Archive for quotations

Checking Our Heads

July 2, 2010 at 11:08 am · Filed under church, Ecumenical, education, pcusa, presbyterian, quotations ·Tagged , , , , ,

Yesterday, I enthused about the PC(USA) website’s makeover, and one of my Facebook friends went to see it. He’s a Southern Baptist, and he wasn’t impressed with this quote on the home page:

Check Our Heads!

The pull quote you see here isn’t quite a quote; if you watch the video you’ll see they “punched it up” a bit. What he actually said was,

“It’s a reasoned faith. I don’t believe we should check our heads at the door when we go to church. That’s one of the reasons I’m a Presbyterian, I guess.”

I sighed when I read that, but the way the page looks, you can hope it’s dynamic content and different visitors will see different quotes. But so far, it appears to be stuck on this one. That’s regrettable.

Read the rest of this entry »

Leave a Comment

Use words if necessary…

October 4, 2009 at 4:34 pm · Filed under quotations, sermons, wisdom, witness

Have you ever heard that quote by St. Francis of Assisi? I couldn’t guess how many times I’ve heard it. I’ve used it myself. It’s a great quote. Except it’s not a quote. Who knew?

Leave a Comment

More Catalyst Nuggets

May 12, 2009 at 9:56 pm · Filed under chaplaincy, conference, presbyterian, quotations, sermons, video

I continue to be impressed with the quality of the material at Catalyst West 2009.

I wasn’t able to carpool today to Presbytery due to a scheduling conflict that made it also my day as chaplain at the local hospital. But the upside was that, when I did drive to Presbytery, I got to listen to 1.5 hrs of Catalyst (actual Origins labs) material. Here’s a pithy quote:

All we need to help somebody find God is already inside them.–Erwin McManus

(Beside Erwin McManus, I also heard an excellent discussion of entrepreneurial leadership from his associate Rick Yamamoto, and another discussion by Dan Kimball about having a missional posture in your life (and therefore in your church).

On the way home, I took a break from Catalyst stuff and listened to a sermon by Jim Burgen of Flatirons Church. (Podcasts are how this pastor hears sermons. I don’t know what I did before I got my iPod, but I must have been one miserable pastor.)

Leave a Comment

Read and Comment

March 19, 2009 at 6:03 am · Filed under book, quotations, wisdom

From Dallas Willard’s The Divine Conspiracy:

The “real” world has little room for a God of sparrows and children. To it, Jesus can only seem “otherworldly” — a good-hearted person out of touch with reality. Yes, it must be admitted that he is influential, but only because he affirms what weak-minded and fainthearted individuals fantasize in the face of a brutal world. He is like a cheerleader who continues to shout, “We are going to win,” though the score is 98 to 3 against us in the last minute of the game.

When this cheerleading approach to the “real world” triumphs among those who profess Christ, they may then have faith in faith but will have little faith in God. For God and his world are just not “real” to them. They may believe in believing but not be able to rely on God — like many in our current culture who love love but in practice are unable to love real people. They may believe in prayer, think it quite a good thing, but be unable to pray believing and so will rarely, if ever, pray at all.

(On pp. 90-91.)

Leave a Comment