"My glass, while not necessarily half empty, is usually half full of sarcasm, 1 . And I need you to be gentle with me. We calloused cynics aren't as tough as we seem. That's the ruse. The truth is we build these emotional walls so dang high because we're hiding behind them. We're not strong like you, we're all soft and broken on the inside and the walls are our only defense." (Jessica Bowman)
"There is a kind of listening with half an ear that presumes already to know what the other person has to say. It is an impatient, inattentive listening, that despises the brother and is only waiting for a chance to speak and thus get rid of the other person. This is no fulfillment of our obligation, and it is certain that here too our attitude toward our brother only reflects our relationship to God. it is little wonder that we are no longer capable of the greatest service of listening that God has committed to us, that of hearing our brother's confession, if we refuse to give ear to our brother on lesser subjects. Secular education today is aware that often a person can be helped merely by having someone who will listen to him seriously, and upon this insight it has constructed its own soul therapy, which has attracted great numbers of people, including Christians. But Christians have forgotten that the ministry of listening has been committed to them by Him who is Himself the great listener and whose work they should share. We should listen with the ears of God that we may speak the Word of God " (Dietrich Bonhoeffer. Life Together: The Classic Exploration of Faith in Community.)
"In the village the saddest and finally the most infuriating expression to the average Peace Corps Volunteer, if my own experience is any guide, was that, frightened sentence they pulled out of their hats when you were talking about change or when you were trying to push some slightly new idea. I was eating dinner one night with Alexandro, and he used the expression four times within a half an hour. What he said four times was: "The people aren't accustomed to doing it that way." Each time it was a little more irritating, especially, I think, because finally it was even irritating to Alexandre. The last time he said it he even blushed a little. The conversation offers some insights into both the problems of a poor town and the problems of a Volunteer working to change things in a poor town."
(Living Poor. A Peace Corps Chronicle. Moritz Thomsen. Pg 55-56)
"This kind of experience was jolting. Our preconceived ideas about the meaning of words like poor, uneducated, poverty-stricken, underprivileged, or disadvantaged were being destroyed. You didn't need a sociological study to see that our neighbors were all of these things. But these adjectives were only the backdrop for the human beings with whom we were now face to face. How can you change people if you can't accept them as they are?"
(Barrios of Manta. Rhoda Smith Brooks. Pg 84)
Speaking about development work in Ecuador...... "And the basic problem still remains: if it is too dry in the dry season and too wet in the wet season, just how and when does one make a garden?" (Living Poor: Peace Corps Chronicle. Moritz Thomsen. Pg 103. Rio Verde, Ecuador)
"We were poling our way through the outpost country, a country of lonely, isolated farms, of messages that never arrive or arrive too late, of sudden sickness and inexplicable fevers and death, of snakes and bugs and downpours of rain, of loneliness, of women living and working alone all day in hacked-out jungle clearings, hauling water in gourds, pounding clothes on rocks, caring for sickly children, worrying. It was a country of distances, separations, longing, of deferred dreams, of small rewards; of muddy trails, stumbling horses, plants that grow two feet a day and choke the crops, armies of ants, blood-sucking lice on the bodies and in the eyes of the livestock. It is heroic country, too.
But when you ask yourself why anyone would live here, completely cut off from the world of comfort and security, there is no easy answer. Perhaps it is man's deepest wish to struggle against great odds, or perhaps the answer lies in that little band of grandchildren swarming around Don Julio. Maybe it is all for them."
(Living Poor: Peace Corps Chronicle. Moritz Thomsen. Pg 107. Rio Verde, Ecuador)
"The work God is doing today among Muslims is so historic and
unprecedented that I wonder if any of us can truly comprehend it. Never
before in the 1,400 years since the death of Muhammad have we seen so many Muslims coming to faith in Jesus as their Savior and Lord. And these are not just isolated individuals but whole families and communities. In our lead article for this issue, Dr. David Garrison reports on an unprecedented number of movements to Christ developing among Muslim communities all over the world.
As Garrison reports, in the first 1,300 years since Muhammad, there was only one voluntary movement to Christ among Muslims of 1,000 or more believers. In the last 20 years of the 20th Century, there were eight. In just the first 12 years of the 21st Century there have been 64. That is not a misprint. As of 2012 there were at least 64 documented movements to Christ taking place among Muslims, each with over 1,000 baptized believers and 100 worshiping fellowships. And the number of these movements is growing." (Mission Frontiers Journal. august 2013)
"Although by our standards these were among the poorest people in the world, each of them would give free fish to those families most in need. Many centuries ago these people learned to share in both good and bad times; it is now their heritage." (The Barrios of Manta. Rhoda Brooks. Pg 83. Ecuador)
"The Roman Catholic Church went on to canonize the system. Luther reformed the theology surrounding the gospel, but left the outer forms of “church” remarkably untouched. The Free Churches freed the system from the state, the Baptists then baptized it, the Quakers dry-cleaned it, the Salvation Army put it in uniform, the Pentecostals anointed it, and the charismatics renewed it, but until today nobody has really changed the system. The time to do that has now arrived."
(The House Church Book. Wolfgang Simson. Barna, 2009, pg xiv)
"I knew what I wanted in theory: to live a personally fulfilling, deliberate life dictated by principle and passion, as opposed to fear, and guided by an internal compass, not external pressures."
(Peace Corps worker Michael Buckler. From Microsoft To Malawi.)
"How can a country thrive when
the average person is frequently under the weather and ultimately expires at the
age of forty, barely reaching the zenith of his potential as a parent, village elder
or worker?
(Michael Buckler. From Microsoft To Malawi. Pg 73)
"Yes," I nod, desperately wanting to believe his words. "These are old problems," he explains, pointing to our surroundings, "They existed before you came, and most of them will remain after you leave." (Old man in Malawi said thus to Peace Corps worker Michael Buckler: From Microsoft To Malawi. Pg 75)
"Much of history has been determined by personal relationships, especially the "personal" in relationships. Why did USAmerica drop the atom bomb on Hiroshima and not Kyoto? Because Secretary of War Henry L. Stimson had a personal relationship with the city of Kyoto. He spent his honeymoon there in 1926 and loved the Japanese art and culture. Although Kyoto was at first designated as the target for the atomic blast, Stimson intervened with President Truman and Kyoto was spared. If you give it some thought, you'll see how your own life has been spared from destruction by personal relationships."
(Leonard Sweet. What Matters Most. Pg 13)
"Ten years ago, together with my wife, Rae Ann, I set out to plant Life on the Vine Christian Community in the northwest suburbs of Chicago. We had ten people join us in the effort. Shortly after, Geoff and his wife, Cyd, came along. We joined together to figure out how to be a church amid these challenges. We had no idea of the difficulties we faced.
In a few years, we had thirty people and decided we needed to reach out to the community. We tried everything. We tried doing a daily vacation Bible school in order to attract busy neighbors who, you would think, would be happy to send their children to a recreational venue in the neighborhood.
As it turned out, only Christians came. We tried providing a date night, offering baby-sitting services for families in the neighborhood who couldn't afford it. Again, only Christians came. Someone proposed we do a fair on the grounds we had been given to start this church. The costs were prohibitive. The chances of competing with the local school district or mega-church in offering these kinds of services were just about nil. Back then, these ideas were what was called outreach.
What we learned quickly was that non- Christian people in our neighborhoods would not come to an event or service held at or associated with a Christian church. Even non-Christians with friends who are Christians will resist. The question, then, was why would we even try these events. In a culture that distrusts Christianity, a society that no longer sees the church as positive, why do we seek to attract people to come to us? Why not instead use this time and energy to be in our neighborhoods, at our local park district gymnasiums and fairs, donating our time, getting involved, knowing the people, and bringing the gospel there? We were living in a culture that no longer wanted to do the things churches do, yet we were doing them anyway."
(Prodigal Christianity)
As a minister for years doing exegetical speaking I know this. People say they, "don't know anything" after 20 years of solid biblical sermons. They are not lying, it's the truth. Why? Read on....
10 Reasons to Stop Preaching
Kathleen Ward.
"The “sermon” is the epicenter of most Sunday morning church services. In seminaries around the world, pastors are taught how to construct and deliver a weekly monologue. It is often the only tool they are given to help God’s people learn, change and grow.
A few years ago, we came across a learning tool which (in our opinion) does away with the need for sermons. It’s called “Simply the Story,“ ( http://simplythestory.org ) and it was designed as a way to help nonliterate cultures dig deep into God’s story and discover spiritual truths for themselves. Unlike sermons, everyone is involved. Everyone gets a chance to listen to the story, retell the story, explore the story and apply it to their own lives and context.
Here are 10 reasons we believe churches should stop using sermons and start using a technique like “Simply the Story” …
1. People aren’t good at listening. Research shows that people’s attention ebbs and flows during a sermon or lecture. At best, they have 10-15 minutes of sustained concentration for passive listening. Most sermons go well beyond this.
2. People learn more when they talk. People remember far more from a conversation they were involved in than a monologue they listened to. Dialogue “chunks” information into smaller segments and allows people time to process, think and ask questions when needed—helping them concentrate and stay engaged for longer.
3. People remember more. You start by listening to the story, then retelling it in your own words, then exploring it as a group, then applying it to your circumstances. This lays down a very strong memory of the story for years to come—something that rarely happens in a sermon.
4. People are more likely to pass it on. Exploring God’s story in this way empowers people to pass it on to their children, their neighbors and friends. They realize they don’t need a theological degree to understand and communicate God’s story to others.
5. Less preparation time than a sermon. The facilitator needs to take some time to memorize the Scripture passage and to study the context and background—but that is all they need to do. No hours of preparing, writing and rehearsing a well-polished speech. No need for dynamic public speaking skills and years of training.
6. More insights than a sermon. Everyone gets to share their “aha moments” and their perspective—not just one person. People get to discover spiritual truths by themselves, which has a greater impact than being “spoon fed” somebody else’s conclusions.
7. More relevance than a sermon. When a pastor prepares a sermon for a diverse congregation, he has to speak generically, not specifically to each person’s needs and context. When we come to God’s story together, we can apply the truths and principles directly to our own circumstances, both as individuals and as a community.
8. More authority than a sermon. A sermon is always about the pastor’s opinion and interpretation—the pastor is positioned as the “authority.” It is better for the combined community to go straight to the source, positioning God’s Word as the authority.
9. Less emphasis on the pastor. The system we use for church elevates the pastor above the rest of God’s people, and unintentionally sets him or her up as a mediator between God and His people. It is more powerful to give everyone the opportunity to access God’s Word directly, rather than just the “professionals.”
10. More room for the Holy Spirit to speak. Something special happens when God’s people gather together to seek His voice, His message, His will for the community. God often lays the same message on the hearts of a number of people, and a central theme becomes apparent throughout the meeting. Time and time again, we’ve seen the Holy Spirit speak through the most unlikely of people—which simply isn’t possible in the structure of a typical church service, where only one person is given a voice.
I’m not saying we have to do away with sermons altogether—but I am saying it might be nice to have more than one tool in the toolbox"
(http://www.churchleaders.com/mobile/pastors/preaching-teaching/168945-kathleen-ward-reasons-to-stop-preaching.html)
"There is a great market for religious experience in our world; there is little enthusiasm for the patient acquisition of virtue, little inclination to sign up for a long apprenticeship in what earlier
generations of Christians called holiness." (Eugene Peterson)
Commenting on a huge fire in Nairobi, in August, 07, 2013....This precious story of a personal, overwhelming encounter with "Africa" was shared by a friend. And many of us just so understand.
"In 2006 I made my first journey to the African continent, I landed at this airport in Nairobi. When I climbed out of the airplane and my feet touched the pavement I was so overcome with joy that I bent down and kissed the ground. Romantic at the time, a little gross when I think about it in retrospect............"
(Catherine Robar)
Those who are able to see beyond the shadows and lies of their culture will never be understood, let alone believed, by the masses. (Plato)
"At times like this, after listening for hours to a language which is badly understood, the brain goes into a paralysis; it closes the doors and shuts up shop. I would sit there trying to look reasonably intelligent but feeling completely useless, my eyes glazed, my mouth hanging open, slowly drowning in a flood of strange, soft sounds. Of course, what was happening and what I didn't realize at the time was that I was getting some additional basic training. The first few months he is in a new country the Volunteer's biggest problem is simply communication, and especially on the technical level where he hopes to work. But after the months of training we are too impatient. The days go rushing by; we want to do something."(Living Poor. A Peace Corps Chronicle. Moritz Thomsen. Pg 26)
"Work around the edges of your religious group (denomination, association, or network) because innovation has less resistance there. You will never find the status quo at the edge, nor will you hear "we've never done it that way before." Maximize your edges by reading in areas outside of your discipline, attending events not put on by your denomination, networking with pastors in other traditions, talking with your kids, visiting new web sites, or going places you would not normally go. Challenge your leaders beyond what they think they are capable of achieving. Innovation is often the result of an over-sized vision or goal. Another way to think of this is to think, "The only place to find God working is among the impossible." ~ Bill Easum
"Where is the Christianity that journeys into the difficult places, the places where the Christian language is not yet spoken, where the witness to God's Kingdom in Christ has not yet reached the edges of humanity, the places where brute force often has the last word?"
(Prodigal Christianity. David Fitch Geoff Holsclaw. Location 476)
"There’s the obvious application here, in that attempting to build any outward facing faith community with believers who are intent on just getting their own needs met just is simply unsustainable. It’s just not going to work. But leaders before we point the finger at all these selfish believers who are stealing all our time and energy from being missionaries to our communities, let it be said: if we develop a church built on serving the saved, then the already blessed people will come wanting more blessings.
It’s just that simple. You will draw the type of people who crave what you’re offering. Only Christians want forty Christian programs to chose from…. Not that there is anything inherently wrong with programs, but the church has a very limited amount of resources, both human and financial. So, if we consume them all for saved people, then we cannot expect our folks to live on mission else where, because they have already spent all of there expendable time and energy on the church campus.
So if we’re drowning in a sea of Christian consumers, we better take a hard look at the scaffolding we have built.” (Jen Hatmaker)
"I yelled...."There's my town." But it didn't look romantic even then; the truth is that nothing looks romantic from a Banana truck." (Living Poor. A Peace Corps Chronicle. Moritz Thomsen. Pg 28)
"When you sit down to the table and are given three soda biscuits and a cup of instant coffee for supper, you at first want to break down and cry like a baby and later, if you are strong enough, begin stamping your little feet on the floor in baby rage. What stops you is the knowledge that not only in your village but in villages all over the world there are families who are eating less than you, if they are eating at all."
(Living Poor. A Peace Corps Chronicle. Moritz Thomsen. Pg 84)
"I would have left with the others if i'd had the means. We have no dignity. Our dignity was sold off. Because when they beat your wife in front of you, beat your sister in front of you, and you can't say anything. They beat your very own mother in front of you, and you...you can't say a word. You have absolutely no dignity left. What are you going to do here except leave if you can."
(Seydou Baba Kounta of Timbuktu. Speaking of the horrors of Islamic radicals occupation of the city over the last year.)
"We need to urgently focus on reconciliation. That's what can bring about lasting peace. Because Mali is a big country, a country with a very long history and a wealth of cultural diversity. Its different peoples have lived together,married one another. To say now that they should be separated is wrong. Mali is indivisible. Mali is secular. Mali is democratic. That should be the starting point of dialogue. Not autonomy! If every community demanded autonomy, Mali wouldn't exist anymore." (Abderahmane Ben Essayouti, Inmam of Timbuktu's Grand Mosque.)
("Islam doesn't force anyone to be Muslim."The Imamas, IRIN documentary June 12, 2013)
"Whatever happens, we'll always manage to sort it out under the palaver tree or in the hallway." (Old mans Words in Timbuktu Mali)
"Despite having one foot in Generation X, I tend to identify most strongly with the attitudes and the ethos of the millennial generation, and because of this, I’m often asked to speak to my fellow evangelical leaders about why millennials are leaving the church.
Armed with the latest surveys, along with personal testimonies from friends and readers, I explain how young adults perceive evangelical Christianity to be too political, too exclusive, old-fashioned, unconcerned with social justice and hostile to lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender people.
I point to research that shows young evangelicals often feel they have to choose between their intellectual integrity and their faith, between science and Christianity, between compassion and holiness.
I talk about how the evangelical obsession with sex can make Christian living seem like little more than sticking to a list of rules, and how millennials long for faith communities in which they are safe asking tough questions and wrestling with doubt.
Invariably, after I’ve finished my presentation and opened the floor to questions, a pastor raises his hand and says, “So what you’re saying is we need hipper worship bands. …”
And I proceed to bang my head against the podium.
Time and again, the assumption among Christian leaders, and evangelical leaders in particular, is that the key to drawing twenty-somethings back to church is simply to make a few style updates – edgier music, more casual services, a coffee shop in the fellowship hall, a pastor who wears skinny jeans, an updated Web site that includes online giving.
But here’s the thing: Having been advertised to our whole lives, we millennials have highly sensitive BS meters, and we’re not easily impressed with consumerism or performances.
In fact, I would argue that church-as-performance is just one more thing driving us away from the church, and evangelicalism in particular.
Many of us, myself included, are finding ourselves increasingly drawn to high church traditions – Catholicism, Eastern Orthodoxy, the Episcopal Church, etc. – precisely because the ancient forms of liturgy seem so unpretentious, so unconcerned with being “cool,” and we find that refreshingly authentic.
What millennials really want from the church is not a change in style but a change in substance.
We want an end to the culture wars. We want a truce between science and faith. We want to be known for what we stand for, not what we are against.
We want to ask questions that don’t have predetermined answers.
We want churches that emphasize an allegiance to the kingdom of God over an allegiance to a single political party or a single nation.
We want our LGBT friends to feel truly welcome in our faith communities.
We want to be challenged to live lives of holiness, not only when it comes to sex, but also when it comes to living simply, caring for the poor and oppressed, pursuing reconciliation, engaging in creation care and becoming peacemakers.
You can’t hand us a latte and then go about business as usual and expect us to stick around. We’re not leaving the church because we don’t find the cool factor there; we’re leaving the church because we don’t find Jesus there.
Like every generation before ours and every generation after, deep down, we long for Jesus"
(Rachel Held Evans, Special to CNN. CNN Belief Blog. July 27, 2013.)
http://religion.blogs.cnn.com/2013/07/27/why-millennials-are-leaving-the-church/?sr=sharebar_facebook
William Carey… told his church prior to departing for Calcutta (India), “You hold the rope and I will climb down into the pit.” Here's the full story....
"Understanding the plight, the desperation, the urgency of the need for gospel proclamation to the unevangelized peoples of the earth is one of the greatest needs of every believer in every age. Here’s how the “father of modern missions” sought to develop such a vision in the believers of his generation.
As the picnickers frolicked on the bank of the river rapids, a shout rang out, “A child fell in the river!”
A crowd quickly gathered, and anxious eyes searched the rushing water for a glimpse of the child. Thinking quickly, the captain of the high school swim team grabbed a nearby “tug of war” rope and tied it around his body. He tossed the other end to the crowd and dove into the rapids. The crowd watched nervously as the high school hero struggled to reach the child. As he grabbed the child and struggled to stay afloat, he shouted over the roaring rapids, “Pull the rope!” The onlookers glanced among each other and asked, “Whose holding the rope?” In the excitement of watching the rescue, no one had grabbed the rope. By then, the rope had slid into the rapids and was well out of reach. Helpless, the crowd watched as the two figures in the water disappeared.
William Carey… told his church prior to departing for Calcutta (India), “You hold the rope and I will climb down into the pit.” Oswald Chambers reminds us, “Prayer is the greater work.”
"I think I’m finally accepting that you can’t have a best friend everywhere you go. Maybe some special, extroverted, grace-filled person can – but I can’t. “Clicking” is such a mysterious, unpredictable phenomenon. A whole lot of people have been nice to us in Canada, people that we now consider friends, but only one really clickable couple has given us the space to just freaking relax when we hang out. And I think that average is about as good as it gets.
It’s about finding the right people. It just works or it doesn’t. It’s not right or wrong. It just is." (Jessica Bowman)
“Faith is much better than belief. Belief is when someone else does the thinking.” (Buckminster Fuller)
“It’s not hard to decide what you want your life to be about. What’s hard, is figuring out what you’re willing to give up in order to do the things you really care about.” (Bittersweet. Shauna Niequist)
"War is organized murder, and nothing else."
(Harry Patch. Last surviving soldier of World War 1)
“These churches we were starting were small (avg. 16) and simple. …we valued a simple life of following our Lord and avoiding many of the complexities of the conventional church. Complex things break down and do not get passed on, but simple things are strong and easily reproduced. Ordinary Christians were able to do the extraordinary work of starting and leading churches because the work was simple, the results powerful.…’We want to lower the bar of how church is done and raise the bar of what it means to be a disciple.’ If church is simple enough that everyone can do it and is made up of people who take up their cross and follow Jesus at any cost, the result will be churches that empower the common Christian to do the uncommon works of God. Churches will become healthy, fertile, and reproductive.The conventional church has become so complicated and difficult to pull off that only a rare person who is a professional can do it every week. Many people feel that to lower the bar of how church is done is close to blasphemous because the Church is Jesus’ expression of the Kingdom on earth. Because church is not a once-a-week service but the people of God’s family, what they have actually done is the opposite of their intention. When church is so complicated, its function is taken out of the hands of the common Christian and placed in the hands of a few talented professionals. This results in a passive church whose members come and act more like spectators than empowered agents of God’s kingdom.”
"We believe that church should happen wherever life happens. You shouldn't have to leave life to go to church.” (Neil Cole, Organic Church)
Here is a typical problem of free aid.....local businesses are bankrupted because aid projects come in and offer it free. How can local business thrive i we do not support the local markets and mechanisms?
"There's a mosquito net maker in Africa. He manufactures around 500 nets a week. He employs ten people, who (as with many African countries) each have to support upwards of fifteen relatives. However hard they work, they can't make enough nets to combat the malaria-carrying mosquito.Enter vociferous Hollywood movie star who rallies the masses, and goads Western governments to collect and send 100,000 mosquito nets to the afflicted region, at a cost of a million dollars. The nets arrive, the nets are distributed, and a 'good' deed is done.
With the market flooded with foreign nets, however, our mosquito net maker is promptly put out of business. His ten workers can no longer support their 150 dependents (who are now forced to depend on handouts), and one mustn't forget that in a maximum of five years the majority of the imported nets will be torn, damaged and of no further use.
(Dead Aid. Dambisa Moyo. 2009, pg44)This is the micro-macro paradox. A short-term efficacious intervention may have few discern able, sustainable long-term benefits Worse still,it can unintentionally undermine whatever fragile chance for sustainable development may already be in play......In terms of the mosquito net example, instead of giving malaria nets, donors could buy from local producers of malaria nets then sell the nets on or donate them locally. There needs to be much more of this type of thinking."
"In 110°, I bike miles everyday to find rice. In front of an empty mailbox, there are no tears, only triumphing beads of sweat raining into the sand......And exhaustion, not love, made me curl up next to Charles when he visited, so when he said he didn't care if someone else kissed me, I laugh - until he left the village. Then on my straw mat, with sweaty legs curled up to my chin, I wept."
(Last Moon Dancing: A Memoir of Love and Real Life in Africa. Monique Maria Schmidt) Peace Corps worker - Benin
"We realized the importance of pens and books when we saw the guns. The extremists are afraid of books and pens."
"This is what my soul is telling me: Be peaceful and love everyone."
"There was a time when women social activists asked men to stand up for their rights, but this time we will do it by ourselves."
"We cannot all succeed when half of us are held back."
[Extremists] are afraid of change, afraid of the equality that we will bring into our society."
"One child, one teacher, one book and one pen can change the world. Education is the only solution. Education first."
"Let us shield ourselves with unity and togetherness."
“It’s difficult to ‘plant’ a normal church in today’s culture. You have to ‘ramp-up’ so fast to make it financially viable that it is silly,” Cecil said, alluding to the benefit of the low overhead in house churches.......Although appealing to many because of this back-to-basics approach, house churches share their own host of problems. “House churches can be messy,” White admits. They’re more vulnerable (easy to start, easy to die), and people miss the ‘bigness’ of traditional church.” From Cecil’s perspective, it seems that people’s “expectations of church as a vendor are still strong,” and this can make a member’s transition to a house church difficult. White notes, "House churches can be ingrown like any other church,” but he sees unique outreach possibilities in this model. “House churches have the potential of everyone owning outreach—of everyone reaching out and folding in new people through relationships. It’s hard to get lost in a house church.”http://www.churchleaders.com/?news=139522/
She said... "Andy, you can't work hard enough to compensate for other peoples lack of interest or inertia."
"The world at large views love as life's prime virtue.... But for the Christian love may be primary- "the greatest of these"—but faith is the primal Christian virtue. Why faith and not love? Because agape love—the love of God— is formed in us by grace through faith. Christian love is a form of plagiarism: We repeat and copy God's love. In fact, our loving is based on faith in God's first loving us."
(What Matters Most. Leonard Sweet. Pg 23, 24)
"We all know one of the severest costs of choosing to walk your own path towards your own independence is experiencing loneliness. To find your own land and stake your own claim requires you to become a pioneer. And pioneers know loneliness. Pioneers simply understand that in order to enjoy their own lives to the full they are going to have to leave the herd.
Read any of the accounts of pioneers, such as the fascinating Canadian explorer, David Thompson, and you will read the story of courageous people who experienced loneliness. The further they got away from home the fewer their companions became.
(“i might be alone for now” by nakedpastor, David Hayward)For many it just isn’t worth it. Comfort is better than change. Safety is better than freedom. Are you at the crossroads now? Will you forge forward?
"Love changes people, but it doesn’t intend to. If you get a sniff of an agenda in what’s being called love, run in the other direction please. Because that’s not love."
(David Hayward. NakedPastor)
"I didn't give a damn how many French government workers stared at me as I dragged my blue plaid rice bag up to the counter and set my moto helmet down loudly on the shiny white formica, next to an arrangement of roses. I needed a vacuum zone. A place where Africa didn't exist. I arrived on Friday afternoon. During the weekend, I gave my bed ten minute periods of rest when I left it to shower or
pee or open the door for pizza. That was it. The rest of the time, I hugged that bed, trying to salvage my nerve endings in an atmosphere of clean and comfort and blankets. With the air-conditioning on high, I piled blankets on me and assumed the fetal position. I pretended I had checked into a ski lodge in Colorado.
From my side, I looked at the phone. The thought of dialing all the access numbers made my hands tired. I didn't call home. What would 1 say? "Hey, Mom and Dad...how's it going? I just about lost my shit today." What could they do? And I didn't want to hear about gardening or complaints about finding parking at the mall. Sometimes when I talked with people in America, I could feel my soul trying to stuff itself into the coils of the phone cord to escape, leaving me alone, a carcass."
(Last Moon Dancing. Monique Maria Schmidt. Former Peace Corps Worker in Benin)
"One of the problems of the church is its forceful insistence on intellectual adherence to certain beliefs, in the relative absence of a holy passion for the incarnational practice of those same beliefs.
The purpose of Christianity is to help people come to faith, which means to establish a relationship with God. Faith is not salvation per se, or liberation per se, or correct belief about the Godhead per se. Faith is the willing acceptance of Jesus s invitation, "Follow me." As a result, it is kinetic and interpersonal. It is transformational, not status quo. It is not satisfied with simply trading one set of convictions for a different, more orthodox set."
(What Matters Most. Leonard Sweet. Pg 23)
"It is not our rule-following behavior but our actual identity that needs to be radically changed. This is a major change of position and vantage point. You do things because they are true, not because you have to or you are afraid of punishment. Henceforth you are not so much driven from without (the False Self method) as you are drawn from within (the True Self method). The generating motor is inside you now instead of a whip or a threat outside.
(Richard Rohr. Immortal Diamond)
