Quotes About Community

Leadership begins the moment you are more concerned about others' flourishing than you are about your own.

I had no blood relatives till I made some.

One broken window, left unrepaired for any substantial length of time, instills in the inhabitants of the building a sense of abandonment—a sense that the powers that be don't care about the building. So another window gets broken. People start littering. Graffiti appears. Serious structural damage begins. In a relatively short span of time, the building becomes damaged beyond the owner's desire to fix it, and the sense of abandonment becomes reality.

Reading is a broad church. But it is still a church.

When we find a painting or a novel or a musical we love, we are briefly connected to the best that human beings are capable of, in ourselves and others, and we are reminded that our path through the world must intersect with others. Whether we like it or not, we are not alone.

My fitness trainer's English, my physio's English, some of my friends are English. I don't have a problem with English people at all.

Well, immediately we announced yesterday or the day before we're building, with my foundation, a youth tennis and learning center in Austin. I'd like to be hands on with that and not see it periodically.

I hope all of you are going to fill out your census form when it comes in the mail next month. If you don't return the form the area you live in might get less government money and you wouldn't want that to happen, would you.

As a leader it is your job to protect the missional integrity of the Jesus gathering to which you have been called. It is your responsibility to see to it that the church under your care continues as a gathering of people in process; a place where the curious,the unconvinced, the sceptical, the used-to-believe and the broken, as well as the committed, informed and sold-out come together around Peter's declaration that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of the living God.

our nation's challenges do not stem from the church's inability to convince unbelievers to behave like believers. Our challenges stem from the church's inability to inspire believers to behave like believers.

One of our pastors, John Hambrick, has a saying that we've adopted organization-wide. He says, "We walk toward the messes." In other words, we don't feel compelled to sort everything or everyone out ahead of time. We are not going to spend countless hours creating policies for every eventuality.

How we treat, talk about, respond to, and care for one another is the identifying mark of a genuine Jesus follower. Not what we believe.

The generosity and compassion of Christians changed the world once. What would happen if the church became known for such behavior again?

It's a shame that so many churches are married to a designed-by-Christians-for-Christians-only culture. A culture in which they talk about the Great Commission, sing about the Great Commission, but refuse to reorganize their churches around the Great Commission.

But I'm not sitting around praying for revival either. I grew up in the "pray for revival" culture.

When our faith is down for the count, we need people who will speak truth to us, friends who will remind us of God's past faithfulness. We need people who will draw our attention outside of the realm of our immediate circumstances, people to put our circumstances in their proper context.

We almost always involve unbelievers in our small groups. And we give them opportunities to lead the discussion.

If your vision is for a year, plant wheat. If your vision is for ten years, plant trees If your vision is for a lifetime, plant people. CHINESE PROVERB

They have adjusted their style in order to worship with their kids. Shouldn't we be willing to adjust ours to reach their kids?

If God has birthed a vision in you, he is in the process of developing a similar vision in the hearts of others around you.

Submit to one another out of reverence for Christ. (EPHESIANS 5:21)

Don't be so concerned about keeping the folks you've got, that you neglect the folks you're trying to reach.

one of the primary reasons that you have to listen to outsiders: If you don't, you will be driven by the complaints and demands of the insiders.

Political and ideological alignment is not a prerequisite for carrying one another's burdens. I can love you the way Jesus loved me regardless of who you voted for.