It is not the task of the church to "Make America Great Again." The contemporary task of the church is to make Christianity countercultural again. And once we untether Jesus from the interests of empire, we begin to see just how countercultural and radical Jesus'...
As I have read the Gospels over the years, the belief has grown in me that Christ did not come to found an organized religion but came instead to found an unorganized one. He seems to have come to carry religion out of the temples into the fields and sheep pastures,...
Making a list of which sinners are welcome in the church and which sinners are not goes against the teaching of the Gospel.
If a person is of infinite worth in the sight of God, whether they are saint or sinner, whether they are a good person or a bad person, evil or not, if that is true, then I am never relieved of my responsibility for trying to make contact with this worthy thing in...
Many a sinner has played himself into heaven on the trombone.----------------------------------------Gender-inclusive version: Many a sinner has played himself or herself into heaven on the trombone.
The absolute religious genius of Jesus is that he utterly refuses all debt codes, purity codes, religious quarantines, and the searching for sinners. He refuses the very starting point of historic religions. He refuses to divide the world into the pure and the impure,...
Confession is a difficult discipline for us because we all too often see the believing community as a fellowship of saints before we see it as a fellowship of sinners.
Every congregation is a congregation of sinners. As if that weren’t bad enough, they all have sinners for pastors.
Never once did Jesus scan the room for the best example of holy living and send that person out to tell others about him. He always sent stumblers and sinners. I find that comforting. from Accidental Saints: Finding God in All the Wrong People
I want to write a longer piece about those bishops who seek to keep some from the table of Christ, but for now I will say this: it is not your table (nor mine). Bishops, priests, etc. are neither the hosts nor the bouncers nor the ones who wrote the guest list. The...