Welcome, welcome ladies and gentlemen. A very good Monday to you. A very good Monday, indeed.
First, 5 quick announcements.
1) Our blog manager has voted on the jokes that were submitted last week. Chris Williams, your joke was voted the absolute worst – bar none. David Hughes, your joke was voted the best. However, the blog manger decided to give the award to Chris. Why? Because I had to administer smelling salts in order to get her off the floor after she read it. She was that impressed with the quality of the joke. So you win, Sir. Send your snail address to PTMIN@aol.com to receive your prize J
2) Since this is Thanksgiving week where I live, there will be no blog post on Thursday. So I will be doing something that no mortal has ever dared do – I shall be combining both the serious side and the lighter side into ONE post! Whooooaaa … I guess we’ll see if the earth doesn’t come unglued as a result.
3) This one is an observation. I’m becoming more and more convinced that those who regularly participate on this blog are among the sharpest people in the Christian blogosphere today. I’ve read many Christian blogs where the posters routinely give their opinions on books and articles that they’ve never read and speak with such self-confidence, when (in reality) they have no idea what they’re talking about. I’ve yet to see such a thing on this blog so far 
. This, coupled with the powerful insights that so many of you bring to our discussions, is quite refreshing to say the least. I’m honored to have such an awesome readership.
4) I plan on traveling a good bit next year, God willing. And I always love meeting my readers in person. Right now, trips are planned for Canada, South Africa, various cities in Florida, Texas, Illinois, Georgia, Nevada, North Carolina, Oregon, Texas, and a few other places. If you wish to be notified, please fill out the EVENTS form at www.ptmin.org/enewsletter.htm as most of these trips will not be announced publicly due to limited seating. Details will be forthcoming to those who fill out the form (I don’t have the details myself yet).
5) For those interested, there is now a huge discount on all of our books. Just go to www.reimaginingchurch.org/holiday.htm – the discount ends Dec. 31st or while supplies (current inventory) lasts.
Now on to today’s subject matter:
THE SERIOUS SIDE
I’m a fan of a good, crisp, pithy quote.
If you’ve read any of my books, you know that I like to use epigrams before every chapter.
What follows are four quotes that I really like. Let us know which one you like the best and share your own favorite quotes with us. Oh, and if you’re a first-time poster, please begin your comment with the word FROG. (We recently discovered that we have TONS of regular readers who have never posted a comment yet. So we hope to hear from you J )
Friendship is born at that moment when one person says to another: “What! You, too? Thought I was the only one.”
C.S. Lewis
One hundred religious persons knit into a unity by careful organization do not constitute a church any more than eleven dead men make a football team. The first requisite is life, always.
A.W. Tozer
It is not only possible, but actually highly likely, that the church has distorted the real Jesus, and needs to repent of this and rediscover who its Lord actually is.
N.T. Wright
We make a living by what we get, but we make a life by what we give.
Winston Churchill
THE LIGHTER SIDE
Have a fantastic week,
Frank
25 Comments
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I enjoyed your post. Nice to see something you can read without getting depressed, mad, or repulsed. Unfortunately no one has developed software to screen posts from sub-70 IQers. Visit me @
http://www.SandySays1.wordpress.com
LOVE the quote by A.W. Tozer. He was a man on fire! I have a book that is a collection of sermons he gave on the Holy Spirit. Very enlightening. If you use iGoogle, you can add a Tozer devotional gadget.
I’ll add this quote, although there are so many great ones, I don’t know what my favorite is. I just happen to see this recently.
“The question is not whether we will be extremist, but what kind of extremist will we be.”
Dr. Martin Luther King
FROG “If I find in myself a desire which no experience in this world can satisfy, the most profitable explanation is that I was made for another world.” C.S. Lewis
Oops, corrections below.
It’s a miracle! Thank God, I finally my found my cure, “SARCASMA!”
I have to tell ya, the truth is, when it comes to my sarcastic attitude toward the IC, I cannot seem to find a cure.
Would that SARCASMA was on the market.
I’d rush out to the store and get some right AWAY!!!!
Then, again, maybe I wouldn’t…
FROG (I think)
I would go with the C.S. Lewis quote as my favorite. We just spent the weekend with a family that I think we spent the whole weekend saying that to each other! We spent Sunday morning on the beach, sharing the Word and praise with each other. My husband and I both agreed it was the best “service” we’ve been to in years.
I’ve been reading “Pagan Christianity” to him in pieces and am currently reading “Reimagining Church” and I say Lewis’ quote to myself while reading both! We are “neighbors” as we lives in the Ocala area.
You know that one pict you have about women in the church-Church of the Open Door? Uh. There actually was one named that, and I used to attend when I was a teen. That Pastor RANTED about women and how they wore earrings, and how they were supposed to be submissive. Then he took off in the middle of the night with everything the church had given him.
The Tozer quote is great….
Here is one I really like by CS Lewis
“God whispers to us in our pleasures, speaks to us in our conscience, but shouts in our pains: It is His megaphone to rouse a deaf world”
See how I used it the other day on my blog entry.
http://www.bswan.wordpress.com
Brian
Thanks for drawing attention to the Tozer quote, and drawing me back to it. I skipped right past it paying it no real mind.
It’s beautiful – right on!
Tozer is one of my favorites. He pulls no punches – tells it like it is.
Pal
Hmmmmm, favorite quote?…..
“Walk on road, hm? Walk left side, safe. Walk right side, safe. Walk middle, sooner or later [makes squish gesture] get squish just like grape.
Here, karate, same thing. Either you karate do “yes” or karate do “no.” You karate do “guess so,” [makes squish gesture] just like grape. Understand?”
- Mr. Miyagi
Ya had to choose quotes? I’m a huge fan of quotes and love so many different ones that it’s gonna be hard to single one out. But I’ll try with this one…
“A man can no more diminish God’s glory by refusing to worship Him than a lunatic can put out the sun by scribbling the word, ‘darkness’ on the walls of his cell.”
C. S. Lewis
That magazine cover about women in the church hits a little too close to home to really be …amusing. But it does provoke me to go looking for the actual edition of that magazine you pictured here because now I want to read it.
It’s not so much the churches that are outspoken against women that bother me anymore. It’s the subtler stuff that really does the damage. I expect some groups to expect women to be silent and hidden – and leave them to their devices. It’s when those who lift up Christ so beautifully and extol Him so richly just don’t seem to think the sisters really can participate in digging into His riches together in their deep male theological conversations that I particularly am bothered. I’m not some “women’s rights” activist or anything – I think there is wisdom, beauty, and divine design in husbands being the heads of their wives, etc, but…. I still don’t understand why the world receives the gifts of women’s minds better than the church does.
Hmm…I will throw in a favorite quote that is not C.S. Lewis. It’s by Dan Allender, an amazing man and an amazing author.
“The task of growth is to pursue an unflinching honesty about self, world, and God, no matter what the results compel us to face or give up.”
Here’s to Allender, for helping me grow….
“Every cult of personality that emphasizes the distinguished qualities, virtues, and talents of another person, even though these be of an altogether spiritual nature, is worldly and has no place in the Christian community; indeed , it poisons the Christian community.
The desire we so often hear expressed today for “episcopal figures,” “priestly men,” “authoritative personalities” springs frequently enough from a spiritually sick need for the admiration of men, for the establishment of visible human authority, because the genuine authority of service appears to be unimpressive.”
Life Together – Dietrich Bonhoeffer
FROG (at least I think so)
I really like the NT Wright quote. Mostly because it has been true for me.
What no trip to Kenya? Can’t guarantee a big audience, but I would sit and have tea with you.
I think that Churchill’s might be my favorite.
Also, I would like to add a quote by Watchman Nee: “Love flows from the denial of the self life.”
So, no trip to Southern California?
Among my favorite pithy sayings:
Kindness greases new friendships and glues the old ones.
I love the Tozer quote, hadn’t heard that one before.
“The world outside isn’t looking for a new definition of Christianity, it’s waiting for a new demonstration of it.” — Leonard Ravenhill
Reminds me of the verse the Lord keeps impressing on me — “They will know you are my disciples by your love for one another.”
UNITED
“Let them be One that the world may believe”
Still,
while Church
believers
stand divided,
We who starve
thirst
and ache,
We unemployed
unused
unworthy,
stand in pain
united,
stand you as One
Condemned!
‘Our lack of real Christianity is clearly evident to those who want to see!
From Walking the Walk by Gery Skelton
Do you think church people will actually get any of these? Oh sorry, I forgot to take my Sarcasma!
I like the N.T. Wright quote just because I think it best describes the “Church” today. We truly need to find our Lord and do away with American Jesus.
Here’s a very short quote by one of our forefathers and the more I read about him the more I think he had a wonderful walk with the Lord.
“Lighthouses are more helpful than churches.” -Benjamin Franklin
Here’s a very long quote that came out of a short article I wrote.
“Our forefathers fled to America in search of refuge from a religion that operated by a required inclusion of all, via forceful means through corrupt government and vigilante enforcement. We in America now flee from a religion that is based on something far more devious and evil that operates via coercive tactics promising worldly gain and happiness in exchange for our money and souls. Relinquishing control of our lives to buy blessings from God and to follow false teachers is far worse than participating in a religion because of feared reprisal. The first ends in bankruptcy of spirit and bank accounts; the latter ends in a rebellion against man-made religion and a desire for spiritual freedom.”
FROG
I’ll say the N.T. Wright quote. Hard to run from it.
One of my favorite quotes is by Edmund Burke.
“All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing”
I grew up with hanging on the wall in my dad’s office at the house. It has stuck w/me ever since.
Frog
I loved all of the quotes, especially NT Wright.
Favorite CS Lewis quotes:
I believe in Christianity as I believe that the sun has risen: not only because I see it, but because by it I see everything else.
If you read history you will find that the Christians who did most for the present world were precisely those who thought most of the next. It is since Christians have largely ceased to think of the other world that they have become so ineffective in this.
i love the Lewis quote. actually, i like all Lewis quotes. even while trying to find the quote i am about to write, i found 3 more Lewis quotes. anyway, here’s the one like:
“We are paralyzed in a poverty of hope because, first, we underestimate the value of what God has given us to transform lives. Second, we underestimate the value of a single life. And third, we underestimate God’s determination to rescue us from a trivial existence if we will just free up our hands and our hearts from unworthy distractions and apply them to matters that make a difference in someone else’s life.” -Gary Haugen, president of Intern. Justice Mission
Just seven words:
“I don’t preach things. I preach Christ.”
Alex W. Ness
Frank,
Four great quotes…hard to pick just one.
In my younger pugnacious years WSC was my hereo. I’ll add one from him-as best I can remember it;
“Concensus is the worst possible way to make decisions…except for all the other ways.”
T
My favorite is the C.S. Lewis quote. Because I just read your essay about why you left the institutional church and wondered how you got in my head and TOOK MY OWN WORDS. Wow.
Hi, Friend!!