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I’m leaving out some of the hugely successful megachurches, of which I have very little experience.

Barbara Brown Taylor

The tradition piece is so embedded in me I don’t know that I can see it any more, but the community piece is one I’ve been in danger of losing.
BARBARA BROWN TAYLOR

Community Losing Pieces
I wanted to be as close as I could to the Really Real, and I’ll capitalize both of those R’s, because God is a word that means different things to different people, but we might all agree it’s what is most real.
BARBARA BROWN TAYLOR

Mean People Real
As a general rule, I would say that human beings never behave more badly toward one another than when they believe they are protecting God.
BARBARA BROWN TAYLOR

Behave Believe Politics
When I talk about losing myself, which I did, it’s losing my idea of who I was and my idea of what I was supposed to be doing and the idea of what my value was to God. I lost all of that at least.
BARBARA BROWN TAYLOR

Ideas Losing Lost
I have learned to prize holy ignorance more highly than religious certainty and to seek companions who have arrived at the same place.
BARBARA BROWN TAYLOR

Holy Ignorance Religious
God does some of God’s best work with people who are seriously lost.
BARBARA BROWN TAYLOR

Lost People Seriously
It does seem to me that at least some of us have made an idol of exhaustion. The only time we know we have done enough is when we are running on empty and when the ones we love most are the ones we see the least.
BARBARA BROWN TAYLOR

Doe Idols Running
The boundaries became constrictive in what I was doing, and if my faith grew, it was because I pressed some of the boundaries in ways I hadn’t felt comfortable or responsible doing that before.
BARBARA BROWN TAYLOR

Boundaries Responsible Way
I thought being faithful was about becoming someone other than who I was…it wasn’t until I failed that I began to wonder if my human wholeness might be more useful to God than my exhausting goodness.
BARBARA BROWN TAYLOR

Becoming Faithful might
To get God on your side is a great way to feel powerful.
BARBARA BROWN TAYLOR

Feel Powerful Side Way
I read more widely. I made friends more widely. I wore more red. I stayed home on Sundays. I did things that were never in the realm of possible things to do before. That was a real desert experience for me.
BARBARA BROWN TAYLOR

Home Real Sunday
To be in the mainline is to have a history and not simply to be an amalgam, a community church of who knows what that came from who knows where.
BARBARA BROWN TAYLOR

Church Community Knows
I think a toxic message in a lot of Christianity has been that the self has to be annihilated in order for God to be found. I think that has been a toxic message.
BARBARA BROWN TAYLOR

Order Self Thinking
That’s enough, and I have a ministry as a neighbor as well. A ministry as a friend and a ministry as an aunt and a godmother, and family is very much in the circle of my vocation.
BARBARA BROWN TAYLOR

Aunt Circles Godmother
Most of us spend so much time thinking about where we have been or where we are supposed to be going that we have a hard time recognizing where we actually are.
BARBARA BROWN TAYLOR

Hard Recognizing Thinking Times
I have learned things in the dark that I could never have learned in the light, things that have saved my life over and over again, so that there is really only one logical conclusion. I need darkness as much as I need light.
BARBARA BROWN TAYLOR

Dark Light Needs

I’m leaving out some of the hugely successful megachurches, of which I have very little experience.

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Popular Authors

I’m leaving out some of the hugely successful megachurches, of which I have very little experience.

Related Topics

Popular Authors

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