Faithfulness requires the courage to risk everything on Jesus, the willingness to keep growing, and the readiness to risk failure throughout our lives.

Though it is true that the church must always dissociate itself from sin, it can never have any excuse for keeping any sinner at a distance.

Leadership in the church is not entrusted to successful fund raisers, brilliant biblical scholars, administrative geniuses, or spellbinding preachers...but to those who have been laid waste by a consuming passion for Christ - passionate men and women for whom privilege and power are trivial compared to knowing and loving Jesus.

When a man or woman is truly honest, it is virtually impossible to insult them personally.

The Good News of the gospel of grace cries out: We are all, equally, privileged but unentitled beggars at the door of God's mercy!

The kingdom is not an exclusive, well-trimmed suburb with snobbish rules about who can live there. No, it is for a larger, homelier, less self-conscious caste of people who understand they are sinners because they have experienced the yaw and pitch of moral struggle.

When we wallow in guilt, remorse, and shame over real or imagined sins of the past, we are disdaining God's gift of grace.