Quotes about Ministry

Remember that I have been a legalist. We are the ones who throw stones. We are quick to judge without knowledge. We feed rumors and incline our heads to hear more. We label the messy people and gossip about the sinners and shake our heads in disgust. And when you have been a legalist in ministry, it's not pretty. And it's not ministry. And it couldn't possibly be what the Jesus had in mind when He said, "Go and teach them about me.

When a church is spending more of its budget on media than shepherding, something is out of whack. We have gotten things twisted around.

I have never had demands on me as acute as when I was a parish priest.

I can work for the Lord in or out of prison.

Jesus expressed an earthy, semiotic theology by materializing his message through various media, including images, stories, actions (stilled storms, healed limbs), and objects like spit, fig trees, bursting baskets, etc. He was a master semiotician. You might even say that Jesus' ministry was more a semiotics ministry than a preaching, teaching, or healing ministry.

The church doesn't lose its kids when they go to college. We start losing them in middle school. We lose children in the church when we send them out of worship to children's church or Sunday school. This is one reason why Jesus kept insisting, "Let the little children come to me."[222

I like the monastic life... in the prayer and the praising... this has charged me with new energy, spiritual energy. This is very important for my ministry outside the monastery.

There are individuals who have never done anything for Jesus Christ, and I have no doubt there are preachers as well, who have never done anything for the God Almighty.

It is a thoroughly anti-Christian doctrine that the Spirit of God, and therefore the life and governing power of the Church, resides in the ministry, to the exclusion of the people.

Ministry in no way is a privilege...it is the core of the Christian life. No Christian is a Christian without being a minister.

An ill life will effectually drown the voice of the most eloquent ministry.

Jesus called fishermen, not graduates of rabbinical schools. The main requirement was to be natural and sincere.