Quotes about Community

We've got to unite ourselves as one body. Because Jesus is coming back and he's coming back for a bride, not a harem.

But we are not just called to be candles. We are called to be fire. Candles can be snuffed out by the slightest wind or by the smallest child on their birthday. But it's harder to put out a fire. We are to be fire, to weave our lives together so that the Spirit's inferno of love spreads across the earth.

Something mystical can happen in the course of acting together that transcends words and ideologies—people who do not agree on ideas can create common ground in the act of loving.

When we begin enacting the new world, the nations will follow. Nations will not lead us to peace; it is people who will lead the nation to peace as they begin to humanize the nations.

We shall do even greater things because the love that lived in the radical Christ now lives within millions of ordinary radicals all over the planet.

When our theology gets in the way of loving our neighbors, it's time to rethink our theology.

Lord, remind us that it is not always agitated uprisings and nonstop activity which lead to justice, but that change often comes through the quietcommitment of a small group of people. Help us raise our small body of people to set about quietly becoming the change we want to see in the world. Amen.

But it was hard to stay cynical, as I met more and more beautiful people.

Salvadoran Archbishop Oscar Romero said this shortly before his assassination: "I am going to speak to you simply as a pastor, as one who, together with his people, has been learning the beautiful but harsh truth that the Christian faith does not cut us off from the world but immerses us in it; the church is not a fortress set apart from the city. The church follows Jesus, who lived, worked, struggled and died in the midst of a city, in the polis.

Christianity can be built around isolating ourselves from evildoers and sinners, creating a community of religious piety and moral purity. That's the Christianity I grew up with. Christianity can also be built around joining with the broken sinners and evildoers of our world crying out to God, groaning for grace. That's the Christianity I have fallen in love with. In

True fasting is not just depriving ourselves of privilege but als osharing sacrificially tob ring an end to the cycles of inequality, an end to creation's groaning and the groaning of hungry bellies.

I used to think you all were missionaries bringing the gospel to your neighborhood, but now I see that it is in your neighborhood that you have learned the gospel, and that you are actually missionaries to the church.