Theology That Bites Back
“The service is not a zero-sum game, where the sacrament must give way to the Word or vice versa. Word and sacrament go together the way cooking and eating do. Services with great preaching and no sacrament are like celebrity chef television shows, where a lot of good food is prepared but not eaten. And sacramentalists are the ecclesiastical equivalent of a raw foods movement, where you come to church to get your puny carrot.”
Let the Stones Cry Out, p. 122
“A very common feature of the acknowledgements section at the beginning of books is the part where the author thanks his long-suffering family for putting up with his surliness while he was Locked-in-the-Attic-in-Order-to-Write-the-Book, and for being willing to leave food by the door, tapping twice quietly, and then slipping quietly away.”
Ploductivity, p. 94
“We always have the resources for doing what we are supposed to be doing at that moment. If we don’t have the resources for going forward, we have the resources for waiting. If we are supposed to go forward, we will have the resources to do so . . . God doesn’t steer parked cars. If there is no motion, it doesn’t matter how much the steering wheel is turned back and forth.”
Let the Stones Cry Out, p. 119
“An amazing amount of work can be accomplished through diligent plodding. But please note that I said plodding, not shuffling.”
Ploductivity, p. 92
“When congregations build church buildings, this is either a testimony or a mask. It is either a declaration of what we are all becoming in Jesus Christ, or it is an attempt to substitute with blocks of stone what God will only receive from tender hearts.”
Let the Stones Cry Out, p. 117
“We are not to teach what the Bible says in bits and pieces, but rather are to gather it all up in a systematic whole.”
Let the Stones Cry Out, p. 107
“We do not give ten percent so that God will leave us alone with our ninety percent. That would just be an ecclesiastical extortion racket. Rather, we give ten percent as tribute, a ten percent that says in a very tangible way that one hundred percent belongs to God. And it does not really matter how much of it there is. What matters is what percentage of it is blessed.”
Let the Stones Cry Out, p. 106
“The Bible does tell us that God loves a cheerful giver (2 Cor. 9:7), but it does no good to harangue everybody with this glorious truth if the leadership of the church insists on doubling down on all the things that make cheerful giving impossible.”
Let the Stones Cry Out, p. 101
“You cannot love God whom you have not seen, if you do not love your brother, whom you have not paid.”
Let the Stones Cry Out, p. 103
“A poet who has mastered (by imitation) all the classic forms of poetry might be in a good position to develop a new and challenging form. But if he passes by all that, and sits down to write poetry that just expresses himself, then he is likely only to achieve a form of free verse that was invented by junior high girls who had just finished sobbing.”
Ploductivity, p. 82
