11 Quotes

Here are eleven quotes worth remembering from Leonard Sweet’s book, 11 Indispensable Relationships You Can’t Be Without:

Jewish households needed their “shot of Goy” for strict Sabbath observance....We need people of other cultures and faiths in our lives, not just to “witness” to them but also to keep us honest and faithful in our own rituals and beliefs and to purify our own understanding of the faith.

Just as bruised apples make the best pies, bruised and broken people make the best blessers and blessings.

My New Zealand friend Alan Jamieson puts it like this in his book that comes as close to a theology of journey as anything yet written: “Like Abram, the question that we, too, must consider is whether we will have descendants: not children in our own line but descendants in faith and life. Will we love and care for others in such a way that they become descendants?”

A healthy sycamore tree is a tree with heirs...”Always look for a tree’s successors,” she would say over and over again, “before you judge its health and vitality.”

For at least ten years now, I have been arguing against the desk dominion of the “Pastor’s Office” in favor of the apprentice environment of the “studio” model. Instead of private, personal “office” space, what if we reconfigured our space to allow for open areas with large tables and other architectural elements that could encourage collaboration, discourage possessiveness, and allow for osmosis to take place.

In the twentieth century, a Timothy’s key assets were a right arm and a left brain. The future belongs to the right brained and the left armed. The era of left-brain dominance is over. In fact, most left-brained items---rational, logical, linear functions---will be outsourced to computers.

In the future, who you studied with will be more important than where you studied....Billy Graham, Bill Hybels, Jim Cymbala, Brian McLaren, etc., are not qualified to teach in a seminary even though they are some of the most successful practitioners of that for which seminaries profess to educate.

There are many invitations that God presents to us that are not commands. We are free to accept or decline.

If Jesus is to be believed, and followed, there is no “other.” There is only “oneanother.”

A copycat Christianity filled with quivering knee-jerk, butt-kissing, sound-the-same look-alikes is the exact opposite of authentic discipleship.

It is time for Christians to “Get out more,” to try alfresco forms of faith and community.