Quotes about Engagement

history consists primarily of speaking and being answered, crying and being heard. If that is true, it means there can be no history in the empire because the cries are never heard and the speaking is never answered. And if the task of prophecy is to empower people to engage in history, then it means evoking cries that expect answers, learning to address them where they will be taken seriously, and ceasing to look to the numbed and dull empire that never intended to answer in the first place.

Thus the Sabbath of the fourth commandment is an act of trust in the subversive, exodus-causing God of the first commandment, an act of submission to the restful God of commandments one, two, and three. Sabbath is a practical divestment so that neighborly engagement, rather than production and consumption, defines our lives.

1. The first partner in the meeting is the text.

the church is, in my judgment, called to its public vocation to practice neighborliness in a way that includes both support of policies of distributive justice and practices of face-to-face restorative generosity.

We must have a citizenship less concerned about what the government can do for it and more anxious about what it can do for the nation.

Never have there been so many words and images coming at us 24/7. They come through our senses and enter our minds. But so many of them are worthless and lead to worthless thoughts. Never has there been a greater need to watch what we watch, to monitor what we see and hear, to protect our children from the enemy's assault through worthless things and images.

Discipleship in the church today has more to do with consuming and absorbing cognitive content than it has anything to do with missional action.

Three Tasks of a Good Missionary Learn the language: educate yourself on how to talk in a way that people can understand and to which they can relate and eventually respond Study the culture: become so sensitized to that culture that you can operate effectively within it Translate the gospel: translate it into its own cultural context so that it can be heard, understood, and appropriated

The relevance of the church is not found in its capitulation to culture but in its transformation of culture.

People will put up with being terrified but no one will tolerate being bored.

Indeed, the only purpose of the game is to prevent it from coming to an end, to keep everyone in play.

If finite games must be externally bounded by time, space, and number, they must also have internal limitations on what the players can do to and with each other. To agree on internal limitations is to establish rules of play.