We cannot love God unless we love each other, and to love we must know each other. We know [Christ] in the breaking of bread, and we know each other in the breaking of bread, and we are not alone anymore. Heaven is a banquet, too, even with a crust, where there is...
Some communities are defined by proximity, structured of wood or stone or brick and bound by lines on a map. But the community of believers is made of holy, living stones cemented with the mortar of Christ’s love, crossing all lines, and having no permanent address.
In the beginning, the church was a fellowship of men and women who centered their lives on the living Christ. They had a personal relationship with the Lord. It transformed them and the world around them. Then the church moved to Greece, where it became a philosophy....
The church is…not a restricted religious community; if it were, the risen Christ would be merely the Lord of its cult. Nor is it a fellowship of like-minded people; in that case the Lord would only be there to give value to its mental attitude. The church, with its...
Jesus returns again and again to his Church with his message and the power of his Spirit…to arouse a Church which, tired and listless, is always on the point of sleep; to light the way for a Church which is so often on the point of losing the path on its pilgrimage;...
Congregations that discern the mission of God in the world and discover their participation in it will shape the future of the Church in North America. Missional churches are ones that see their purpose for existence as incarnating the life and ministry of Jesus...
When the gospel has become bad news to the poor, to the oppressed, to the broken-hearted and imprisoned and good news to the proud, self-righteous and privileged instead, it is no longer the gospel of Jesus Christ.
In the same way the Church exists for nothing else but to draw men into Christ, to make them little Christs. If they are not doing that, all the cathedrals, clergy, missions, sermons, even the Bible itself, are simply a waste of time. God became man for no other...
The principle runs through all life from top to bottom. Give up yourself, and you will find your real self. Lose your life and you will save it. Submit to death, death of your ambitions and favorite wishes every day and death of your whole body in the end; submit with...
"Let the little children come unto me and forbid them not, for such is the kingdom of heaven," Jesus said. He did not say let only rich or middle-class white children come. He did not say let only the strapping boys but not the girls come. He did not say let only the...