Calvin on Curiosity

“We are naturally prone to curiosity. Hence, neglecting altogether, or tasting but slightly, and carelessly, doctrine that tends to edification, we are hurried on to frivolous questions. Then there follow upon this — boldness and rashness, so that we do not hesitate to decide on matters unknown, and concealed.”

John Calvin

Exodus 16:18

“Whoever gathered much had nothing left over, and whoever gathered little had no lack.”

Exodus 16:18

Great Quote

“There is nothing like returning to a place that remains unchanged to find the ways in which you yourself have altered.”

Nelson Mandela

Tim Keller on the State of the Church

The kind of outsiders Jesus attracted are not attracted to contemporary churches, even our most avant-garde ones. We tend to draw conservative, button-down, moralistic people. The licentious and liberated or the broken and marginal avoid church. That can only mean one thing. If the preaching of our ministers and the practice of our parishioners do not have the same effect on people that Jesus had, then we must not be declaring the same message that Jesus did. If out churches aren’t appealing to “younger brothers” they must be more full of elder brothers than we’d like to think.

Ed Clowney on the Mission of the Church

Mission is not an optional activity for Christ’s disciples. If they are not gatherers, they are scatterers. Some supposed that a church may feature worship and nurture, leaving gathering as a minor role… Such a church is actively involved in scattering for the congregation that ignores mission will atrophy and soon find itself shattered by internal dissension. It will inevitably begin to lose its own young people, disillusioned by hearing the gospel trumpet sounded every Sunday for those who never march.
The Church p.159-160

Ed Clowney

Another Great Quote – Keller

The vigorous, continual planting of new congregations is the single most crucial strategy for 1) the numerical growth of the Body of Christ in any city, and 2) the continual corporate renewal and revival of the existing churches in a city. Nothing else–not crusades, outreach programs, para-church ministries, growing mega-churches, congregational consulting, nor church renewal processes–will have the consistent impact of dynamic, extensive church planting.”

Dr. Tim Keller Why Plant Churches?

Another Great Quote

Bryan Chapell“The missional church does not ask how can you serve me but how can we unite as the people of God for something larger than ourselves, to believe what our presbyterian principles are–that we can do far more corporately as a church, than we can do individually, to believe that deeply and profoundly.”

Bryan Chappell 2007 PCA GA

Lewis on Love

“It is easier to be enthusiastic about Humanity with a capital ‘H’ than it is to love individual men and women, especially those who are uninteresting, exasperating, depraved, or otherwise unattractive. Loving everybody may be an excuse for living nobody in particular.”
-C.S. Lewis

Another Good Quote

“Better is the loss that makes them humble than the success that makes them proud”

Thomas Watson – from A Body of Divinity

Another Good Quote

“Satan is real, hell is real, people are dying, sin is alive, repentance is needed, healing is necessary and people need a Jesus who bears a sword and fights for them and men pursuing death for the same cause.”

-Anthony Bradley