Suffering is increasing in the world today. People are hungry for something more beautiful, for something greater than people ‘round can give. There is a great hunger for God in the world today. Everywhere there is much suffering, but there is also great hunger for...
As a political-religious metaphor, the kingdom of God referred to what life would be like on earth if God were king and the kingdoms of this world, the domination systems of this world, were not… The kingdom of God was not only for the earth, but involved a...
God by nature recruits outsiders to be partners in providence, makes a home among them, and through them enriches the world. We miss out on this fullness of life when we limit our partnerships to those who most resemble ourselves.
The grace of God means something like: Here is your life. You might never have been, but you are because the party wouldn’t have been complete without you. Here is the world. Beautiful and terrible things will happen. Don’t be afraid. I am with you. Nothing can ever...
There’s a world bigger than our families. The only way we can ultimately protect our family is to create and protect the entire human family.
We modernists have often gotten at our faith by a negative process. We do not believe this. We do not believe that. We have given up this incredible idea or that obsolete doctrine. So we pare down and dim out our faith by negative abstractions until we have left only...
In a world that is desperate for something real, many mega-churches today are like Disney World plus God, while too many mainline churches are serving up bits and pieces of the Great Books Club. One wonders which fiction is most cruel, that all your dreams can come...
Conversion is primarily an unselfing. The first birth of the individual is into his own little world. He is controlled by the deep-seated instincts of self-preservation and self-enlargement—instincts which are, doubtless, a direct inheritance from his brute ancestry....
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 visible church is all the people who get together from time to time in God’s name. Anybody can find out who they are by going to look. The invisible church is all the people God uses for his hands and feet in this world. Nobody can find out who they are except...