Quotes about Community

We were designed to be social beings, to live in vertical community with God and horizontal community with others.

When we replace vertical awe of God with awe of self, bad things happen in the horizontal community.

Dependency means living, as a leader, as if I really do believe that my walk with God is a community project. It means that because of the blinding power of remaining sin, I give up on the belief that no one knows me better than I know myself. Dependency means no longer being afraid of exposure, because I really do believe that there is nothing that could be known, exposed, or revealed about me that has not already been addressed by the person and work of Jesus.

Now, if these people are not the focus and object of ministry, then what is ministry?

First, the gospel is the world's best love story. It is a story of a God of love who places his love on people who do not deserve his love. This God sends the Son of his love to make a sacrifice of love so that his children can be welcomed into his arms of love and become a community of love that takes his love to those in desperate need of that love.

Limits not only reveal his wisdom; they also express his love. Limits are not a prison; they are a grace. You cannot allow your leadership community to assign more work to a leader than can be done in the time allotted to him or her. You cannot ask a person to pile work upon work, day after day, without periodic Sabbaths of rest. There are few more important things for a spiritually healthy leadership community to consider than the time limits that God designed for his creation from the get-go.

If true humanity is bound up in community with God and godly community with others, I will never experience it when all my eyes ever see is my own need.

Healthy ministry communities, which leave a legacy of long-term gospel productivity, have longevity and fruit because they are, at their core, communities of grace. Rather than achievement forming how the leadership community forms itself and operates, the gospel does.

The prayer of faith will save the one who is sick, and the Lord will raise him up. And if he has committed sins, he will be forgiven. Therefore, confess your sins to one another and pray for one another, that you may be healed. (James 5:15—16)

It is most important for the practice of the Christian ministry, especially in its missionary activities toward those both within and without the Christian culture, to consider pagans, humanists, and Jews as members of the latent Spiritual Community and not as complete strangers who are invited into the Spiritual Community from outside. This insight serves as a powerful weapon against ecclesiastical and hierarchical arrogance.

We don't set out to save the world; we set out to wonder how other people are doing and to reflect on how our actions affect other people's hearts.

Christians should be living so that sinners are attracted to them.