Quotes about Community

By the way, I like letters. Letter writing has been an important pasttime for the church. I can't promise I'll write you back, but I will read your letter, and I'll do my best to reply. Right now, I'm running about six months behind on writing. And I prefer old-school snail mail: Shane Claiborne, PO Box 12798, Philadelphia, PA 19134.

The way of Jesus is not a proposal for how to take over the nation-state and make it Christian. It is, rather, a lesson in learning not to take over--to be a community where we find a new way of life by giving ourselves for others.

But if you ask the average person how Christians live, they are struck silent.

I truly believe that when the poor meet the rich, riches will have no meaning. And when the rich meet the poor, we will see poverty come to an end.

Christians are meant to be God's holy counterculture, showing the world what a society of love can look like. It is about political imagination and what it means to be the peculiar people of God. As

Fourth-century preacher John Chrysostom said, "This is the rule of most perfect Christianity, its most exact definition, its highest point, namely, the seeking of the common good. For nothing can so make a person an imitator of Christ as caring for his neighbors.

The families had chosen to seek refuge in the historic sanctuary and had hung a banner out front that read, "How can we worship a homeless man on Sunday and ignore one on Monday?

Augustine said, "The church is a whore, but she's our mother." The early Christians said that if we do not accept the church as our mother, we cannot call God our Father. We are not to leave her, but we are to work for her healing, as we would with a dysfunctional parent. Our work is not "para-church" but "pro-church." The church needs our discontent, and we need the rest of the body of Christ.

Lord, keep us from speaking of love while hoarding the gifts you have given us. Make us full of discontent as long as there are brothers and sisters living and dying in hunger. Amen.

As Don Everts says in his book Jesus with Dirty Feet, "Referring to the church as a building is like referring to people as two-by-fours.

ordinary radicals are committed to doing small things with great love.

I remain convinced to this day that if we continue to lose young people in the church, it won't be because we made the gospel too hard but because we made it to easy. We