Quotes from Brian Sanders

The UNDERGROUND knew we had to build something that affirmed that every Christian in every context is being called by God to proclaim the coming of his kingdom. Our work, then, should be to help people listen to and obey that call. For those who have already heard it, our job is to give them permission to pursue their call with abandon.

It is like the indictment of the prophets: I hate your solemn assemblies, because you neglect the poor.5 If we really believe Scripture, then we have to face the very real possibility that our experience of church, where the majority of people have neglected the poor and have refused to make disciples, might mean the withdrawing of the tangible presence of God from our gatherings.

When you look at the list of the five stops in the discipleship journey, where is your group already engaged and where do you need to focus in the future? Love of God Way of Jesus Leadership Calling Sending

What makes the church truly unique in the life of the people of God is that we are now meant to hold our place in the wall together, in teams of people who worship like monks, live like family, and engage the world like missionaries. But what happens when the church itself goes astray? When the church becomes more of a club than the hands and feet of Jesus? We are called to examine our hearts and test our ways. It is time also to look at the way we do church.

Only that perhaps behind our cursory reasons for breaking into smaller and smaller units, we are ultimately fulfilling the will of God for us.

I am arguing that the best way to love and lead our people is not to call them to our vision, but to call them to the values of the kingdom and release them to see a vision for how that looks in their own life.

Any place where we can go consistently and remain anonymous is not a witnessing church.

Money, as Remmy had taught them, was phony baloney in the dreamworld. It was as fake as Fakesville, and it was well-known that Finkel continually enlarged the supply of money, making it worth less and less. While the busy bees of the Unum toiled for their meager wages, Finkel dreamcasted trillions of Un-coins into existence and either spent them on hairbrained projects or lent them to his colleagues and friends.

IDEATION ITERATION CODIFICATION EXPANSION Dream / Idea Experiment Convictions Welcoming Team? Learn? Disciples? Sending

She loved him so much, though she could hardly say what he really was. Maybe he was, in the end, only the way to the truth. And this, as he himself had told her, she would never forget.

All of this is not easy to believe, I know. Most people have no inkling that they're asleep. But you, Suzy, you have long suspected something was wrong. You dreamed of a beautiful world, not knowing that the beautiful world was true—was Reality.

This is the mechanics of movements. If we as believers want to see the church grow beyond our control, we must release control. This is done, in part, by a brave redefinition. Microchurches, then, are your answer to the question: What are the irreducible elements of the church? It is precisely this closer look which promises a new, nimble, empowered, indomitable church in our time.

As Prussian field marshal Helmuth Karl Bernhard Graf von Moltke said, "No battle plan survives contact with the enemy.

The idea that ten thousand hours of practice will lead to excellence, popularized by Malcolm Gladwell, comes from the research of Anders Ericsson. It is not just that mastery comes from thousands of hours of practice, it is that it comes from a certain kind of practice. What he calls "deliberate practice."16 The difference? Reflection and the application of learning.

When there are large sums of money, method, and institutional expectation on our shoulders, we are tempted to cut the corner of mission and simply gather Christians. If we can conceive of the church as something smaller and simpler, we can plant mission with hope and not anxiety.