Quotes About Layperson

I'm a layperson. I barely got out of high school. I have no business telling people what to do or my big philosophy on life. I'm certainly not going to write any sort of memoir.

The ocean is the source of life. We all come from there. I think about these one-celled creatures, and I think about the planet. It is related to my obsession with biology, even if it's only a layperson's obsession. The way I visualise what's at the bottom of the ocean is very much to do with how I feel when I'm swimming in the sea.

As a layperson, I consider myself fairly well-educated in terms of politics. My family always has been really interested in politics, and various members of my family have a hand in politics in upstate New York.

As however the ancients say that in case of necessity any Christian lay person can administer the sacrament of Baptism, so Luther says the same thing about absolution in case of necessity, where no priest is present.

When I got to MIT, I discovered a really interesting Master's program called the Science and Technology and Policy Program - it taught people with a background in STEM how to think about science and tech from a policy perspective. It was a great way to understand how to communicate science to a policymaker or a layperson.

I was influenced very much by St. Francis of Assisi, whose idea was to radically live the gospel. He was not a priest, or even a brother. He was a layperson. His whole concept was to emulate Christ through the gospels, and to live it in a radical way.

While my approach has been academic, the truths I present here for the layperson, which are distilled from analyzing the writings of Isaiah, are far from academic—I consider them life giving. I invite you, the reader, to put them to the test, to see if they are not enlightening, empowering, and freeing to your spirit for that flight to heaven which God has invited every one of us to make.

Think hard before you do this," one said to me when I told him I wanted to be ordained. "Right now, you have the broadest ministry imaginable. As a layperson, you can serve God no matter what you do for a living, and you can reach out to people who will never set foot inside a church. Once you are ordained, that is going to change. Every layer of responsibility you add is going to narrow your ministry, so think hard before you choose a smaller box.

In case of necessity, not only a priest or a deacon, but a lay man or woman, nay even a pagan and a heretic, can [validly] baptize, provided only that he observes the form prescribed by the Church and has the intention of doing what the Church does.

The concern of the scholar is primarily with what the text meant; the concern of the layperson is usually with what it means. The believing scholar insists that we must have both. Reading the Bible with an eye only to its meaning for us can lead to a great deal of nonsense as well as to every imaginable kind of error—because it lacks controls. Fortunately, most believers are blessed with at least a measure of that most important of all hermeneutical skills—common sense.

Sometimes, it reads like a love story: falling in love with a stranger; falling so far that you forsake all others; falling away from yourself until you are not an American and you are not Japanese and you are not a layperson and you are not a monk and you find yourself wrapped up in a black robe and falling on your knees to bow down in gratitude to the person who occasioned this fortunate fall.