Quotes from Frank Viola

Jesus Christ is God's rule. And Jesus Christ is God's presence. Wherever Christ is, there is the kingdom.

Winston Churchill wisely said, "First we shape our buildings. Thereafter, they shape us." Exegete the architecture of a typical church building and you'll quickly discover that it effectively teaches the church to be passive.

Someone once said that you don't hold a grudge. It holds you. Holding a grudge is self-inflicted pain. Consequently, bitterness doesn't imprison those who hurt you. It imprisons you.

In the minds of the early Christians, the people—not the architecture—constituted a sacred space.

A great deal more failure is the result of an excess of caution than of bold experimentation with new ideas. The frontiers of the kingdom of God were never advanced by men and women of caution. —J. Oswald Sanders

God's idea of ministry training is a broken vessel. His idea of spiritual preparation is suffering, which includes rejection.

To put a finer point on it, the church building is based on the benighted idea that worship is removed from everyday life.

Jesus desires friends, not servants. He desires love, not servitude. In the cold temple of Jerusalem, God was merely served. But in the warmth of the Bethany home, He was befriended and cherished.

In short, extensive Bible knowledge, a high-powered intellect, and razor-sharp reasoning skills do not automatically produce spiritual men and women who know Jesus Christ profoundly and who can impart a life-giving revelation of Him to others.

When Christianity was born, it was the only religion on the planet that had no sacred objects, no sacred persons, and no sacred spaces.'8 Although surrounded by Jewish synagogues and pagan temples, the early Christians were the only religious people on earth who did not erect sacred buildings for their worship.19 The Christian faith was born in homes, out in courtyards, and along roadsides.20

The pulpit elevates the clergy to a position of prominence. True to its meaning, it puts the preacher at center "stage"—separating and placing him high above God's people.

From the human perspective, the purpose of the church meeting is mutual edification. But from God's perspective, the purpose of the gathering is to express His glorious Son and make Him visible. (The church is the body, and Christ is the Head. The purpose of one's body is to express the life that's within it.)

Every year that we grow in the Lord, Jesus Christ looms larger and greater in our eyes.

Today, youth pastors are part of the professional clergy. Their position is built on the contemporary church's misguided choice to honor a division that was born in secular culture less than a century ago—namely, the division between teenager and everyone else.

People are more important to Him than human traditions.

The triune God stands at the beginning and at the end of the Christian pilgrimage and, therefore, at the center of Christian faith.

Custom without truth is error grown old." —Tertullian, third-century theologian

The Lord has a unique way of preparing His servants for His work. It's one that involves transformation. And transformation always involves emptying, suffering, and loss. Humanity's way is to hand you a method. Divinity's way is to hand you a cross.

As Thomas Moore once put it, "Earth has no sorrow that Heaven cannot heal." Jesus is heaven personified.

A word of encouragement: if your foundations are in Jesus Christ, then you can weather the storm.

Note that there is a monumental difference between well-motivated humans working for God in their own strength, wisdom, and power versus God working through humans.

It doesn't matter how great your sins are; God's grace is big enough to forgive and cleanse them.

Sin and love are exact opposites. Love is benefiting others at the expense of yourself. Sin is benefiting yourself at the expense of others. Sin is selfishness; love is selflessness.

An exhortation from one beggar to another: keep sacrificing. Keep losing. Keep laying your life down. Keep loving your enemies. Keep blessing those who despise you. Keep refusing to return fire upon those who bad-mouth you. Keep pouring your life into others, even if those people never acknowledge it and even if others never notice. Keep faithfully serving your Lord without looking back. Why? Because there is One who is watching. And only His opinion matters.