We need a coat with two pockets. In one pocket there is dust, and in the other pocket there is gold. We need a coat with two pockets to remind us who we are.

It's more important to be in right relationship than it is to be right.

For me, teaching is about weaving a web of connectedness between myself, my students, the subject I'm teaching, and the larger world.

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.

A leader is a person who must take special responsibility for what's going on inside of himself or herself ... lest the act of leadership create more harm than good.

We listen for guidance everywhere except from within.

We can teach a good, formal lesson on forgiveness as a Christian virtue and all the doctrines that are attached to it. But to be in a real-life situation, a work camp or a trip or some other activity with young people where real forgiveness needs to happen, that's a different situation altogether. And that is where the deepest learning will occur.