“The Glory of God is a man fully alive.”  –St. Irenaeus of Lyons

More WF Lifestyle Thinking…

Tying the Clouds Together

“Rather than shrinking our vision, the text (Bible) should become a pair of eyes with which we are able to see even more. There’s a great big world out there with quantum physics, and architecture, and economic theory, and the thread count of clothing, and the fact that refrigerators in Europe are smaller—all of these seemingly random events and occurrences and happenings are all connected and help us see how this really is God’s world.”

“Youth ministry is about holding a young person’s deepest identity until he or she is able to see it too.”  –Mark Yaconelli, Contemplative Youth Ministry

More WF Lifestyle Thinking…

What Will the Church Be Like in Ten Years?

“Such churches give careful attention to quality events and activities for teenagers, but always view them as secondary in importance to immersing teenagers in relationships with a few godly adults. These churches know that spiritual transformation is much more likely from integrity relationships between teenagers and adults than from events and activities.”

“No one can read the Gospels without feeling the actual presence of Jesus.  His personality pulsates in every word.  No myth is filled with such life.”  –Thomas Edison, requoted in Time, April 5, 2007

More WF Lifestyle Thinking…

The Remarkable Ordinariness of Pastoral Ministry

“…But lately I’ve come to realize something…the people in our church who are doing the ‘exciting’ ministry (planting churches, preparing to be missionaries, starting food pantries, evangelizing the lost) are people who were raised by caring parents or well-taught in good churches or discipled by an older believer. Someone took the time to do ‘ordinary’ ministry in their life, and now they are bearing a lot of awesome, exciting fruit…

“How does it make you feel to consider that aspiring artists are looking to you and your bandmates as mentors of sorts?” His answer was, “mentors… hmmm…I always go back to 6th grade when I think about my heroes. I grew up with surf posters hanging on my walls: Curren, Slater, Occy. I watched them on TV, read about them in surfer mags, and breathed them in–every turn,every logo, every smile. Have they impacted the way I live my life today? A little, but they’re mostly just a piece of the past. But there is another type of mentor–one that stays with you. I’d like to be this type. You see, I’ve never had a picture of C.S. Lewis or my ninth grade history teacher or my dad hung up on my wall, but these men have had a significant impact on the way I live today.”   –Jon Foreman of Switchfoot, CCMMagazine.com

More WF Lifestyle Thinking…

What Do Parents Need from Youth Pastors?

“I have often tried to explain the idea of God as a very unsafe and wild being. What about love is safe? What about love communicates that it only likes to exist in places where comfort reigns? The love I put my hope in is wild and unpredictable. It is a love that shines into darkness. It is a light that makes itself known in the dark night of the soul and in the midst of suffering. It goes places I would never be caught in. It is in the brothel and the leper colony. It finds its way into the hearts of convicts and hardened pastors. So why would anyone ever presume that we, the body of Christ, the conduits of this love, would only be able to exist within the walls of our comfortable churches? I would even contend that if it were not for God coming into places where these Christian people think are inappropriate, they themselves might not know Christ or redemption and salvation!”  –Dan Haseltine of Jars of Clay, CCMCentral.com