Quotes from Erwin McManus

Our job is not to change people; our job is to connect people to Jesus, and it's Jesus' job to change people.

The Bible has been trapped in modernity. Everything has to work perfectly. And if everything doesn't fit in a Lego-oriented functionality, then we don't deal with it as Christians.

One trend I see is the rejection of growth for self-discovery and the pursuit of authentic community. So we keep whittling our spiritual community to a smaller and smaller and more exclusive inner circle. The problem is if the diagnoses are wrong, so will be the cure.

We have to ask ourselves, 'Am I really trying to discern God's will, or determine whether I want to do it?'

When we dwell on the past, we tend to want to live there. When we dream of the future, we want to go there. Our dreams are where God paints a picture of a life waiting to be created.

If we keep asking the wrong questions, we are just going to get better wrong answers. The solution to lack of community isn't to give up on the community.

When we look at history, we see history is made up of the heroes of their times. Yet, somehow we miss this when we put on the lens of the Scriptures.

How many people just get up on Monday and do the same thing they've done every single Monday - go to work and just turn on route automatic and no longer have any meaning in their life?

I've worked in the business world and, as a futurist, the whole 20 years that I've led at Mosaic.

I think a lot of us are not on a path; we're in a rut. We have confused comfort with peace, belief with faith, safety with wisdom, wealth with blessing, and existence with life.

One of the things you'll discover... as you listen to your own soul is that you spend a great amount of your life trying to bring meaning to your own life. And, by the way, most people are not going to church, so the place they're actually trying to find meaning in their life is at work.

I have an incredible confidence in the resilience of the human spirit and the creative ability of the Holy Spirit. So, if you can get people asking the right questions, it really will start moving in the right direction.

Los Angeles has been known as the center of creativity but has often been equally known for the absence of spirituality.

Often we talk about God's ability to change lives without fully understanding how to access that power.

I think we've overstated that God is the God who wants us to obey. Obedience is not the end game. Obedience is only our calling so that we can step into our freedom.

Promise Keepers was looking for a movement that can actualize the hope of Jesus, the hope that we see. And 'Uprising' was what they were looking for.

We're a part of the insurrection, trying to turn Christianity upside down. We're an experimental church: God's research and development arm.

You are both a work of art and an artist at work.

Talent doesn't win. Hard work, determination, and character wins. If you root your talent and ability in those things, then you have a powerful combination.

You are an artist. What work of art will you leave behind?

A life well lived is the most exquisite work of art.

I think we are all trying to figure out what it means to be the Church as opposed to just doing church.

From the beginning, our community has been focused on people outside of Christianity. But that emphasis means that a lot of hard work is represented in every person who is baptized.

I love what Monet, Picasso, Van Gogh and Jesus all said - that love is really the driving principle of the creative act. In fact, they would say that great art is always inspired by love.