Huevos up. Swing up to the window, swing back to Al B. Hall, who says, "Bless you," and would I get him a bottle of Satan's Red-Hot Revenge for the eggs? Sure thing, Pastor.
Too often, our concept of pastors and church leaders reinforces rather than obliterates the sad state of family life in our current context.
Writting turns you into somebody who's always wrong. The illusion that you may get ir right someday is the perversity that draws you on. What else could? As pathological phenomena go, it doesn't completely wreck your life.
The fact remains that getting people right is not what living is all about anyway. It's getting them wrong and wrong and wrong and then, on careful reconsideration, getting them wrong again. That's how we know we're alive: we're wrong.
A piece of paper doesn't make you a pastor any more than making predictions makes you a prophet.
You cannot be a conscious Christian without St. Paul. He translated the teachings of Christ into a doctrinal structure that, even with the additions of a vast number of thinkers, theologians and pastors, has resisted and still exists after two thousa...
You can tell how popular a church is by who comes on Sunday morning. You can tell how popular the pastor or evangelist is by who comes on Sunday night. But you can tell how popular Jesus is by who comes to the prayer meeting.
As a pastor and as a dad, I want my son to know I tell the truth. He can read the book. He knows if I exaggerated or if I didn't. My son is forever gonna believe that I'm an honest person or I'm a liar by what I wrote in that book, because he can rea...
Just very practically, pastors need to be careful that while they have a right to call people to absolute allegiance to the Word of God, we don't have the right to call people to absolute allegiance to our programs or every ministry we have at the ch...
The minute the church and pastors start saying what do people want and then giving it to them, we betray our calling. We're called to have people follow Jesus. We're called to have people learn how to forgive their enemies.
I think pastors are the worst listeners. We're so used to speaking, teaching, giving answers. We must learn to be quiet, quit being so verbal, learn to pay attention to what's going on, and listen.
First of all, do I think there's some racists in the Tea Party? Yeah. I'm an ordained United Methodist pastor; there's some racists in the Methodist church. I don't know if there's a body that does not have some racists in it.
The Internet has given atheists, agnostics, skeptics, the people who like to destroy everything that you and I believe, the almost equal access to your kids as your youth pastor and you have... whether you like it or not.
I'm not sure many writers are trying to reconcile all the things that are separated in our culture - body and mind, urban and pastoral, lyricism and hardboiled, men and women, joy and grief. I tried to do quite a lot, but I wanted to create a serious...
But then the pastors and men of God can only be human,--cannot altogether be men of God; and so they have oppressed us, and burned us, and tortured us, and hence come to love palaces, and fine linen, and purple, and, alas, sometimes, mere luxury and ...
I just don't think pastors should turn their pulpits into public policy platforms. It cheapens the gospel. Our congregation doesn't need another political opinion. They need spiritual revelation. They don't need to think about politics on the weekend...
I am a former newspaper reporter turned church secretary turned vampire novelist. I wrote my first complete novel, 'Nice Girls Don't Have Fangs,' at night while I was working as the receptionist for a Baptist church. That was an interesting conversat...
Mental illness is not a fraternity or a social club for like minds. It is its own religion to each person that has it. Their mind is their pastor, their feelings are their scriptures and their delusions are their own bible story. To break them free, ...
As a pastor in a Protestant church, my whole ministry centers on the conviction that by grace we are saved through faith. And it's not our faith that delivers us, as if believing something, anything at all were pleasing to God. It's the object of our...
I have tried to devote my life - with all my husband failures, father failures, pastor failures, friend failures, any other possible failures I'm sure I've done them - to the God-centeredness of God and my aspiring, yearning to join Him in that activ...
I was in Christian broadcasting back in the 1970s. I was director of communications for James Robinson, and I really thought Christian broadcasting was going to be my career. There have been so many twist and turns in my life; of course I haven't bee...
