Quotes about Community

The church needs to be so clear about its identity as the body of Christ that everything it does generates a gravitational pull toward the heart.

We all need the pendulum swing of snatching spaces of solitude and serving tables of sociability. In fact, the more plugged in and connected we are, the more we need to unplug and disconnect. A world of presence needs a time of absence.

Have your breakfasts all alone. Share lunch with your best friends. Invite your enemy to dinner. Nelson Mandela

If we were to make the table the most sacred object of furniture in every home, in every church, in every community, our faith would quickly regain its power, and our world would quickly become a better place. The table is the place where identity is born—the place where the story of our lives is retold, re-minded, and relived.

Adam means "human." Eve means "life." A human needs another for "life" to come alive and become living. Identity can't grow ferally, only communally. We were meant to eat together, not solo. Eve's solitary eating is what got her in trouble.

The church doesn't lose its kids when they go to college. We start losing them in middle school. We lose children in the church when we send them out of worship to children's church or Sunday school. This is one reason why Jesus kept insisting, "Let the little children come to me."[222

The more we are the Presence of Christ for others, the more present we are for Christ to speak to us.

Jesus didn't care about a "holy table" as the religious establishment defined "holy." For Jesus a holy table was one that was open to anyone, a table where all God's children were present.

You never get a blessing for yourself. You get a blessing to bless others. In the words of the black church, "a blessing can't get to you unless it first can go through you." We are blessed to bless.

It is more important that our churches have tables that are relationally correct than liturgically correct. Rules aren't "truth"; we don't follow out of slavish obedience to something absolute. We follow preestablished rules because we want to signal our love of community….

Do you want to hear Jesus speak? Go to where the wounds are. Find wounded people, hurting people, suffering people, and you will find Jesus.

I will heighten my life by helping others heighten theirs.