Chaplain: Let us praise God. O Lord... Congregation: O Lord... Chaplain: ...Ooh, You are so big... Congregation: ...ooh, You are so big... Chaplain: ...So absolutely huge. Congregation: ...So absolutely huge. Chaplain: Gosh, we're all really impresse...
Martin Luther King Jr.: Those who have gone before us say "no more"! No more! [church congregation repeats in unison] Martin Luther King Jr.: NO MORE! [church congregation again repeats him] Martin Luther King Jr.: That means protest! That means marc...
If people don't know their pastor, it's easy to put the pastor on a pedestal and depersonalize him or her. It's also easy for pastors, who don't know their congregations, simply to classify congregants as saved or unsaved, involved or not involved, t...
The conscience is a communal organ—a way of knowing that we do with others formed always in reference to others.
Anxious systems also fail to get a clear view of things. Embedded in their dread, they lose a sense of proportion. They have little awareness of what is happening and how it is being mutually maintained. Emotionally cramps the broader view.
In the deepest, most central place of our being, we don't want to cross God and our not wanting to is the beginning of wisdom.
Martin Luther King Jr.: We will not wait any longer! [church congregation applauds] Martin Luther King Jr.: Give us the vote! Jimmie Lee Jackson: [stands up and applauds] That's right - no more! Martin Luther King Jr.: We're not asking - we're demand...
The higher Christian churches...come at God with an unwarranted air of professionalism, with authority and pomp, as though they knew what they were doing, as though people in themselves were an appropriate set of creatures to have dealings with God.....
I have learned that there's no way to open yourself to the experience of God while retaining your cool, your sense of ironic detachment.
If we have a hair trigger on the exclusion gun, shouldn't it be aimed at those who are using their power to abuse someone who is in a weaker, more vulnerable position?
Theology is not a private subject for theologians only. Nor is it a private subject for professors. Fortunately, there have always been pastors who have understood more about theology than most professors. Nor is theology a private subject of study f...
Jesus gives his life for the congregation, not the other way around.
I do not like a high-organized church. I think that as soon as the congregation reaches a level of one hundred or so people, it is time to build a new church. As soon as the congregation gets to the point where you are not on fairly intimate terms wi...
Over four decades of pastoral ministry—I got started early—you make mistakes. But the mistakes you most regret are the ones that obscure the gospel and hurt the people you love, by saying in effect, "You do not belong," to those for whom Christ d...
For too long, our controversies seem to boil down to conservatives and liberals (or, if you prefer, traditionalists and progressives) talking past each other for the benefit of stirring up their loyalists, as partisans do in the primary campaigns of ...
Martin Luther King Jr.: [somberly yet passionately speaking to church congregation at a funeral] Who murdered Jimmie Lee Jackson? Every white lawman who abuses the law to terrorize. Every white politician who feeds on prejudice and hatred. Every whit...
Congregations shaped by the Scriptures generally have preachers who are shaped by the Scriptures.
Virtually every church tradition, by theology, interpretive strategies, or pastoral practice, makes accommodations for divorced people who seek to remarry. These accommodations permit divorced people to enter unions that are outside the rule laid dow...
We so want to be right and so trust that our desire to be right is something that God would surely bless. Yet the desire to be right comes with a price: the fear of being wrong. And so, in a counter-intuitive way, this focus on being right seems to b...
I love you, but I hate your overeating" doesn’t help a marriage. It's not helpful because hatred is a powerful emotion (a posture, really) that is not easy to wield or maintain carefully. Hatred is more a bludgeon than a scalpel. Our ability to dis...
My cream and black Aga. It is the heart of the house, and people congregate around it.
