Mapping is now non-linear. It’s more like “a spider spinning a web,” says Brian Shannon of the Corps of Engineers. “You’re moving back and forth building something one line at a time until you have a complex network that captures a place.” … Even for you personally to update redrawn maps becomes worthless when the very principles of mapping have changed. What leaders need to pilot the church on God’s terms are navigational skills that can get them from problem to solution.

Leonard Sweet. AQUACHURCH.

Servanthood is not simply doing what one is assigned. Nor is it doing one's rightful duty. It means you will do what no one else would possibly choose to do!

Think of how much of Christian leadership is not labor or work of the menial type but rather traffics in information only. It is centered on conferences and congresses and colloquiums and committees and communication. But rarely is it focused on doing the work of a slave.

Joe Novenson. Draped in a Servant’s Towel Rather Than a Master’s Robes.

I think every poet, or any artist, has a sense of the Muse. It’s unpredictable; no matter how much personal discipline you have, you can’t just sit down and write a poem when you want to. You have to wait for the images and the ideas to be presented and then be alert enough to catch them when they come, and record them….And you have to pay attention; you can’t just say, “Later, later.” You really have to pay attention at that moment. Because it’s so central—there’s a sense that this is what my life is really all about and the other things become more peripheral.

Lucy Shaw. Interview in Mars Hill Review. May 1995.

If I had a spell of magic
I would make this enchantment for you
A burgundy heart-shaped medallion
With a window that you could look through
So that when all the mirrors are angry
With your faults and all you must do
You could peek through that heart-shaped medallion
And see you from my point of view

David Wilcox. BURGANDY HEART-SHAPED MEDALLION.

Annette

If she were a book,
the cover would be tea leaves.
Ideas to steep.

Upon turing it,
sweetened knowledge, cream of thought -
warmed by the reading.

Dan Haase. (Thank you Dan for the birthday Haiku)

But in the spiritual life, the word discipline means "the effort to create some space in which God can act." Discipline means to prevent everything in your life from being filled up. Discipline means that somewhere you're not occupied, and certainly not preoccupied. In the spiritual life, discipline means to create that space in which something can happen to you that you hadn't planed or counted on.

Henri Nouwen. Moving from Solitude to Community to Ministry.

That is the key to history. Terrific energy is expended--civilizations are built up--excellent institutions are devised; but each time something goes wrong. Some fatal flaw always brings the selfish and cruel people to the top and it all slides back into misery and ruin. In fact, the machine conks. It seems to start up all right and run a few yards, and then it breaks down. They are trying to run it on the wrong juice.

C.S.Lewis. MERE CHRISTIANITY.

If you want to remain a full-orbed grape, you must keep out of God's hands for he will crush you. Wine cannot be had in any other way.

Our Lord's conception of discipleship is not that we work for God, but that God works through us; he uses us as he likes; he allots our work where he chooses.

Oswald Chambers.

What thrilling stories there must be hidden ... many places which will one day be told in Heaven, where I am sure there will be endless time to trace the threads of His weaving!

Edith Schaeffer. L'ABRI.

Educator John Westerhoff of Duke Divinity School predicted that if Christian educators replaced a year's worth of Sunday School programs with two meaningful church retreats, their congregations would experience a superior Christian education.

quoted by Ron Habermas. "Three Distinctives of Adolescent Learning." YouthWorker Journal. Summer 1990.

In our culture institutions rather than people are seen as vessels of God's power...

Skye Jethani. THE DIVINE COMMODITY: DISCOVERING A FAITH BEYOND CONSUMER CHRISTIANITY.

Fasting is a person's whole-body, natural response to life's sacred moments. ...[It's the] body talking what the spirit yearns, what the soul longs for, and what the mind knows to be true.

Scot McKnight. FASTING.

The kind of work God usually calls you to is the kind of work (a) that you need to do and (b) that the world needs to have done. If you find your work rewarding, you have presumably met requirement (a), but if your work does not benefit others, the chances are you have missed requirement (b). On the other hand, if your work does benefit others, you have probably met requirement (b), but if most of the time you are unhappy with it, the chances are you have not only bypassed (a) but probably aren’t helping your customers much either.
....Neither the hair shirt nor the soft berth will do. The place God calls you to is the place where your deep gladness and the world's deep hunger meet.

Frederick Buechner. WISHFUL THINKING: A SEEKER'S ABC

We all want progress. But progress means getting nearer to the place where you want to be. And if you have taken a wrong turning, then to go forward does not get you any nearer. If you are on the wrong road, progress means doing an about-turn and walking back to the right road; and in that case the man who turns back soonest is the most progressive man.

C.S. Lewis. MERE CHRISTIANITY.

And if He had no hamartia [character flaw] in the literal sense, there was at any rate that clash between His enviornment and Himself which is the mainspring of drama. He suffered misfortune because He was what He was and could not be otherwise; and since His time tragedy has become the tragedy of will and character, and not of an external and arbitrary destiny.
Thus far, then, a classic tragedy. But…there occurs a peripeteia [reversal of circumstances]…brought about by an anagnorisis [discovery, recognition]. The Hero is recognised for what He is: and immediately, what was the blackest human tragedy turns into Divine Comedy.
In light of this fact, the interesting question arises whether such a thing as a Christian tragedy is possible….Short of damnation, it seems, there can be no Chrisitan tragedy…where Christ is, cheerfulness will keep breaking in.

Dorothy Sayers. THE MAN BORN TO BE KING. Introduction

...Pastor Wayne Cordeiro of New Hope Christian Fellowship in Hawaii... said that each person's plate is a different size; each person needs to first find the size of their plate and then fill it only with those things that are of highest priority. And, before adding any additional things to our full plate, we must take something else off to leave space for the new duty. Finding the size of one's plate takes time and attention. For example, I have personally seen that high-level leaders have an energy level that is unusually high and those working under them who seek to keep up with their pace find themselves quickly burning out.

Mark Driscoll. DEATH BY MINISTRY.

Setting: three weeks of Pre-Ranger school… difficult field exercises… non-stop rain for four days… wet, sleeping in puddles, under only a poncho in 40 degree weather.

My buddy almost quit because of hypothermia. I began to pray and to try to encourage him but deep down I was ready to give up too. As I kept praying and encouraging my friend, I began to believe what I was telling him. As a result, we both made it through.

Letter from a friend.

May I not be like those who do not make You their strength but trust in the abundance of their wealth...

Adapted from Psalm 52:7 by Kenneth Boa. FACE TO FACE: PRAYING THE SCRIPTURES FOR INTIMATE WORSHIP.

Give me grace for such an act of self-recollection as may again bring together the scattered forces of my soul.

John Baillie. A DIARY OF PRIVATE PRAYER. Sunday. Morning.

The first service that one owes to others in the fellowship consists in listening to them. Just as love to God begins with listening to His Word, so the beginning of love for the brethren is learning to listen to them. It is God’s love for us that He not only gives us His Word but also lends us His Ear. So it is His work that we do for our brother when we learn to listen to him. Christians, especially ministers, so often think they must always contribute something when they are in the company of others, that this is the one service they have to render. They forget that listening can be a greater service than speaking.

Many people are looking for an ear that will listen. They do not find it among Christians, because these Christians are talking when they should be listening.

Dietrich Bonhoeffer. LIFE TOGETHER.

Taking a moment to reflect about deeper matters, such as teen identities as persons of faith, as men or women, or as citizens, is not only distracting, it can be downright “dangerous.” That’s because such reflection can lead teens to an unpopular choice about one of these deeper identities, which in turn puts teens out of step with the American cultural mainstream, if not in jeopardy of never attaining one’s desired standard of living. In short, mainstream American life has become a relentless work-spend-borrow-consume cycle that discourages all questioning or reflection...

Derek Melleby. Life after high school: The first year

Only when we know that developing our gifts is intimately related to our spiritual development and only when we've made the commitment to do something about that in our lives will we have the dedication to make the time we need to develop our art.

Janice Elsheimer. THE CREATIVE CALL: AN ARTIST'S RESPONSE TO THE WAY OF THE SPIRIT.

A Christian fellowship lives and exists by the intercession of its members for one another, or it collapses.

....The individual must realize that his hours of aloneness react upon the community. In his solitude he can sunder and besmirch the fellowship, or he can strengthen and hallow it. Every act of self-controll of the Christian is also a service to the fellowship. On the other hand, there is no sin in thought, word, or deed, no matter how personal or secret, that does not inflict injury upon the whole fellowship.

Dietrich Bonhoeffer. LIFE TOGETHER.

I'm not a really religious person. We consider ourselves to be Catholics, but we think of it more as a cultural thing. But what I love about Ted's story, at least about Ted's family, is that the Bible got them through. They read the Bible. They would read these passages, and it moved me. I went out and bought a new Bible. When I was making Friends with God, everybody quoted the Bible, but I was never inspired to go buy one. But this experience with Ted turned me onto the Bible in a whole new way, because he would read these passages and it would really inspire me.

People might come away from this movie being a little anti-church, but it makes you really pro-Bible. It makes you really pro-God in a way, because you read these things in the Bible and you're like, wow.

Andrea Pelosi in a CT interview about her documentary, THE TRIALS OF TED HAGGARD

Whatever in our present success mere Fashion has given us, mere Fashion will presently withdraw. The real conversions will remain: but nothing else will. In that sense we may be on the brink of a real and permanent Christian revival: but it will work slowly and obscurely and in small groups. The present sunshine (if I may so call it) is certainly temporary. The grain must be got into the barns before the wet weather comes.
This mutability is the fate of all movements, fashions, intellectual climates and the like. But a Christian movement is always up against something sterner than the mere fickleness of taste....The enemy has not yet thought it worth while to fling his whole weight against us. But he soon will....Neither our armour nor our enemies' is yet engaged. Combatants always tend to imagine that the war is further on that it really is.

C.S. Lewis. "The Decline of Religion" in GOD IN THE DOCK.

Our Lord trusted no man, yet He was never suspicious, never bitter. Our Lord's confidence in God and what His grace could do for any man, was so perfect that he despaired of no one. If your trust is place in human beings, we shall end in despairing of everyone.

Oswald Chambers. MY UTMOST FOR HIS HIGHEST. July 30.

When we think about the remarkably early age at which the young men went up to university in, let us say, Tudor times, and thereafter were held fit to assume responsibility for the conduct of their own affairs, are we altogether comfortable about that artificial prolongation of intellectual childhood and adolescence into the years of physical maturity which is so marked in our own day? To postpone the acceptance of responsibility to a late date brings with it a number of psychological complications which, while they may interest the psychiatrist, are scarcely beneficial either to the individual or to society....

For we let our young men and women go out unarmed, in a day when armor was never so necessary. By teaching them all to read, we have left them at the mercy of the printed word. By the invention of the film and the radio, we have made certain that no aversion to reading shall secure them from the incessant battery of words, words, words. They do not know what the words mean; they do not know how to ward them off or blunt their edge or fling them back; they are a prey to words in their emotions instead of being the masters of them in their intellects.

Dorothy Sayers. THE LOST TOOLS OF LEARNING.

From his father...[Bonhoffer] learned, what characterizes all that he wrote, an insitent realism, a "turning away from the phraseological to the real." For him Christianity could never be merely intellectual theory, doctrine divorced from life, or mystical emotion, but always it must be responsible, obedient action, the discipleship of Christ in every situation of concrete everday life, personal and public. And it was this that led him in the end to prison and death. Six years before his imprisonment by the Gestapo he had written, "When Christ calls a man, he bids him come and die."

John Doberstein in the introduction to Dietrich Bonhoeffer's LIFE TOGETHER

We have no conception of what God is aiming at, and as we go on it gets more and more vague. God's aim looks like missing the mark because we are too short-sighted to see what he is aiming at. (Aug. 3)

The main thing about Christianity is not the work we do, but the relationship we maintain and the atmosphere produced by that relationship. (Aug. 4)

Oswald Chambers. MY UTMOST FOR HIS HIGHEST.

We do not fight in order to win because in Christ we have already won. Overcomers are those who rest in the victory already given to them by their God....If we believe the Lord, we shall not pray so much but rather we shall praise him more.

Watchman Nee. SIT, WALK, STAND.

Sooner or later you figure out life is constructed specifically and brilliantly to squeeze a man into association with the Owner of heaven.

Donald Miller. THROUGH PAINTED DESERTS: LIGHT, GOD, AND BEAUTY ON THE OPEN ROAD.

One difficulty with 'principles' is how useful they are in the face of complex moral dilemmas. They are helpful as far as they go, but are sometimes too abstract and general to help in sorting out complex moral questions....
We need not so much to establish a set of abstract principles as to cultivate the kind of character that will act wisely and justly in different situations -- a bit like developing the skill to hit a good tennis shot, whatever angle or speed the ball may be hit towards you....
Virtues are learnt in the same way in which we mostly learn to play football, dance, carve wood or cook --through example and imitation, not logic and principles. We watch those who are already good at these things, experience a desire to be like them, and so we start to copy them. A person of virtue does not have to think too hard about doing the right thing; he or she will do it naturally, without thinking....
The other key point...essential to the cultivation of virtue is the telling of stories.

Graham Tomlin. SPIRITUAL FITNESS: CHRISTIAN CHARACTER IN A CONSUMER CULTURE.

The purpose of integrating contemplative presence in youth ministry is not to turn kids into monks, nor is it to make us experts in contemplative prayer; it is to deepen our awareness of God, others, and self so that we might become fully alive....

Engaging kids solely in contemplative exercises in unnatural, because contemplative prayer does not lead to more contemplative prayer--it leads to authentic action. Activities in the youth ministry are not longer chosen frantically from resource books; instead the youth ministry becomes more responsive to the needs of the youth and the movement of the Holy Spirit. We begin to hold our programs lightly....The ministry becomes something unique and natural to our community, rather than a cookie-cutter "franchise" ministry imported from a mega-church.

Mark Yaconelli. CONTEMPLATIVE YOUTH MINISTRY:PRACTICING THE PRESENCE OF JESUS.