You must read to lead. Reading feeds. It opens our souls to a long line of counselors.
My job is not to solve people's problems or make them happy, but to help them see the grace operating in their lives.
A pastor, a politician, and a brick walk into a bar, and the bartender says, “Sorry, we don’t serve rigid nonthinkers here.” So the brick and the pastor look at the politician, who turns around and leaves.
I don’t regret anything I was before because I still am. I only regret not having loved you. Put your hands in mine And let’s be quiet, surrounded by life.
Every pastor, youth pastor, and every parent is in competition with the Internet and the information it is spreading. Most young people don't get their news from CNN or CBS; they get it from bloggers.
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...
Somehow we American pastors, without really noticing what was happening, got our vocations redefined in the terms of American careerism. We quit thinking of the parish as a location for pastoral spirituality and started thinking of it as an opportuni...
For students who have not been required to confess that it is easier to learn theology then live it, it is tempting to think maturity is more a matter of knowing in a matter of living
Most people like it when the pastor says, "family is priority." What they don't like very much is when the pastor actually chooses his own family as the priority over them.
They (theological liberals)seemed to know what the answer was supposed to be and weren’t much concerned with how to get there. They knew only that whatever answers the Fundamentalists came up with must be wrong.
With the tools of democracy, democracy was murdered and lawlessness made "legal." Raw power ruled, and its only real goal was to destroy all other powers besides itself.
Describing Bonhoeffer's demeanor on returning to danger in Germany rather than safety in America, with "with a strong and joyful firmness such as only arises out of realized freedom.
Whenever pastors assume people in their congregation know certain things, they miss opportunities to teach. If a pastor makes assumptions year after year, then a whole generation has never heard [that truth] for the first time. If we assume too much,...
Do not try to make the Bible relevant. Its relevance is axiomatic. Do not defend God's word, but testify to it. Trust to the Word. It is a ship loaded to the very limits of its capacity. -Dietrich Bonhoeffer
The most important thing a pastor does is stand in a pulpit every Sunday and say, 'Let us worship God.' If that ceases to be the primary thing I do in terms of my energy, my imagination, and the way I structure my life, then I no longer function as a...
Many pastors would rather preach God's Word and keep their distance than invest in a personal one-on-one counseling ministry. Most pastors counsel because they have to, not because they want to.
(Bonhoeffer's) change was not an ungainly, embarrassing leap from which he would have to retreat slightly when he gained more maturity and perspective. It was by all accounts a deepening consistent with what had gone before.
The conscience is a communal organ—a way of knowing that we do with others formed always in reference to others.
She would go off in the morning with the punt full of books, and spend long glorious days away in the forest lying on the green springy carpet of whortleberries, reading. She would most diligently work at furnishing her empty mind. She would sternly ...
Suffering often draws us closer to God. Instead of being a sign of God's punishment or distance, suffering can purify us, lead us into the heart of God, and transform our souls.
You and I are part of the colony of heaven. Right now, we may reside here on earth, but our passport indicates that our citizenship is in heaven. We are the earth, but not the earth.
