We admit that we will never reach our ideal in this life, a distinctive the church claims that most other human institutions try to deny.

I cried at the funeral. It wasn’t because I loved her, it was because I was there, in the front pew at the church, chopping onions.

The cross has two sides to it. One side is what Jesus did for us. He forgave us our sins. The other is the God side. God now lives in man!

How can we say that the Church wishes to bring us back into the Dark Ages? The Church was the only thing that ever brought us out of them.

The city takes a breath on Sunday. Of all that’s lost with the pursuit of what’s next, I hope we don’t lose that…

Freedom for the Church comes from the necessity of the Word of God. Otherwise, it becomes arbitrariness and ends in a great many new ties.

Deb and I were married on a snowy night - wind cross-wove a veil of snow for her then threw confetti at us as we left the lighted church...

Again, as I had often met it in my own church, I was confronted with the Impurity of Women doctrine that seemed to preoccupy all clergymen.

The wealthy, Jesus says, can only get into heaven through the eye of a needle; the same applies to churches wealthy in numbers and programs.

There's not enough wrong with it to leave and there's just enough wrong with it to stay," Matthew later told me. "Fight to change it.

This is a paradox of Whitefield's legacy: evangelicalism draws people of different churches while dividing those within the same denomination.

Without vision, a church devolves into a lukewarm, aimless organization characterized by infighting, budget grabbing and a dead heart for the lost.

My life has far exceeded my expectations not because of my own personal efforts or mindset but because of my friends who have enriched my existence

If heaven really exists: then, technically, living is an activity that believers keep themselves busy with — while they wait for their death.

In a team setting, leadership is shared by a community of people, which counters the tendency for pastors to form congregations in their own images.