"I don't know of any other profession in which it is quite as easy to fake it as in ours. [We can do it] by adopting a reverential demeanor, cultivating a stained glass voice, slipping occasional words like 'eschatology' into conversation - not enough to confuse people, but enough to keep them aware that our habitual train of thought is a cut above the pew level...Without [prayer, Scripture study, and spiritual direction], there can be no substance - without these practices, the best of talents and best of intentions cannot prevent a thinning out into a life that becomes mostly impersonation." - Eugene Peterson (quoted in Pastor's Weekly Briefing, Feb. 28, 1997, page 1)
"You are the custodian of the most important information in the world. You are a specialist in what God has to say to people through the Bible. Your divine calling far supercedes all other professions. Your presence and impact have eternal consequences in the world. What you say is in God's name and for His sake." - Henry Blackaby, Power of the Call
"Jesus already died for your congregation. If that isn't good enough for them, ain't no point in you dying, too." - Tony Evans
"It's not in the nature of the shepherd to produce sheep. It's in the nature of sheep to produce sheep. It's in the nature of the shepherd to equip, to train, to care for, and to provide for the sheep." - W. G. Robertson, retired pastor, Southside Baptist Church, Monroeville
"When are you most likely to face temptation?' Of course those surveyed, 81% said it was when they have not spent much time with God; 57% when they have not had enough rest; 45% when life is difficult; 42% during times of change; 37% after a significant spiritual victory. It seemed to me these figures profiled a substantial number of the pastors I meet along the way. Today, I heard of two more of our colleagues who yielded to temptation and failed morally, and it reminded me to remind you to 'Flee the evil desires, and pursue righteousness, faith, love and peace, along with those who call on the Lord out of a pure heart' (2 Timothy 2:22). Read the list again and see if it does not represent your danger zone. There is a 'new wind' blowing amidst the church and those who lead her, and, with it, Satan stirring to prevent the Spirit's outpouring. Let us not be guilty of 'putting out the Spirit's fire' through our own moral and relational weakness." - H. B. London, Jr.
"The task of pastoral ministry is, above all else, to arrange the contingencies for an encounter with the Divine." - Dietrich Bonhoeffer in Spiritual Care
"Loving the people and maintaining the heart of a servant is the basis for all that the pastor does. - Warren Wiersbe (quoted in 'Bibliotheca Sacra', Oct-Dec 1997, page 507)
"The Christian Ministry is the worst of all trades, but the best of all professions." - Pastor John Newton, who wrote the words to 'Amazing Grace' (quoted in Power for Living, Aug. 31, 1997, page 8)
"One of the things that amazes me is the expectation by churches for the perfect pastor. Of course, the only one to have existed was the Good Shepherd (pastor) Jesus Christ, and they crucified Him. I thought of these things when I learned that a very superior pastor had to leave his church. He was remarkably able, but not too versatile, but what pastor can meet all needs? What churches need are not pastors to please them, but men who please God." -R.J. Rushdoony (In Chalcedon Report, Mar 1996, page 32)
Pastor
"God dwells in a state of perpetual enthusiasm. He is delighted with all that is good and lovingly concerned about all that is wrong. He pursues His labors always in a fullness of holy zeal. No wonder the Spirit came at Pentecost as a sound of a rushing mighty wind and sat in tongues of fire on every forehead...Whatever else happened at Pentecost, one thing that cannot be missed by the most casual observer was the sudden upsurging of moral enthusiasm. Those first disciples burned with a steady, inward fire. They were enthusiastic to the point of complete abandon." - A.W. Tozer in Of God and Men
"The time is near at hand which must probably determine, whether Americans are to be freemen, or slaves; whether they are to have any property they can call their own; whether their houses, and farms, are to be pillaged and destroyed, and they consigned to a state of wretchedness from which no human efforts will probably deliver them. The fate of unborn millions will now depend, under God, on the courage and conduct of this army. Our cruel and unrelenting enemy leaves us no choice but a brave resistance, or most abject submission, and that is all we can expect. We have therefore to resolve to conquer or die." - General George Washington's general orders, July 2, 1776
"The difference between the impossible and the possible lies in a person's determination." - Tommy Lasorda, famed baseball manager
Passion
"Leadership is influencing a community to follow Jesus." - Dan Kimball
"Leadership is influence. Leadership says, 'Here's where we're going, here's how we'll get there, and these are the values we'll take with us.'"- Jake Perk
"Leadership is the ability to know where you're going and take others with you." - Rick Wood
"Leadership is the ability to energize human communities by painting a picture of the preferable future and empowering people to sculpt activities to match the picture." - Tammy Kelley
"Leadership is the ability to influence people and motivate them to do what needs to be done to accomplish a goal, vision, or mission." - Robert Johnson
"Leadership is the ability to inspire others to follow you. A leader never pushes or pulls. A leader moves, and those around him fall in behind and go with him wherever he takes them because they trust him." - Brian Cameron
"Leadership: The relational process whereby a person or people energize others to accomplish together what they could not individually." - Alan Nelson
"The first responsibility of a leader is to define reality. The last is to say thank you. In between the two, the leader must become a servant and a debtor. That sums up the progress of an artful leader." - Max DePree
"As we look ahead into the next century, leaders will be those who empower others." - Bill Gates
"Leaders are those who make the most of every moment, of every opportunity, and of every available resource." - Theodore Roosevelt
"Great leaders never tell people how to do their jobs. Great leaders tell people what to do and establish a framework within which it must be done. Then they let people on the front lines, who know best, figure out how to get it done." - General H. Norman Schwarzkopf
"Leaders are visionaries with a poorly developed sense of fear and no concept of the odds against them." - Dr. Robert Jarvik, inventor or the Jarvik-7 artificial heart
"Leadership is the art of getting someone else to do something you want done because he wants to do it." - Dwight D. Eisenhower, quoted in The Toronto Sun
"Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, concerned citizens can change the world. Indeed, it is the only thing that ever has." - Margaret Mead
"The place to improve the world is first in one's own heart and head and hands." - Robert Pirsig
"Charisma becomes the undoing of leaders. It makes them inflexible, convinced of their own infallibility, unable to change." - Peter Drucker
"If your actions inspire others to dream more, learn more, do more, and become more, you are a leader." - John Quincy Adams
"The key to successful leadership today is influence, not authority." - Kenneth Blanchard
"A leader takes people where they want to go. A great leader takes people where they don't necessarily want to go, but ought to be." - Rosalynn Carter
"Great leaders are almost always great simplifiers who can cut through argument, debate, and doubt to offer a solution everybody can understand." - General Colin Powell
"The first responsibility of a leader is to define reality. The last is to say thank you. In between, the leader is a servant." - Max DePree
"Management is efficiency in climbing the ladder of success; leadership determines whether the ladder is leaning against the right wall." - Stephen Covey
"Any committee is only as good as the most knowledgeable, determined, and vigorous person on it. There must be somebody who provides the flame." - Lady Bird Johnson
"The leadership instinct you are born with is the backbone. You develop the funny bone and the wishbone that go with it." - Elaine Agather
"I long to accomplish a great and noble task, but it is my chief duty to accomplish humble tasks as though they were great and noble. The world is moved along not only by the mighty shoves of its heroes, but also by the aggregate of the tiny pushes of each honest worker." - Helen Keller
"If you want to know the temperature of your organization, put a thermometer is the leader's mouth." - Rick Warren
"Outstanding leaders go out of their way to boost the self-esteem of their personnel. If people believe in themselves, it's amazing what they can accomplish." - Sam Walton
"The pessimist complains about the wind. The optimist expects it to change. The leader adjusts the sails." - John Maxwell
Leadership
"If you asked twenty good men today what they thought the highest of the virtues, nineteen of them would reply unselfishness. But if you asked almost any of the great Christians of old he would have replied, love. You see what has happened? A negative term has been substituted for a positive, and this is of more than philosophical importance. The negative ideal of unselfishness carries with it the suggestion not primarily of securing good things for others, but of going without them ourselves, as if our abstinence and not their happiness was the important point. I do not think this is the Christian virtue of love." - C.S. Lewis in The Weight of Glory
"He who begins by loving Christianity better than truth will proceed by loving his own sect or church better than Christianity, and end by loving himself better than all." - Samuel Taylor Coleridge in Aids to Reflection: Moral and Religious Aphorisms
"Bitterness imprisons life; love releases it. Bitterness paralyzes life; love empowers it. Bitterness sickens life; love heals it. Bitterness blinds life; love anoints its eyes." - Harry Emerson Fosdick in Riverside Sermons, Christianity Today: February 9, 1998
"I have found the paradox that if I love until it hurts, then there is no more hurt, but only more love." - Mother Teresa
"It is a small step from looking down on others to looking up to oneself." - P. J. O'Rourke in the Weekly Standard
"The test of love is in how one relates not to saints and scholars but to rascals." - Abraham Joshua Heschel in A Passion for Truth
"Simply put, the stability of marriage is a by-product of an iron-willed determination to make it work." - James Dobson
"The pain of love is stronger than the pain of legalism." - Scotty Smith
"Without love, almsgiving is no more important an action than brushing your hair or washing your hands, and the Pharisees had just as elaborate a ritual for those things as they had for alms, too, because all these things were prescribed by law, and had to be done so. But love does not give money, it gives itself. If it gives itself first and a lot of money too, that is all the better. But first it must sacrifice itself." - Thomas Merton in Run to the Mountain: The Journals of Thomas Merton, Vol. 1, 1939-41
"Disturbers are to be rebuked, the low-spirited to be encouraged, the infirm to be supported, objectors confuted, the treacherous guarded against, the unskilled taught, the lazy aroused, the contentious restrained, the haughty repressed, litigants pacified, the poor relieved, the oppressed liberated, the good approved, the evil borne with, and all are to be loved." - Augustine
Love
"It's sad, but some people think that becoming a Christian means you never get to smile anymore." - Source unknown
"An individual who has no geniality about him had better be an undertaker, and bury the dead, for he will never succeed in influencing the living. I commend cheerfulness to all who would win souls; not levity and frothiness, but a genial, happy spirit. There are more flies caught with honey than with vinegar, and there will be more souls led to heaven by a man who wears heaven in his face than by one who bears death in his looks." - Charles Spurgeon, in addressing young men who wanted to be pastors
"Americans find difficulty very hard to take. They are inevitably looking for a happy ending. Perversely, I will not give the happy ending (in my stories). I think life is difficult and that's that. I am not at all - absolutely not at all-interested in the pursuit of happiness. I am interested in pursuing a truth, and the truth often seems to be not happiness but its opposite." - Jamaica Kincaid (quoted in Utne Reader, Jan/Feb 1998, pg 41
"If you happiness depends on what somebody else says or does, I guess you do have a problem." - Richard Bach
Happiness
"Until a man is nothing, God can make nothing out of him." - Martin Luther
"Breakthrough happened around me when breakup happened within me." - Jack Hayford, on being humbled by God
"A sign on a department store dressing room mirror: 'Objects in mirror may appear bigger than they actually are.'" - Hope Health Letter (12/95)
Humility
"Yet we should approach this new century with humility. Remember that the 20th century opened with brimming optimism, too. A New York Times editorial on Dec. 31, 1899, hailed the 19th century for its economic and scientific advances and predicted that the 20th would be even better. The next day, Jan. 1, 1900, a Times headline proclaimed 'The United States the Envy of the World.' But some rude surprises were just ahead. Historian John Keegan has said that the 20th century can be written through the biographies of six men: Lenin, Stalin, Hitler, Mao, Churchill, and Franklin Roosevelt. The first four were tyrants who dimmed the lamps of freedom and plunged the world into the bloodiest conflicts in all of human history. Those two wars, along with a crushing depression, darkened man's outlook for years thereafter. As Americans we owe an extraordinary debt to those generations who have brought us to the edge of a new promised land. Their sacrifices not only brought us a good life, but through war and hard times, kept those values alive. Our Judeo-Christian values are now the greatest gift we can pass on to the 21st century."
Heritage
"People don't fall into immorality instantly. The road to immorality involves a process. Absolutely anyone can fall, and that person can do it while having a successful ministry." - Lois Mowday Rabey in 'The Snare' (NavPress) quoted in Virtue, Sep/Oct 1997, page 58
"Luther E. Smith is professor of church and community at Emory University's Candler School of Theology. He had this to say in a speech to students about living honestly. 'Faking it for a class session is one thing. But it's so easy to find ourselves making faking it a lifestyle. We fake it with others. We fake it with ourselves. We fake it with God. This summer I saw a bumper sticker that said: 'Jesus is coming. Look busy!''" - Chronicle of Higher Education, Oct. 11, 1996
Hypocrisy
"Someone asked the American historian Charles A. Beard if he could summarize the lessons of history in a brief book. He said he could do it in four sentences: '(1) Whom the gods would destroy, they first make mad with power; (2) The mills of God grind slowly, but they grind exceedingly small; (3) the bee fertilizes the flower it robs; (4) When it is dark enough, you can see the stars.'" - Warren W. Wiersbe in On Being a Servant
History
"If you are seeking gradual sanctification, you may know you are wrong because you are seeking it by works. If you have to wait, it is not for God, but for yourself to work. You get all blessings from God, not by work, but by faith alone. Hence you don't have to wait. For God wants to give it to you now." - John Wesley, quoted in Wesleyan Advocate, Feb 1996, page 21
Holiness
"Every time we proclaim our goodness and purity, those who know us see our hypocrisy and those who don't know us think that the Christian faith is only for good and pure people. Frankly, I've never seen anyone come to Christ because of the purity of another Christian. If they did, it was despite that purity. Our witness is always one of beggars pointing to the source of the bread." - Steve Brown
"Always do right, it will gratify some people and astonish the rest." - Mark Twain
"Integrity is keeping my commitment even if the circumstances when I make the commitment have changed." - David Jeremiah
"Integrity is like the weather: everybody talks about it but nobody knows what to do about it... Integrity entails not only a discernment of the right action but a willingness to act on one's conclusions." - Stephen L. Carter in Integrity
"We as a nation too often lack integrity, which might be described, in a loose and colloquial way, as the courage of one's convictions. We, the people of the United States, who a little over 200 years ago ordained and established the Constitution, have a serious problem: too many of us nowadays neither mean what we say nor say what we mean. Moreover, we hardly expect anybody else to mean what they say either." - Stephen L. Carter
Integrity
"Every time we proclaim our goodness and purity, those who know us see our hypocrisy and those who don't know us think that the Christian faith is only for good and pure people. Frankly, I've never seen anyone come to Christ because of the purity of another Christian. If they did, it was despite that purity. Our witness is always one of beggars pointing to the source of the bread." - Steve Brown
"Always do right, it will gratify some people and astonish the rest." - Mark Twain
"Integrity is keeping my commitment even if the circumstances when I make the commitment have changed." - David Jeremiah
"Integrity is like the weather: everybody talks about it but nobody knows what to do about it... Integrity entails not only a discernment of the right action but a willingness to act on one's conclusions." - Stephen L. Carter in Integrity
"We as a nation too often lack integrity, which might be described, in a loose and colloquial way, as the courage of one's convictions. We, the people of the United States, who a little over 200 years ago ordained and established the Constitution, have a serious problem: too many of us nowadays neither mean what we say nor say what we mean. Moreover, we hardly expect anybody else to mean what they say either." - Stephen L. Carter
Integrity