Quotes About Community

We have to understand in a deep way that having what we truly want in life contributes to the general state of human happiness and supports others in creating more happiness for themselves.

This is what Jesus had in mind: folks coming together, forming close-knit communities and meeting each other's needs-- no kings, no major welfare systems, no presidents necessary. His is a theology and practice for the people of God, not a set of suggestions for empire.

I had come to see that the great tragedy in the church is not that rich Christians do not care about the poor but that rich Christians do not know the poor...I truly believe that when the rich meet the poor, riches will have no meaning. And when the rich meet the poor, we will see poverty come to an end.

Sometimes people call folks here at the Simple Way saints. Usually they either want to applaud our lives and live vicariously through us, or they want to write us off as superhuman and create a safe distance. One of my favorite quotes, written on my wall here in bold black marker, is from Dorothy Day: "Don't call us saints; we don't want to be dismissed that easily

We give people fish. We teach them to fish. We tear down the walls that have been built up around the fish pond. And we figure out who polluted it.

One by one, these disciples would infect the nations with grace. It wasn't a call to take the sword or the throne and force the world to bow. Rather, they were to live the contagious love of God, to woo the nations into a new future.

As Christians, we should be the best collaborators in the world. We should be quick to find unlikely allies and subversive friends, like Jesus did.

God's people are not to accumulate stuff for tomorrow but to share indiscriminately with the scandalous and holy confidence that God will provide for tomorrow. Then we need not stockpile stuff in barns or a 401(k), especially when there is someone in need.

Clarence Jordan, co-founder of Koinonia Farm, wrote, "The Good News of the resurrection is not that we shall die and go home with him, but that he is risen and comes home with us, bringing all his hungry, naked, thirsty, sick, prisoner brothers with him.

We have not shown the world another way of doing life. Christians pretty much live like everybody else, they just sprinkle a little Jesus in along the way.

the church was an international institution long before globalization.

The church is like Noah's ark. It stinks, but if you get out of it, you'll drown.

Lord, you call us out of captivity into the freedom of your beloved community. As we pass through the wilderness spaces of our lives, grant us ears to hear you, eyes to see you, and hearts that ache for you, that we might not turn away from the brothers and sisters who help us remember who we are. Amen.

You may have lost hope in Christianity or Christendom or all the institutions, but you have not lost hope in the church. This is the church." At that moment, we decided to stop complaining about the church we saw, and we set our hearts on becoming the church we dreamed of.

It's hard to hear the gentle whisper of the Spirit amid the noise of Christendom.

We've got to unite ourselves as one body. Because Jesus is coming back and he's coming back for a bride, not a harem.

Something mystical can happen in the course of acting together that transcends words and ideologies—people who do not agree on ideas can create common ground in the act of loving.

When we begin enacting the new world, the nations will follow. Nations will not lead us to peace; it is people who will lead the nation to peace as they begin to humanize the nations.

We shall do even greater things because the love that lived in the radical Christ now lives within millions of ordinary radicals all over the planet.

When our theology gets in the way of loving our neighbors, it's time to rethink our theology.

Lord, remind us that it is not always agitated uprisings and nonstop activity which lead to justice, but that change often comes through the quietcommitment of a small group of people. Help us raise our small body of people to set about quietly becoming the change we want to see in the world. Amen.

But it was hard to stay cynical, as I met more and more beautiful people.

Salvadoran Archbishop Oscar Romero said this shortly before his assassination: "I am going to speak to you simply as a pastor, as one who, together with his people, has been learning the beautiful but harsh truth that the Christian faith does not cut us off from the world but immerses us in it; the church is not a fortress set apart from the city. The church follows Jesus, who lived, worked, struggled and died in the midst of a city, in the polis.

That's the beautiful mystery: we have a God who chooses to need us. We have a God who doesn't want to change the world without us. We have a God who longs to cooperate with us, to allow us to fail and flounder and who promises to make up for our shortcomings, but nonetheless wants us.