Shane Claiborne Quotes

I always felt that church is where I'm going to find my community and people to live my life with.

I go to church as an expression of my need for God and for God's family.

Attending church is one thing, belonging is another.

When we went to mass that first Sunday after moving to a new place, that was where we felt at home and were able to say, 'well, home is anywhere, it doesn't matter where we live because we have the faith.'

Home Run portrays the church in its beauty--true life transformation through real and honest relationships with one another and with Jesus.

Nations and governments come and go, but people remain, and therefore people are the ultimate foundation of what is real and worthy.

Now the Church is not wood and stone, but the company of believing people; one must hold to them, and see how they believe, live and teach.

I love what the church offers to us as a culture - black people in particular. We would be nowhere without the black church.

Churchgoers are like coals in a fire. When they cling together, they keep the flame aglow; when they separate, they die out.

Solitude does not pull us away from our fellow human beings but instead makes real fellowship possible.

I also grew up with community co-parents who looked out for each other. They looked out for children and tried to be the hands of God. They tried to live their faith.

We are not born, we do not live for ourselves alone; our country, our friends, have a share in us.

When I had something I thought God was talking to me about, the first thing I did, before I ever talked to the congregation, was to sit down with the major influencers of the church and share with them what I thought God was speaking to me. I gave them time for input or questions. Many times they would ask questions and I would reply, "I need to spend more time on this. I'm not sure I'm thinking clearly there." Other times they added value and helped make this vision better or more accessible to the people.

The naturalness of life... the sense of community is, I think, a very important factor in an artist's life.

THE ONLY REAL FAILURE IS TO FAIL OTHERS.

I am a person of faith, so I come from a community that's involved in 360,000 churches across the country, that is an institution that could, in a relatively short period of time, provide hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of positive male role models.

Things are getting much better, but I always wondered when I went to church on Sundays. I've always been one to... I'm not just a boxer.

To the extent that the parents who send their children to these [Catholic] schools are parents like my own, who actually have faith in the church. Faith that it will provide their children with safety, a decent education and values about life and others. This is an institution that stands for all good in the world.

There is nothing like the local church when the local church is working right.

The Hindu religion appears ... as a cathedral temple, half in ruins, noble in the mass, often fantastic in detail but always fantastic with a significance crumbling or badly outworn in places, but a cathedral temple in which service is still done to the Unseen and its real presence can be felt by those who enter with the right spirit.

A local church will only be as great as its conception of God.

When we come together and appreciate each other, that's always a positive thing; a step in the right direction. That is what the NAACP Image Awards do. If we can just come together and love each other, that's important. I do feel like there's a lack of love but oddly enough, we blame the lack of love on other people not loving and appreciating our accomplishments. But the real reality is we haven't loved and appreciated our own accomplishments.

I've worked with farmers in Zimbabwe who've lost their lands. I've worked with people in Venezuela, under threat of kidnappings, whose external world is unstable. But they have very strong social connections with their family and friends. And as a result, they're able to maintain a greater level of happiness and optimism than I've seen from bankers, consultants, or salespeople who are on the road all the time, who follow jobs separated from their families, and, as a result, find themselves missing out on the happiness that comes from those very connections that they severed.

Unity, to be real, must stand the severest strain without breaking.

Having small group once a week gives me a lot of encouragement and accountability. Even though I go to church, I don't really know many people there, but my real community is my small group.