Christ who are courageous enough to walk alongside others and encourage their growth without controlling them."

- Wayne Jacobsen. Beyond Sundays. 

"We don't judge the quality of the game by the half time chat in the locker room. The coach said this, the music was like that. No we judge it by the game being played out on the field."

- Reggie McNeal

Church Elsewhere

"Being church is a way of being in this world, not a place or something I go to, to do certain things. I church at home, and i church in the neighbourhood.... just like I husband at home, and in the neighbourhood..."

- Reggie McNeal

The Real Mission Trip

"We need to view our life as the mission trip."

-Reggie McNeal

History Speakes Louder

"To understand any event in history, you must put it firmly into that history and not rest content with what later generations have said about it."

- N. T. Wright. The Day The Revolution Began.

I Want To Be With The Rejected Ones

I want to be outside with the misfits, with the rebels, the dreamers, second-chance givers, the radical grace lavishers, the ones with arms wide open, the courageously vulnerable, and among even—or maybe especially—the ones rejected by the Table as not worthy enough or right enough. 

- Sara Bessey

The Real Question We Should Be Asking

"The most important questions become not what should I do, but how do I get to know him?"

- Wayne Jacobsen. Beyond Sundays 

The I Don't Know What To Do Christian

Don't  fret, we the church created you. 

"The worst indictment of the failure of our institutions is that people no longer have any idea how to follow Christ without rituals and guidelines from the outside. Instead of being equipped to follow Jesus, they were lulled to spiritual passivity by a well-planned program. This, more than anything, accounts for the emptiness people feel and why they go look for something else. But even then, they will naturally seek a set of activities to sustain them."
- Wayne Jacobsen. Beyond Sundays. 

Only If It's Helpful Community

"Some people find connection in other established groups. If they do, I encourage them to go for the relationships, not the program. Any structure is helpful only to the degree that it equips people to live in the Spirit and to share community. When it subverts either mission, ignore it."

- Wayne Jacobsen. Beyond Sundays

We Are Not The Only Church Game In Town.

"So many of us institutional Church people are quick to disparage anything that is not of us, from us, and for us. We see ourselves as the center of all spiritual attention in our community. God's people are the ones who meet with "us" on Sunday. He is nowhere else as correctly today. There is no other church in this community but us, seems to be our assumption.

We literally fight against the idea that Christians, as members of the Universal Church and the Body of Christ at large, gather at different times, locations, in different numbers and by various expressions. 

Our location is not the only expression, and we struggle with this thought, why? Because we have never known anything besides what we know and how we've been doing it.

Not with us in our buildings? We assume something very untoward about those people, almost always. We understand so little about the diverse expressions that the Kingdom is taking in the world today. It is time for the the body of Christ to realize that the kingdom is here, and it is not only located inside our four walls this Sunday. Our expression is not the center of God's attention. There is often any number of people meeting in ways that bring no attention to themselves, and we institutional people are often unaware that it is happening. Why are we unaware? Because those gathering in other ways know better than to talk to us institutional folks about how they live out their faith. It puts a huge target on their back. They learned from experience, the hard way, to simply live out their faith in their community in quiet, before people like us. When was the last time you heard church leaders speak well of alternate expressions of kingdom taking place, apart from their own style of gathering on Sunday?

We are not enemies, but we are marking each other as so, because we continue to extend so little grace to each other in our conversations & writings.  Hostile assumptions and labels will continue to divide us, and this is to no good end.

A good dose of humility reminds us that we are not the only game in town anymore when it comes to the Kingdom. It's the new reality,  not everyone apart from us is dying on the vine. We better get used to it, and walk in peace and partnership, not "mouthyness.""

- Andy Rayner

A Child Parrot?

"Kids are different, as I am learning increasingly all the time. Their thoughts are not prepackaged and clean. It takes a while for them to meander through their thinking, the words all bathed in clownish characters and story..... 

Our children will learn to submit and even parrot our beliefs soon enough; allow them the gift of their imagination as long as possible...  

Also, keep in mind that the more we adults talk in stories, as opposed to ideas, the more children will feel free to tell us their stories as well. We may even discover that stories on lock at all Faith as well."

- Tony Kriz. Aloof 

Too Mouthy

"Generally speaking, most of us are horrible at making space for other people to talk. . . not just kids either. I am talking about everybody. We are impatient and frenetic in our communication. I spend most of my time half-listening because I am preparing in my head what I am going to say next, waiting for the slightest pause so I can steal the conversation away."

Tony Kriz. Aloof 

Listening to Others Faith Story

"People were interested in whether I could name the three men in the fiery furnace and how quickly I could list the books of the New Testament, but I doubt that anyone wanted to know my wondering and stumbling thoughts of Faith. (As I write these words, all I want to do right now is go straight home and invite my three young Sons to tell me about their stories of faith.)

Additionally, I don't think that children are all that much different from full-sized humans. I think all of us would love to tell our wandering spiritual musings and experiences, but who really cares enough to listen."

-  Tony Kriz. Aloof

Metaphorical Mystery

"Metaphor and linguistic risk has historically been the stuff of spiritual transformation. Heck, Jesus pictures God as an unjust judge, a wind, and a fig tree murderer."

-Tony Kriz 

My Year Of Pretending Faith

So I pretended for the that one last year. It was "make believe" (a surprisingly ironic idiom.) And I discovered that pretending was not that hard. Church was my culture, as comfortable to me as being an Oregonian. The culture of Christianity came naturally to me.

I learned that pretending can be comfortable, very comfortable. Everyone around me was perfectly unfazed with my pretending. I think they preferred it. I discovered that religion encourages pretending. I did not know that.

Less than a year later and I would be off to college and the opportunity to start a new life, full of new adventures and new beliefs . . . free of pretending. I could not, however, have predicted that in my stand against pretending, belief would find me."

-Tony Kriz. Aloof 

Am I Disqualified From The God-Life?

My driving desire was not to be the smartest Christian (at least not most of the time), or the most holy Christian (a lost cause for sure), or even to have other people compliment my faith. At my deepest level, I wanted to I wanted to believe that it worked, simply worked. I wanted to know that God was real and that I had not done something to irrevocably disqualify myself from the God-life."

-Tony Kriz. Aloof 

I Didn't Easily Believe

"... but none of the mottos or formulas seemed to work for me...

My doubt was not primarily about ideas. It was that I doubted that the system worked at all. From the pulpit, at the conferences, and on the television, the language was so triumphal. Believe this in your life will be full of Peace, Hope, joy, and purpose. Just trust God and he will do the rest. I didn't believe these preachers anymore."

- Tony Kriz. Aloof. 

Unworthy Of Your Holy Places

"Eastern Europe basically has retained the tragic sense of life,  and it knows that even the things you care about most in all the world, even your holy places can be trampled upon and ruined utterly by people who are unworthy of them."

Douglas Murray

God As A Person Or Ideology?

"When I listen to people talk, including myself, I often find myself wondering if we even believe that God is a person. You know, a person: a dynamic and living being with thoughts, emotions, intents, and actions. Most people speak as if God is just and ideology: a set of concepts, arguments, guidelines, and categories. 

God is presented as something that people need to be convinced of, as opposed to someone they can be introduced to. 

God is something that needs to be explained, as opposed to someone to be encountered. 

God is something to be understood, as opposed to someone to be known.

- Tony Kriz. Aloof 

I Don't See God Everywhere

"Throughout history Jesus -folk have been trying to close the gap between God's revealed abilities and desires and our actual daily experience."

- Tony Kriz.

Children Have A Theology Too

"We need to remember that children have a theology too. It may be clumsy or rudimentary, but it is a theology. The difference between a child and an adult is not primarily the content of the theology. The biggest difference is the impact of that theology. Children are different...... They actually believed their beliefs and that those beliefs have present consequences."

- Tony Kriz. Aloof:

 Figuring Out Life With A God Who Hides.

The Fertile Ground Of Humility

"Humility comes from the Latin word humus, fertile ground. The fertile ground is there, unnoticed, taken for granted, always there to be trodden upon. It is silent, inconspicuous, dark and yet it is always ready to receive any seed, ready to give it substance and life, The more lowly, the more fruitful, because it becomes really fertile when it accepts all the refuse of the earth. It is so low that nothing can soil it, abase it, humiliate it; it has accepted the last place and cannot go any lower."

-  Anthony Bloom