There are congregations on nearly every corner. I'm not sure we need more churches. What we need is a church. I say one church is better than fifty. I have tried to remove the plural form churches from my vocabulary, training myself to think of the church as Christ did, and as the early Christians did. The metaphors for her are always singular - a body, a bride. I heard one gospel preacher say it like this, as he really wound up and broke a sweat: "We've got to unite ourselves as one body. Because Jesus is coming back, and he's coming back for a bride not a harem.
Shane ClaiborneI found that the death penaltyโ - โand I'm not a hot-button issue person, you know, I'm not a single issue personโ - โbut what I think drew me to the death penalty is because it raises some very deep, fundamental questions like: Is anybody beyond redemption?
Shane ClaiborneThere are someโ - โcalled 'death fatigue'โ - โpeople who just grow so tired of death, so they don't want to keep perpetuating death and creating more victims and more anger and more pain. They want to heal from that, and I think that's exactly what God wants to do. And, interestingly enough, that's part of what God's original law was doing with the 'eye for an eye' thing. It was actually to limit the patterns of retaliation and then to begin to heal from that.
Shane Claiborne