No one on a cohesive team can say, Well, I did my job. Our failure isn't my fault.

The path to significance is bigger than the individual.

We simply weren't constructed to live only for ourselves. We were placed on earth to be part of something bigger than the narrow borders of our own survival and our own little definition of happiness. The desire resides in each of us, and it is called transcendence. To transcend is to be part of something greater. We were created to be part of something so big, so glorious, so far beyond the ordinary that it would totally change the way we approach every ordinary thing in our lives.

Autonomous Christianity never works, because our spiritual life was designed by God to be a community project.

I am persuaded that the church today has many more consumers than committed participants.

People move from church to church as if the churches in their community are nothing more than ecclesiastical department stores. They're shopping for just the right preacher, women's ministry, youth ministry, or worship style. These Christians' relationship to the church mirrors my relationship to Macy's.

Many, many believers think of their church as a place to attend rather than something with which they are intimately involved.

If you followed the Lord for a thousand years, you would still need the ministry of the body of Christ as much as you did the day you first believed.

It's pointless to blame someone for being themselves and looking to their own interests.

this half belonged to the congregation: 337,500 sheep,

people and priest alike, servant and master, maid and mistress, buyer and seller, lender and borrower, creditor and debtor.

John said to Him, “Teacher, we saw someone else driving out demons in Your name, and we tried to stop him, because he does not accompany us.”