Quotes about Community

Community is like peace in that it is a result instead of an action. Peace results from acts of justice and behaviors of love. Community also emerges out of loving behaviors—like compassion and an embrace and forgiveness — and out of acts of justice.

First we are to seek peace in our local fellowship, to end strife and to seek reconciliation with God and with one another, and out of this peace-shaped, kingdom-shaped church we spill over peace into the world.

Give generously of what you have, and if you don't have much, give little generously.

Put differently, we've made the church into the American dream for our own ethnic group with the same set of convictions about next to everything. No one else feels welcome. What Jesus and the apostles taught was that you were welcomed because the church welcomed all to the table.

God's dream is the kingdom, that's already clear. But what is not always clear is that God's kingdom happens when human beings are empowered by God's Spirit to do God's kingdom work in the shape of a new community.

readers. The story of the Bible is creation, fall, and then covenant community—page after page of community—as the context in which our wonderful redemption takes place.

The church becomes a community called atonement every time it reads the story of Jesus and every time it identifies itself with that story and every time it invites others to listen in to hear that story. Reading Scripture and listening to Scripture and letting Scripture incorporate us into its story is atoning.

A person is a person through other persons.

I hope you agree with me that the hope for the world is the local church, and that the heart of God's plan is found in creating a whole new society in a local church. If

This entire book—don't forget this please—is for each of those seven churches. Every vision, every interlude, every song is for each of them.

One thing that has to cease among Christians is the appeal to an audience to give with the promise of getting something.

kingdom mission is church mission, church mission is kingdom mission, and there is no kingdom mission that is not church mission.