Quotes About Community

Christianity can be built around isolating ourselves from evildoers and sinners, creating a community of religious piety and moral purity. That's the Christianity I grew up with. Christianity can also be built around joining with the broken sinners and evildoers of our world crying out to God, groaning for grace. That's the Christianity I have fallen in love with. In

True fasting is not just depriving ourselves of privilege but als osharing sacrificially tob ring an end to the cycles of inequality, an end to creation's groaning and the groaning of hungry bellies.

I used to think you all were missionaries bringing the gospel to your neighborhood, but now I see that it is in your neighborhood that you have learned the gospel, and that you are actually missionaries to the church.

It is a beautiful thing when folks in poverty are no longer just a missions project but become genuine friends and family with whom we laugh, cry, dream, and struggle. . . Servanthood is a fine place to begin, but gradually we move toward mutual love, genuine relationships.

that few things have more transformative power than people and stories. People

And in a very special way, as Jesus says in Matthew 25:40, in the least of these, we find Jesus in disguise. Perhaps we are just as likely to encounter God over the dinner table or in the slums or in the streets as in a giant auditorium. Of course, suggesting that God doesn't need these million-dollar megacathedrals is the sort of thing that gets you in big trouble.

Church father Ignatius said that if our church is not marked by caring for the poor, the oppressed, and the hungry, then we are guilty of heresy.

When the church becomes a place of brokerage rather than an organic community, she ceases to be alive. She ceases to be something we are, the living bride of Christ. The church becomes a distribution center, a place where the poor come to get stuff and the rich come to dump stuff. Both go away satisfied (the rich feel good, the poor get clothed and fed), but no one leaves transformed.

When we did so poorly at helping folks recover from drug addiction, we stepped back and said, "Duh, no wonder. None of us are heroine addicts.

On the wall of New Jerusalem is a sign that reads, "We cannot fully recover until we help the society that made us sick recover.

Jesus never says to the poor, 'Come find the church,' but he says to those of us in the church, 'Go into the world and find the poor, hungry, homeless, imprisoned,' Jesus in his disguises.

I'm just not convinced that Jesus is going to say, "When I was hungry, you gave a check to the United Way and they fed me," or, "When I was naked, you donated clothes to the Salvation Army and they clothed me." Jesus is not seeking distant acts of charity. He seeks concrete acts of love: "you fed me…you visited me in prison…you welcomed me into your home…you clothed me.

few things have more transformative power than people and stories.

And we are just one little cell within the Body, very full of life but only a small part of the whole. Cells are born and cells die, but the Body lives forever.

Our communities should be places where people can detox, whether that be from alcohol, tobacco, gluttony, shopping, or gossip. We long for a space that tips us toward goodness rather than away from it, where we can pick up new habits — holy habits — as we are formed into a new creation, transformed by God.

us assemble ourselves before you today through our acts of peace and reconciliation with neighbors near and far. Help us to teach the children in our communities what it means to be children of a God who loves us like a mother. Amen.

There are so many people who are longing to be brought to life, who know all too well that they have done evil and long to hear not only of a God who embraces evildoers but also of a church that does the same.

The person who loves their dream of community will destroy community [even if their intentions are ever so earnest], but the person who loves those around them will create community.

St. Augustine: "The Church is a whore, but she's my mother." She is a mess and has many illegitimate children. But she is also our momma and managed to give birth to us and to give us enough of the truth that we have been able to ask the questions that we have in this book.

Lord, give us the imagination to dream and catch glimpses of the life you intend for us to live. Show us how our individual lives are entwined with those around us, and help us to live so truly together that we embody your good news in this world. Amen.

There is a place for good food and beautiful art; what matters is who you share it with. What's just as important as what you eat is who you are eating with. One of my favorite sayings these days is "Simple living does not mean ugly living." We can live in ways that are simple and responsible—and beautiful.

We can do more together than we can do alone.

True generosity is measured not by how much we give away but by how much we have left, especially when we look at the needs of our neighbors. We have no right not to be charitable. The early Christians taught that charity is merely returning what we have stolen. In the seventeenth century, St. Vincent de Paul said that when he gives bread to the beggars, he gets on his knees and asks forgiveness from them.

Jesus never says to the poor, 'Come find the church,' but he says to those of us in the church, 'Go into the world and find the poor, hungry, homeless, imprisoned,' Jesus in his disguises.