“Life is too short and the world too compassion-starved for you to keep subsisting in situations that drag you down and curtail your potential to help advance the Kingdom. There’s just too much at stake.”

The tithe is a wonderful goal but a terrible place to stop.

You don’t have to be any more talented, any richer, any slimmer, any smarter, any more or less of anything to partner with God. All you have to be is willing to be used by him in everyday way

If there is ever a time crying out for courageous leadership, its now.

I’m praying to a God who wants to bear fruit through me, and I am going to trust that he is going to use me tonight. Not because of who I am, but because of who he is. He is faithful.

Every single decision you make as a leader has an effect on the spirit of those you lead.

The leader is the organization’s top strategist… systematically envisioning the future and specifically mapping out how to get there.

The grander the vision the greater the price tag.

Our conduct will never change God’s character.

You can never underestimate the amount of energy and frequency you must give to vision casting. You can never underestimate it.

I’m praying to the God who has always been faithful to me, who has never let me down no matter how frightened I was or how difficult the situation looked.

He [God] wants us to talk to him as to a friend or father – authentically, reverently, personally, earnestly.

And when enough churches are thriving, you can affect a region, a country, and eventually the entire world with the positive, life-changing power of Jesus Christ and the redeeming and restoring work of his people.

Most unmarried people have no idea what it takes to make a marriage work; they grossly underestimate the price people have to pay to build long-term, mutually satisfying relationships.

If you’re a serious minded leader, you will read. You will read all you can. You will read when you feel like it, and you will read when you don’t.

Nothing on earth has greater potential to change lives and carry out His kingdom work in your community, than your local church.

Our minds, like the needle in that compass, can focus on a variety of subjects throughout the day. But in the end, when they’re left alone to settle, they’ll focus on the objects of our greatest affection.

Prayer is not designed to inform God, but to give man a sight of his misery; to humble man’s heart, to excite his desire, to inflame his faith, to animate his hope, to raise his soul from earth to heaven.

As I’ve taught our congregation, within the Christian faith the question of homosexuality is not a question of biblical authority, but biblical interpretation.

Many people celebrate Christmas as a secular holiday for the most part than a Christian holiday. Obviously, many, many people celebrate it as a Christian holiday. But then there’s even more people or there’s additional people who celebrate it as a secular holiday as well.

There’s no bigger atheist than me. Well, I take that back. I’m a cancer screening away from going agnostic and a biopsy away from full-fledged Christian.

Christians believe that God is everywhere and is involved in our lives at every moment, whether we publicly acknowledge God or not.

The greatest gift a church can receive is to have a group of families who take their responsibilitie s with such Christian seriousness that they are willing to completely alter their lifestyle to raise up disciples for Jesus Christ.

I’m a punk rocker. I don’t do Christian.

There are two kinds of beauty; there is a beauty which God gives at birth, and which withers as a flower.