Quotes from Erwin McManus

Jesus did not have a value for prayer for prayer's sake. He had a value for the intimate communion between God and man.

Home is ultimately not about a place to live but about the people with whom you are most fully alive. Home is about love, relationship, community, and belonging, and we are all searching for home.

There are few things more powerful than a life lived with passionate clarity.

While we would love to have no criticism, probably if we had no critique, we wouldn't be doing anything meaningful.

True religion always moves us to serve others and to give our lives to see those oppressed find freedom.

Jesus is being lost in a religion bearing his name.

Religion as a whole specializes in sin management. It's all about organizing humanity in such a way that we cause as little damage as possible.

It is amazing where God will take you when you are willing to follow. Life is full of surprises when we choose mystery over security.

I realize that I live on the bubble of insanity. I feel the weight of human suffering, loneliness and despair on me all the time. It's not getting easier; if anything, it's always right on the edge of my skin.

For Christians, they need to access the power of Jesus and not look at Christianity as a religion. It is our Lord Jesus that makes you change, and Christians need to actualize it and put it into practice.

You have a generation that is saying we are tapping out of religion in many ways. But what they are not saying is that we are tapping out of a serious search for meaning in life.

I think that's a part of what motivates me in my teaching and writing. Once the Gospel feels mainstream and becomes a nicely organized, orchestrated belief system, frankly, I don't think there is even an attraction to the human spirit.

Within a moment there is monumental potential. That is the mystery of a moment. It is small enough to ignore and big enough to change your life forever

How in the world could you ever imagine a life of faith that does not require risk? Faith and risk are inseparable.

Gratitude changes your perspective about life. You see the future, experience the present, and remember the past in a dramatically different way.

Wherever and whenever God is moving in a new and fresh way, there emerges a new song!

My primary assessment would be because American Christians tend to be incredibly self-indulgent, so they see the church as a place there for them to meet their needs and to express faith in a way that is meaningful for them.

I hope my greatest contribution will be to try to extract principles of truth that will cause us to live our lives in a more effective way and to advance Jesus' purpose in the world.

I think the exploration and the search for who Jesus is, and that 2,000 years later we're still trying to figure out who He was, and did He really rise from the dead... And I think for me, the answer is 'yes,' and that's why we're talking about Him today.

You're not supposed to die with your potential. A life well lived squeezes all the potential placed within and does something with it.

Courage frees us from the fears that would rob us of life itself.

The person who loves the process has a much greater chance of success than the person who loves the outcome.

This thing that haunts you, that never seems satisfied, the cravings in your soul that you are unable to satiate through all the success that the world can bring this is your soul screaming for God.

We are constantly learning and growing and changing. We are really an experiment. We are endeavoring to discover if a community of faith can exist purely for the good of others.