Quotes from Christianity Today

The trick of faith is to believe in advance what will only make sense in reverse.--Phillip Yancey

On Welcoming the Stranger--

Let all guests who arive be recieved like Christ, for he is going to say, "I came as a guest and you recieved me."
St. Benedict

A story said to originate in a Russsian Orthodox monastery has an older monk telling a younger one: "I have finally learned to accept people as they are. Whatever they are in the world, a prostitute, a prime minister, it is all the same to me. But sometimes I see a stranger coming up the road, and I say, "Oh Jesus Christ, is it you again?"--
Kathleen Norris, Dakota

Be kind, for everyone you meet is fighting a great battle.
Philo of Alexandria

Your whole life through you....seek the face you've lost in strangers' faces.
Fredrick Buechner

That is our vocation: to convert...the enemy into a guest and to create the free and fearless space where brotherhood and sisterhood can be formed and fully experienced.--
Henri Nouwen

In an era where many of us feel time is our scarcest resource,hospitality falters..."In a fast-food culture," a wise Benedictine monk observes, "you have to remind yourself that some things cannot be done quickly. Hospitality takes time."--
Dorothy Bass, Recieving the Day

From the News Section

God assumed from the beginning that the wise of the world would view the Christians as fools....and He has not been disappointed....Have the courage to have your wisdom regarded as stupidity.--
Justice Antonin Scalia

From "Spirituality for all the Wrong Reasons" an Interview with Eugene Peterson

"One of my favorite stories os of Teresa of Avila. She is sitting in the kitchen with roasted chicken. And she's got it with both hands, and she's gnawing on it, just devouring the chicken. One of the nuns comes in shocked that she is doing this, behaving this way. She said, "When I eat chicken, I eat chicken. When I pray, I pray."

The minute we start advertising the faith in terms of benefits, we're just exacerbating the self problem. Instead we need to get people bored with themselves so that they can start looking to Jesus.

It's very dangerous to use the language of the culture to interpret the gospel. Our language needs to be chastened and tested by revelation, by the Scriptures.

When we advertise the gospel in terms of the world's values, we lie to people.

There's nobody who doesn't have problems with the church, because there is sin in the church. But there is no other place to be Christian except the church.

How do we meet needs? Do we do it the Jesus way or the Walmart way?

I think the besetting sin of pastors, maybe especially evangelical pastors, is impatience.