“But should we repent for the purest of motives? Doesn’t work that way. If we had pure motives we wouldn’t be needing to repent.”
Ploductivity, p. 62
Equal Portions for All, Albeit Somewhat Small
“Let us not teeter along on the rim of some health and wealth nonsense, but at the same time, let us give the steely eye of rebuke to those Christian leftists who want to dance along the other rim of disease and poverty, once those progressive ideals have been suitably renamed.”
Ploductivity p. 62
Ensouled Sanctuaries
“The faith of the people is the soul of the building. The building itself, without living, evangelical faith—without songs pouring out of forgiven hearts, without a proclamation of truth that is piping hot, without prayers of honest and sincere contrition—becomes a mausoleum. When the people are alive, the sanctuary is animated and alive.”
Let the Stones Cry Out, p. 71
Establishing Idols Fells Them
“Whatever you worship in place of God is another thing you lose. Whatever you surrender gladly to Him is returned to you, pressed down, shaken, and running over.”
Ploductivity, p. 62
Not if Evangelism is Happening
“Church growth must not be thought of as a zero sum game, where one church can only grow at the expense of the others.”
Let the Stones Cry Out, p. 69
Two Effects
“There are two effects of every sermon, one special, in the enforcement of a single thought, or the inculcation of a single duty; the other general, in the diffusion of a sense of the beauty of holiness and the value of truth.”
Phillips Brooks, The Joy of Preaching, p. 148
Not in the Job Description
“It is not [the preacher’s] business to despair of anybody.”
Phillips Brooks, The Joy of Preaching, p. 148
A Third Way Needed
“The technophile just assumes that man is the measure of all things, and he plumps his resume in order to get a job with Google, so that he too may become one of the lords of the earth. The technophobe just memorizes the poetry of Wendell Berry, and years for the days of yesterday when all our food was eked out under a hot sun by a slow mule and a picturesque peasant staggering behind it.”
Ploductivity, p. 59
The Location of Law
“In that Holy of Holies, the law of God was kept inside the ark, but under the mercy seat. And so that is how we treasure our commitment to the law—under the mercy.”
Let the Stones Cry Out, p. 67
Literacy Where It Counts
“What is evangelical faith? It is spiritual literacy. The natural man does not understand the things of the spirit because they are spiritual discerned.”
Let the Stones Cry Out, p. 65