Theology That Bites Back
“Is it possible to be both relaxed and driven? People who are only relaxed are frequently slackers, and much of the book of Proverbs would appear to apply to them. But people who are driven give a diligent work ethic a bad name. Nobody wants to be like that. We might admire the house they can afford, but nobody wants to be like the people who live in it.”
Ploductivity, p. 7
“Care not for your sermon, but for your truth, and for your people; and subjects will spring up on every side of you and the chances to preach upon them will be all too few . . . If you have anything to say, and say it bravely and simply, men will come to hear you.”
Phillips Brooks, The Joy of Preaching, p. 119
“If we are to put on the white robe called Jesus, there are certain foul rags that we have to take off in order to do so.”
Let the Stones Cry Out, p. 7
“Never tolerate any idea of the dignity of a sermon which will keep you from saying anything in it which you ought to say, or which your people ought to hear. It is the same folly as making your chair so fine that you dare not sit down in it.”
Phillips Brooks, The Joy of Preaching, p. 118
“A basic truism of modern design is that form follows function. This is self-evidently true, but the reason modern men have found themselves living, working, and worshiping in overgrown shoeboxes is that we have allowed ourselves to drift into a truncated and reductionist view of what our actual function as human beings truly is.”
Let the Stones Cry Out, p. 7
“I can conceive of but two things which should cause the preacher any difficulty in regard to the abundance of subjects for his preaching. The first is the sterility of his own mind, the second is a stilted and unnatural idea of what the sermon he is going to write must be.”
Phillips Brooks, The Joy of Preaching, p. 117
“What we do need to do is go over the temptations faced by people who live in the proximity of money. Teaching on this is also found in Scripture, but we are not nearly enough on our guard about it. If someone in our congregation received a windfall inheritance of 100 million dollars, the chances are pretty good that this person would receive scores of warnings not to let it go to his head. All the people around that guy will not receive any warnings, and they are the ones who really need it.”
Let the Stones Cry Out, p. 5
“We need to remember that money will do what money always wants to do.”
Let the Stones Cry Out, p. 4
“We are fit for no other life. There can be nothing more modest than that. It is not pride when the beech-tree refuses to copy the oak. He knows his limitations. The only chance of any healthy life for him is to be ads full a beech-tree as he can. Apply all that, and out of sheer modesty refuse to try to be any kind of preacher which God did not make you to be.”
Phillips Brooks, The Joy of Preaching, p. 114
“One danger is the obvious one of calling it cultural engagement when we are just drifting along with whatever it is the world is dishing up.”
Let the Stones Cry Out, p. x
