If my life is any example, the work that youth workers are doing is very, very important. It tends to get marginalized in the church or seen as less important than being a senior minister in a large, prosperous congregation; but I don't believe that for a minute. I think this is absolutely critical work in the life of the church; and I think my path in life would have been much different if it hadn't been for my youth minister, Burt Randle, and a series of campus ministers in both college and graduate school.

Storytelling has always been at the heart of being human because it serves some of our most basic needs: passing along our traditions, confessing failings, healing wounds, engendering hope, strengthening our sense of community.

I don't do a lot of top-down teaching.

By surviving passages of doubt and depression on the vocational journey, I have become clear about at least one thing: self-care is never a selfish act -- it is simply good stewardship of the only gift I have, the gift I was put on earth to offer to others. Anytime we can listen to true self and give it the care it requires, we do so not only for ourselves but for the many others whose lives we touch.

The ancient human question 'Who am I?' leads inevitably to the equally important question 'Whose am I?' - for there is no self outside of relationship.

The inner life of any great thing will be incomprehensible to me until I develop and deepen an inner life of my own.

We must come together in ways that respect the solitude of the soul that avoid the unconscious violence we do when we try to save each other that evoke our capacity to hold another life without dishonoring its mystery never trying to coerce the other into meeting our own needs.