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

Give Up Religion To Find God

"Many people begin coming to God once they stop being religious, because there is only one master of the human heart – Jesus Christ, not religion."

~ Oswald Chambers

Our Institutions Are Too Big?

 "Our institutions are too big; they represent not the best but the worst characteristics of human beings. By submitting to huge hierarchies of power, we gain freedom from personal responsibility for what we do and are forced to do - the seduction of it - but we lose the dignity of being real men and women. Power corrupts; attracts the worst and corrupts the best. ... Refuse to participate in evil; insist on taking part in what is healthy, generous, and responsible. Stand up, speak out, and when necessary fight back. Get down off the fence and lend a hand, grab a-hold, be a citizen - not a subject."

- Edward Abbey, Postcards from Ed: Dispatches and Salvos from an American Iconoclast

I Don't Want To Wear The Armour

"You've turned down literary honors?
You've turned down a knighthood?" ~ Steve Croft (60 Minutes)

Yes! ~ David Cornwell - Jean Le Carré

"Why?" Steve Croft

"In my own country I'm  so suspicious of the literary world that I don't want its accolades. And, least of all, do I want to be called a Commander of the British Empire, or any other thing of the British Empire. I find it emetic."

And why do you feel that way?

"I don't want to posture sombody who's been honored by the state and therefore must somehow conform with the State. And, I don't  want to wear the armour."

(60 Minutes interview. By Steve Croft. Jan 21, 2018)

When Its About Legacy

"Fund-raisers know that it is much easier nowadays to get someone to build a building for some social institution, such as a hospital or college, than it is to get them to endow the maintenance on a building You can name the building after the contributors or their family, or at least put up a plaque with their name upon it. But you can't do that for the maintenance of the building; no one seems to want their name on a mop or a broom."

(Dallas Willard. The Divine Conspiracy)

Expensive Sheep Sheds

"My heart is one with the body of Christ no matter where or how or why they gather, but this never hinders me from recognizing the seriousness of the errors of the institutional church approach. I'm not into isolationism, but I'm also not at peace with a system that has marginalized Jesus, usurped His headship, turned the body into passive spectators, robbed believers of billions of dollars to build expensive sheep sheds, and a leadership that lord's it over God's flock."
- Tom Sparks