Quotes from Andy Crouch

The bigger the change we hope for, the longer we must be willing to invest, work for, and wait for it.

Brew coffee or tea, sit with a friend and ask them questions—questions just one step riskier than the last time you talked. As you listen, observe the flickers of sadness or hope that cross their face. Try to imagine what it must be like to live their story, suffer their losses, dream their dreams. Pray with them and dare to put into words their heart's desires, and dare to ask God to grant them.

If we are known mostly for our ability to poke holes in every human project, we will probably not be known as people who bear the hope and mercy of God.

If you want one last picture of authority and vulnerability together, laughter will do the trick. To laugh, to really laugh out loud, is to be vulnerable, taken beyond ourselves, overcome by surprise and gratitude. And to really laugh may be the last, best kind of authority—the capacity to see the meaning of the whole story and discover that our final act, our only enduring responsibility in that story, is simply celebration, delight and worship.

Stewardship means to consciously take up our cultural power, investing it intentionally among the seemingly powerless, putting our power at their disposal to enable them to cultivate and create.

If there is a constructive way forward for Christians in the midst of our broken but also beautiful cultures, it will require us to recover these two biblical postures of cultivation and creation. And that recovery will involve revisiting the biblical story itself, where we discover that God is more intimately and eternally concerned with culture than we have yet come to believe.

To be Christian is to stake our lives on this belief: the only cultural goods that ultimately matter are the ones that love creates.

The biblical record suggests that we need to rest not just one day a week but for longer times at longer intervals, up to the forty-nine-year cycle called the "jubilee" that allowed both land and farmers to be rejuvenated. But if the work of creating consistently leaves us depressed or drained, it is likely that we have somehow missed the path. Creation, even on a human scale, is meant to end with the glad exclamation, "It is very good.

Grace is not an exemption from failure. It is, however, what makes it possible to sustain hope in the midst of failure.

The followers of Jesus will begin to demonstrate a new set of horizons for human life to their neighbors and even to their enemies—the horizons of shalom, the horizons of true humanity living in dependence on God.

What is most needed in our time are Christians who are deeply serious about cultivating and creating but who wear that seriousness lightly—who are not desperately trying to change the world but who also wake up every morning eager to create.

There is perhaps no single thing that could better help us recover Jesus' lordship in our frantic, power-hungry world than to allow him to be Lord of our rest as well as our work. The challenge is disarmingly simple: one day a week, not to do anything that we know to be work.

Every idol makes two simple and extravagant promises. "You shall not surely die." "You shall be like God.

Disciplines are small and by themselves inconsequential (like the scales that professional musicians play every day), attracting no notice and deserving no prize, humbling us in advance of the occasions when our work will be recognized and applauded. Disciplines are difficult, revealing all too clearly our laziness and foolishness, preparing us for the times when fruit seems to burst from our smallest efforts.

One night, as I tucked my daughter into her bed, safe beneath her down comforter and properly lavished with kisses and hugs, and prayed for her safety, I unexpectedly sensed the unmistakable voice of Another addressing me in return. "I hear your prayers," this voice seemed to say kindly but sternly. "But I also hear the prayers every night of parents who can offer their children no protection.

Over and over in the Gospels, Jesus interrupts his agenda for those who have nothing to offer him but need everything from him.

The Christian hope is not for a gradually improving world any more than it is for a fountain of youth. But Christian hope overcomes the forces of despair and decay in the midst of this world, and provides foretastes of the coming kingdom where anyone who will receive the Lamb's sacrifice will be raised to life, and where the glory and honor of the nations will be presented as offerings to the King of kings.

What makes action meaningful? Above all, meaningful action participates in a story. It has a past and a future. Meaningful action does not just come from nowhere, and it does not just vanish in an instant—it takes place in the midst of a story that matters.

Leadership begins the moment you are more concerned about others' flourishing than you are about your own.

The biggest cultural mistake we can indulge in is to yearn for technological solutions to our deepest cultural problems.

To disengage from the profound needs of those caught in suffering is to reject the call to bear the image of God.

The beginning of culture and the beginning of humanity are one and the same because culture is what we were made to do. There is no withdrawing from culture. Culture is inescapable. And that's a good thing.

In fact, I've come to the conclusion that the more you entertain children, the more bored they will get.

The home is the place where worship of the true God starts: the place where we remember and recite God's Word, and where we learn to respond to God with our heart, soul, strength, and—as Jesus added when he called this the greatest commandment—with our mind as well.