Calling
“Don’t ask yourself what the world needs. Ask yourself what makes you come alive, and go do that, because what the world needs is people who have come alive.” –Anonymous (advice given to Gil Bailie by a spiritual mentor) Quoted in Wild At Heart, 200, John Eldridge–
“The place where God calls you is the place where your deep gladness and the world’s deep hunger meet.” — Frederick Buechner —
Challenges
“….We’re not afraid of challenges. It’s like I always say: if you want to go out in the rain, be prepared to get burned.” –a Brazilian soccer player to a newspaper interviewer
Change
“This strategy represents our policy for all time, until it’s changed.” –Marlin Fitzwater —
“What is the difference between a living thing and a dead thing? How to tell one from the other?….In the medical world, a clinical definition of death is a body that does not change. Change is life. Stagnation is death. If you don’t change you die. It’s that simple. It’s that scary.
Leonard Sweet, Soul Tsunami, 73
Change is good. You go first. — Bumper Sticker —
Change is good. Unless it happens — Bumper Sticker —
“Unstirred waters lead to stagnation, and stagnation can’t support life. Churches looking for lack of change and preservation of ‘what has always been’ are on course with slow, creeping death. Injection of new life, ideas, freshly surrendered lives, spiritual fervor, hunger to penetrate culture, and better ways to connect people in community all lead to disequilibrium. Disequilibrium is uncomfortable, unpredictable, and chaotic–the dominant reasons people don’t like it…without fresh injections, organizations will be lulled into a false sense of complacency and end up ‘the frog in the kettle slowly brought to boil.'” Ron Martoia, Morph!, 173
“Everyone thinks of changing the world, but no one thinks of changing himself.”
–Leo Tolstoy–
Character
“My dad used to say: ‘You can tell a lot about a man by the way he handles these three things: a rain holiday, lost luggage, and tangled Christmas tree lights.'”
— H. Jackson Brown, Jr. —
“Since most of us would rather be admired for what we do, rather than for what we are, we are normally willing to sacrifice character for conduct, and integrity for achievement.”
— Sidney M. Harris —
“Life is a grindstone; whether it grinds you down or polishes you up depends on what you’re made of.” — Jacob M. Braude —
Cheap Grace
Cheap grace is the preaching of forgiveness without requiring repentance, baptism without church discipline, Communion without confession, absolution without personal confession. Cheap grace is grace without discipleship, grace without the cross, grace without Jesus Christ.” — Dietrich Bonhoeffer —
Christianity
“The problem with Christianity is not that it has been tried and found wanting, but that it has been found difficult, and left untried.” G.K. Chesterton
Church
“The problem with the typical morning worship service is that it starts at 11 o’clock sharp and ends at 12 o’clock dull.” — Vance Havner —
“People are funny. They want to the front of the bus, the middle of the road, and the back of the church.” — Catherine Hall —
“The church is bursting at the seams with rationality, decency, order, dignity, and predictability. What it needs is the holy intoxications of foolishness, humor, craziness, outrageousness, creative disorder, and passion.”Leonard Sweet, Soul Tsunami, 82
“The church, at best, fell asleep. It might be fair to say that we lost the power to transform culture. We accommodated to a culture that was, for us, user-friendly…The church was no longer the shaper of modern culture, but, in fact, modern culture had become the shaper of the church. This should be our great awakening. The world changed, and we didn’t. The world changed for the worse becuase we didn’t change at all….the world waits for the church to once again become God’s agent of change.”
Erwin McManus, (28, 29 Unstoppable Force)
“The truth is, if churches wait too long to die to themselves, then they ensure that they will die by themselves.” Erwin McManus, Unstoppable Force, 19
Church Meetings
“Will anyone lying on their deathbed wish they had had the chance to go to more church meetings?”–Christopher Levan–
Committees
“A group that takes minutes and wastes hours.” –Anon.–
“A group of the unfit appointed by the unwilling to do the unnecessary.” –Carl C. Byers-
“To get something done a committee should consist of no more than three men, two of whom are absent.” –Robert Copeland–
“A committee is a thing which takes a week to do what one good man can do in an hour.” –Elbert Hubbard–
Commitment
“God never requires of us more than we are able to give. But He does require of us all we are able to give.”– Tommy Barnett, Adventure Yourself, 80 —
Community
“I am convinced that in the 20th century people all over the world will not listen if we have the right doctrine, the right polity, but are not exhibiting community. There is no use saying you have community or love for each other if it does not get down into the tough stuff of life.”– Francis Schaeffer, The Church at the end of the Twentieth Century —
“Our relationship with each other is the criterion the world uses to judge whether our message is truthful–Christian community is the final apologetic.–Francis Shaeffer —
Complacency
The average Christian is so cold and so contented with His wretched condition that there is no vacuum of desire into which the blessed Spirit can rush in satisfying fullness.”
— A.W. Tozer (Born After Midnight, 7.) —
Compromise
“Compromising Christians spread their disease quicker than any other kind. One backslider exerts an influence over the community that is tenfold worse than the influence of a hundred sinners who have never been saved.” — Oswald Chambers, Devotions for A Deeper Life, 113 —
Computers
“Computers make it easier to do a lot of things, but most of the things they make it easier to do don’t need to be done.” –Andy Rooney–
“I think there is a world market for maybe five computers.”
–Thomas Watson, chairman of IBM (1943)–
“640K ought to be enough for anybody.” Bill Gates (1981)
“My computer is so fast. Before yours can boot up, mine has already crashed three times.” — Bill Jones —
Connecting
“I have become to believe that the root of all our personal and emotional difficulties is a lack of togetherness, a failure to connect that keeps us from receiving life and prevents the life in us from spilling over onto others. I therefore believe that the surest route to overcoming problems and becoming the people we were meant to be is reconnecting with God and with our community. But reconnecting, at its most healing levels, is no simple matter. In our fast-paced, get-it-done culture, it is rare.” — Larry Crabb, Connecting, 32.
Consensus
“Concensus is when we have a discussion then I decide.” — Lee Iacocca —
Contentment
“Oh what a happy soul am I although I cannot see, I am resolved that in this world contented I shall be. How many blessings I enjoy that other people don’t. To weep and sigh, because I’m blind? I cannot and I won’t” –Fanny Crosby–
“You say, ‘If I had a little more, I should be very satisfied.’ You make a mistake. If you are not content with what you have, you would not be satisfied if it were doubled.”
— C.H. Spurgeon —
“Christian contentment is that sweet, inward, quiet gracious frame of spirit, which freely submits to and delights in God’s wise and fatherly disposal in every condition.”
— Jeremiah Burroughs, The Rare Jewel of Christian Contentment, 19. —
“Contentment frees you to enjoy every good thing God has given you. Contentment demonstrates your belief that God loves you and has your best interest in mind.”
–Henry Blackaby, Experiencing God Day by Day, 117 —
One of the greatet crises of our day is that we are contented with easy satisfaction in our spiritual lives.” — Oswald Chambers (My Utmost, Apr. 28)
Conversation
“Don’t talk to me while I’m interrupting you.” — Sam Goldwyn —
Conviction
“If you don’t make up your mind, your unmade mind will unmake you.” — E. Stanley Jones —
“The truth that makes men free is for the most part the truth which men prefer not to hear.” — Herbert Agar —
“Without the undergirding of love, the possessor of any conviction becomes obnoxious, and the dogma believed becomes repulsive to the one who disagrees with it. The early church also lived in an intensely pluralistic culture in which it had to deliver an exclusivistic message, but the believers were distinguished and recognized by their love. Our Lord Himself proclaimed truth in exclusive terms, terms in which there was no compromise, but He demonstrated that truth by the embodiment of a perfect love. Being possessed of a conviction is a necessary part of following God, but doing so with love and patience are the necessary handmaidens. — Ravi Zacharias, Deliver Us From Evil, 83 —
Cosmetic Surgery
I was going to have cosmetic surgery until I noticed that the doctor’s office was full of portraits by Picasso.” – Rita Rudner –
Cost
“It is beginning to cost something to be a Christian; and perhaps the church will be purer for it.”– D.A. Carson, How Long, O Lord?, 84. —
Courage
“Courage is fear that has said its prayers.”
— Karl Barth —
Covered Dish
“Lutherans believe you can’t get into heaven unless you bring a covered dish.”
— Garrison Keillor —
Creativity
“Every child is an artist. The problem is how to remain an artist once he grows up.”
–Pablo Picasso–
Credit
“The wheel was invented so we could move faster. Credit was invented so we would have to.” — Cullen Hightower —
Crime
“I haven’t committed a crime. What I did was fail to comply with the Law.” — David Dinkins, then Mayor of New York City —
Crises
“There cannot be a crisis next week. My schedule is already full.”
–Henry Kissinger, New York Times article, 1969.
Criticism
“A successful man is one who can lay a firm foundation with the bricks others have thrown at him.” — David Brinkley —
“It behooves every man to remember that the work of the critic, is of altogether secondary importance, and that, in the end, progress is accomplished by the man who does things.” –Theodore Roosevelt–
“You will be criticized. So it might as well be for doing the right thing.”
Dan Southerland, Transitioning, 118.
“The most blessed ministries in any arena are also the most criticized. Being criticized does not mean you will be blessed; being blessed does mean you will be criticized.”
Dan Southerland, Transitioning, 153.
“Honest criticism is hard to take, particularly from a relative, a friend, an acquaintance or a stranger.”–Franklin P. Jones–
“It is exactly because a man cannot do a thing that he is the proper judge of it.”
–Oscar Wilde–
“If you’re willing to stand apart from the crowd, you’re putting yourself in a vulnerable position, so count on some degree of criticism.”
— John Maxwell Be a People Person, 119. —
“There is nothing as easy as denouncing. It doesn’t take much to see something is wrong. But it does take some eyesight to see what will put it right again.”
— Will Rogers —
“Criticism is something you can avoid easily by saying nothing, doing nothing, and being nothing.” — Aristotle —
“If you stop every time a dog barks, your road will never end.” — an Arabian Proverb —
The Cross
“It costs God nothing, so far as we know, to create nice things; but to convert rebellious wills cost Him crucifixion.”
— C.S. Lewis, Mere Christianity, 179.–
“I do not know when I am more perfectly happy than when I am weeping for sin at the foot of the cross.” — C. H. Spurgeon, Sermon, Vol. 60, p.234
“How would telling people to be nice to one another get a man crucified? What government would execute Mister Rogers or Captain Kangaroo? — Philip Yancey —
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