Quotes About Community

We can heal and hurt each other, and we do. I'm hoping to help lead a tribe that does more healing and less hurting. I consider that my job.

We can't deliver folks from their pits, but we can sure get in there with them until God does. Live long enough and it becomes clear that stuff is not the stuff of life. People are. We need each other, so we probably ought to practice radical grace, because our well-flaunted opinions are cold companions when real life hits.

If Jesus made the sanctuary free and available for all, we should too. If the savior of the world decided that demarkations and hierarchies and power players were no longer necessary to the health of his church, then who are we to reinstate a ranking system after Jesus rendered it obsolete?

Trust me, no one wants a perfect friend who can't offer a minute of transparency. We can get that on Pinterest. Our souls ache for real people in real homes with real kids and real lives. We may carefully curate online identities with well-chosen pictures and selective information, but doing so leaves us starving for something true. I seek only friends who bleed and sweat and laugh and cry. Don't fear your humanity; it is your best offering.

You are not anyone's savior; you are a sister.

Treat other women like your sisters instead of rivals.

May we show love in big and small ways, and may that love reach people accustomed to being shamed or ignored.

Growing up means curbing appetites, shifting from "me" to "we," understanding private choices have social consequences and public outcomes.

And even if someone is nasty, recognize the safe people who guard your story. They deserve to be in your stable and be trusted with your truth. As for the others? As Scott Stratten, author of UnMarketing says: "Don't try to win over the haters; you're not the jackass whisperer."2 (I will now abuse this phrase with reckless abandon.) That brings

The next generation is screaming, 'We can't find God in church! How does God work in the broken places? Why are Christians so mean and scared and defensive? Where is the 'good news' part?

How lovely is a faith community that goes forth as loving sisters and brothers rather than angry defenders and separatists.

We need each other, so we probably ought to practice radical grace, because our well-flaunted opinions are cold companions when real life hits.

We are called to this work, and it might not seem like much, but if you play your one note and I play mine and she plays hers, together it will create a beautiful song that sounds like freedom for the captives and good news to the poor. May the broken-hearted be healed and ashes turned to beauty in our generation. God, make us worthy of Your calling.

God's Word is a place where the by-the-book people and the I-didn't-know-there-was-a-book people can live in harmony.

I sincerely believe we are created by a Creator to be creative. This is part of His image we bear, this bringing forth of beauty, life, newness...It looks like art, it looks like music, it looks like community, it looks like splendor. That thing in you that wants to make something beautiful? It is holy.

Cooking dinner is a sacred gateway from work to rest, from seven separate lives to one shared table.

Stewardship is like that. I won't answer for the way another Christian mismanaged money. I won't be charged with another person's irresponsible consumption. Nor will I get credit for how another faith community shared or sacrificed luxuries for the marginalized. I'll answer for my choices.

A worthy life involves loving as loved folks do, sharing the ridiculous mercy God spoiled us with first. (It really is ridiculous.) It means restoring people, in ordinary conversations and regular encounters. A worthy life means showing up when showing up is the only thing to do.

chronic homelessness, most having experienced at least one year on the street. The marks of such homelessness go much deeper than can be solved solely by the acquisition of a home.

If Jesus is the heart of the church, people are the lifeblood. There is a reason He created community and told us to practice grace and love and camaraderie and presence. People

Jesus created a motley crew, plucking us from every context and inaugurating a piecemeal clan that has only ever functioned with mercy. We should be grabbing hands, throwing our heads back, and laughing that God saved us all, because surely this is the messiest family ever and He loves us anyway. Our shared redemption should keep us grateful and kind, because what other response even makes sense?

God is here and we are not alone. We can't deliver folks from their pits, but we can sure get in there with them until God does. Live long enough and it becomes clear that stuff is not the stuff of life. People are. We need each other, so we probably ought to practice radical grace, because our well-flaunted opinions are cold companions when real life hits.

God never turns away a seeker and neither should we.

History treats kindly the courage of Jesus, Abraham Lincoln, Ghandi, Medgar Evers, Martin Luther King, Jr., Harvey Milk, and, to a general degree, the millions of women who contested the patriarchy, but their own communities and contemporaries killed them for it.