My goal is to speak the truth in love. There are a lot of people speaking the truth with no love, and there are a lot of people talking about love without much truth.

What is the point in calling anything God if it does not also hold sway in every part of one's life--especially one's politics?

I always tell our community that we should attract the people Jesus attracted and frustrate the people Jesus frustrated. It's certainly never our goal to frustrate, but it is worth noting that the people who were constantly agitated were the self-righteous, religious elite, the rich, and the powerful. But the people who were fascinated by him, by his love and grace, were folks who were already wounded and ostracized — folks who didn't have much to lose, who already knew full well that they were broken and needed a Savior.

We have to use our discontentment to engage rather than disengage - our hope has to be more powerful than our cynicism.

For even if the whole world believed in resurrection, little would change until we began to practice it. We can believe in CPR, but people will remain dead until someone breathes new life into them. And we can tell the world that there is life after death, but the world really seems to be wondering if there is life before death.

Jesus did not send us into the world to make believers but to make disciples.

The question for me is not are we political, but how are we political? We need to be politically engaged, but peculiar in how we engage.