Quotes About Community

The church has allowed itself to get so swept up in political issues that it plays by the rules of power, which are rules of ungrace

Where is God when it hurts? Where God's people are. Where misery is, there is the Messiah, and now on earth the Messiah takes form in the shape of the church. That's what the body of Christ means.

the New Testament holds up the model of a church whose activities exist primarily for the sake of outsiders. What keeps us from becoming the church God had in mind?

When I listened to public prayers in evangelical churches, I heard people telling God what to do, combined with thinly veiled hints on how others should behave. When

Jesus, who said little about how believers should behave when we gather together and much about how we can affect the world around us.

Pharisees spend too much time around other Pharisees. As a result Pharisees (whether the Jewish or Christian variety) neglect wider issues, narrow their vision, and compete to achieve an artificial piety.

Where is the church when it hurts? If the church is doing its job—binding wounds, comforting the grieving, offering food to the hungry—I don't think people will wonder so much where God is when it hurts. They'll know where God is: in the presence of God's people on earth.

positioned myself. I once described the people I tend to hear from as "borderlanders," those caught in a no-person's-land between faith and disbelief. Some approach the church cautiously, attracted to Jesus but turned off by his followers. Some have fled the church due to bad experiences, yet still yearn for the consolation they felt there. I've spent time in the borderlands myself and want to honor those wandering on the edges, the misfits.

When we ignore the world outside the walls we suffer—as does it.

the kingdom of God largely exists for the sake of outsiders, as a tangible expression of God's love for all.

As a committed Christian, I wanted to discover what adjustments we might need to make in order to communicate the good news to our friends, neighbors, coworkers.

We do not give up on the institution of family because of its imperfections-why give up on the church?

Today, if I had to answer the question "Where is God when it hurts?" in a single sentence, I would make that sentence another question: "Where is the church when it hurts?" We form the front line of God's response to the suffering world.

What would it take for church to become known as a place where grace is "on tap

It makes all the difference in the world whether I view my neighbor as a potential convert or as someone whom God already loves.

The church of my own childhood, as well as that of my present and my future, comprises deeply flawed human beings struggling toward an unattainable ideal.

A healthy family builds up the weakest members while not tearing down the strong.

Those who suffer rest their security not on things, which often cannot be enjoyed and may soon be taken away, but rather on people.

Our confused society badly needs a community of contrast, a counter-culture of ordinary pilgrims who insist on living a different way. We can make the world stop and think before pulling a trigger, or exacting revenge, or neglecting the vulnerable, or practising euthanasia on those it deems 'devoid of value'.

The phrase "the body of Christ," expresses well what we are called to do: to represent in flesh what Christ is like, especially to those in need. The

what about grace? How rare to find a church competing to "out-grace" its rivals.

In the study of scientific atheism, there was the idea that religion divides people. Now we see the opposite: love for God can only unite.

The church works best as a force of resistance, a counterbalance to the consuming power of the state.

It occurs to me, in fact, that laughter has much in common with prayer. In both acts, we stand on equal ground, freely acknowledging ourselves as fallen creatures. We take ourselves less seriously. We think of our creatureliness. Work divides and ranks; laughter and prayer unite. Finding God in Unexpected Places(245