The gospel costs nothing but it demands everything.
American churches have too often been content to function as a kind of vaguely spiritual NGO... Too often it has not been a community that through its preaching and living bears witness to another way to live.
That is someone who follows the teachings of the nonviolent Jesus and takes the gospel personally, and then pays the price. I fall into that category.
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.
It’s hard to remember that Jesus did not come to make us safe, but rather to make us disciples, citizens of God’s new age, a kingdom of surprise.
There is no such thing as low-cost Christianity. Following Jesus means swimming against the tide, renouncing evil and selfishness
The greatest challenge the church faces today is to be authentic disciples of Jesus.
I want the Church to go out onto the streets, I want us to resist everything worldly, everything static, everything comfortable...eve rything that might make us closed in on ourselves.
Some Christians want enough of Christ to be identified with him but not enough to be seriously inconvenienced; they genuinely cling to basic Christian orthodoxy but do not want to engage in serious Bible study; they value moral probity, especially of the public sort, but do not engage in war against inner corruptions; they fret over the quality of the preacher's sermon but do not worry much over the quality of their own prayer life. Such Christians are content with mediocrity.
May God deliver us from the easygoing, smooth, comfortable Christianity that never lets the truth get hold of us.
Christianity is at its best when it is peculiar, marginalized, suffering, and it is at its worst when it is popular, credible, triumphal, and powerful.
