quotes of the week

I'll probably be doing this sort of thing a lot more often here at renown. Just putting up a lot of quotes that are or have been on my mind recently. "Quotes of the week" may be a little misleading in that none of this stuff was actually said this week, nor did I necessarily read them this week. "Quotes of the week" simply refers to the quotes being posted on renown this week. Hope that makes sense.
*Let me also throw out one of those little disclaimers - just because I post a quote that has made me think and I think might be worthy of making other people think does not mean I totally agree with the quote or everything the speaker/author of that quote has ever said, written, thought, or dreamed and with every person he/she has ever had lunch with.

Enjoy the quotes and drop some comments to let me know which ones are your favorties, which ones made you think most, and which ones you hate...

- "...it is on the cross that we see what love looks like when it stares evil in the face. It is that cross that has led many of us to war zones like Iraq as extremists for love, as people who believe that there is something worth dying for but not worth killing for." - Shane Claiborne, author/activist

- On Coming to Christianity [this is beautiful] - "I thought Christ was like this weird Santa Claus figure. [But my friend told me], 'If you're going to talk about Christ, you should probably read the Gospels, so at least that way, you'll know what you're talking about.' So I did, and I was converted." - Moby, musician [pretty cool story]

- "We [any team] cannot survive a culture devoid of trust." - Andy Stanley

- "Is not the term 'Systematic Theology' as paradoxical as a 'wooden iron'? One day this conception will disappear just as suddenly as it has come into being." - the great theologian Karl Barth, Church Dogmatics [i kind of hope that "one day" won't be too long & as I read this from an old dead scholar I can faintly hear my generation cheering...]

- "The day we are completely satisfied with what we have been doing; the day we have found the perfect, unchangeable system of work, the perfect answer, never in need of being corrected again, on that day we will know that we are wrong, that we have made the greatest mistake of all." - Vincent Donovan, Christianity Rediscovered [RIGHT ON!!! somebody needs to preach that to come Christians]

- "We as a group [Western Church] are people who have shown a lot of signs of being unwilling to give up our wealth in order to follow Jesus." - Derek Webb, singer/songwriter

- "I kind of thought the Church was asleep and turned into a 'holy bless-me club' or whatever you want to call it, but I'm glad to say I was wrong. Particularly the evangelicals, who seemed very judgmental to me over the years, turned out to be incredibly generous in their time and their support of the AIDS awareness effort. I've really had my view of the Church turned upside down." - Bono [pretty cool, but we're just getting started...]

- "There are many ideas within Christian spirituality that contradict the facts of reality as I understand them... When we worship God we worship a Being our life experience does not give us the tools with which to understand. If we could, God would not inspire awe." - Donald Miller, Blue Like Jazz

- "At the heart of the decline [of twentysomething church attendance] is the church's failure to meaningfully connect with a changing culture." - Jeff Kern, former president of Great Commission Ministries

- "To be a Christian in a generously orthodox way is not to claim to have the truth captured, stuffed, and mounted on the wall. It is rather to be in a loving community of people who are seeking the truth on the road of mission and who have been launched on the quest by Jesus, who, with us, guides us still... We're not finished." - Brian McLaren, Generous Orthodoxy

- "What binds people in Emergent is that most everybody would rally under the flag of hope. We have hope for the future. We have hope for the Church. We have hope for the kingdom of God to break into the present and transform the present." - Tony Jones, Emergent coordinator

- "I really don't understand the notion of a pro-capitalist, pro death penalty, pro-war Christian. To me, that just seems like a vegetarian who eats a burger." - Moby, musician [ok, all you hard core right wingers have at least gotta chuckle, right? or do you feel like someone just knocked the wind out of you?]

- "Those of us who've been living in this friendship and talking through these issues have been hard at work for nearly a decade. Why wouldn't you give me, your brother in Christ, the benefit of the doubt? What is it in Christian circles that the immediate knee-jerk reaction is, 'Oh, they've lost their way. They're heretics'?" - Tony Jones, Emergent coordinator [great question, Tony]

- "To live in a Christlike manner is to reject the lifestyle being prescribed by the media, to reject the affluent lifestyle that has become normative in America and embrace simplicity." - Tony Campolo, author/activist

- "It's not like you have to or can do everything, but do something. Do anything other than nothing." - Ben Harper, musician

- "If you have to give a loyalty lecture it's OVER, you just don't know it yet." - Andy Stanley

- "Our common ground is this disease of a conviction that we are right. I don't want to try to convince people to come to Jesus. I just try to tell my truth and share my story and the stories of daily salvation." - Anne Lamott, author


***What do you guys think?