Quotes About Community

In sum: the church exists to be a living exhibit of the reality of the gospel.

The church has become the theater of the gospel, and in this theater, there are no passive spectators, only engaged participants, acting out what is in Christ.

The church is biblical, therefore, when it seeks to embody the words in the power of the Spirit and so become a living commentary.

Christian identity, the role disciples have been called to play, requires being with others. It takes two or three gathered in Christ's name fully to represent him. It takes a company.

Doctrine forms disciples when it helps the church to act out its new life in Christ.

Public theology is first and foremost a reaction against the tendency to privatize the faith, restricting it to the question of an individual's salvation. As we shall see in later chapters, the church is not a collection of saved individuals but the culmination of the plan of salvation: to create a people of God.

The distinct experiential end in question in the church, communion with God and others, neither justifies nor fits many marketing means. The increase of the kingdom of God owes more to the work of the Spirit than to Madison Avenue.

On the Day of Atonement, the Levites performed the central sacrificial rites of the believing community, stewarding annual ceremonies that in graphic detail pictured the evil nature of sin and the bloody nature of divinely provided atonement for sin. The Day of Atonement was a visceral affair, filled with blood and fire and death and, at the pulsing core of it all, the realized hope of forgiveness through repentance. The people could be pure.

Instead of asking your child what they learned today, ask them who they helped today.

Possession is not as important as it once was. Accessing is more important than ever. Pretend

We might subscribe to the marginalia feed from someone we respect, so we get not only their reading list but their marginalia—highlights, notes, questions, musings. The

there are so many more ways to be a service than to be a product.

Communities saturated with anonymity will either self-destruct or shift from the purely anonymous to the pseudo-anonymous, as in eBay, where you have a traceable identity behind a persistent invented nickname.

There is no "I" for a person, for a beehive, for a corporation, for an animal, for a nation, for any living thing. The "I" of a vivisystem is a ghost, an ephemeral shroud.

If you want to go fast, go alone; if you want to go further, go together.

Under what conditions will cooperation emerge in a world of egoists without central authority?

The internet is less a creation dictated by economics than one dictated by sharing gifts.

Lasting self-esteem comes when kids learn that they belong—to a family, to a community, to a group of friends. When they realize, "I can contribute, I can give something back," that's when they see how important they are.

He urged his audience to get religion not simply for their own salvation but for the salvation of their city and country. Without "an old-fashioned revival," he warned, "we cannot last!" A

I could continue with a list of other challenges faced by our current religious institutions, but addressing these three areas would be a great start toward improving the lives of Black males: Stop thinking of divinity as limited to the confines of a building. Stop building our faith on fear of damnation. Stop seeking personal salvation above the good of the whole.

most of the work toward empowering Black males must come from Black males. And nowhere is our love of God more evident than through acts of service.

Feelings of alienation, marginalization, and isolation cause some of us to adopt a "me against the

I'm out there arguing the Labor case. I will do it anywhere and everywhere that I can. I do it within various communities across Australia where I am able to make a positive contribution. And let me tell you, my voice won't be silenced in the public debate because the issue at stake for Australia are so stark.

Failure to communalize grief can imprison a person in endless swinging between rage and emotional deadness as a permanent way of being in the world.