[Jesus] said that they will know we are Christians - not by our bumper stickers and T-shirts - but by our love.

When we put too much hope in a candidate or a party we set ourselves up for disappointment. When I see a poster with [Barak] Obama's image with the word "hope" under it, something in me cringes - our hope is built on nothing less than Jesus' blood and righteousness, the old hymn goes, all other ground is sinking sand.

Jesus still has a really great reputation and the Spirit is still moving. I've got a lot of hope for a generation that takes Jesus seriously, once again.

This common prayer project has taken years of energy, but we see it not as a way to leave our individual churches, but as a movement we hope to see permeate the larger Church.

Christianity is at its best when it is peculiar, marginalized, suffering, and it is at its worst when it is popular, credible, triumphal, and powerful.

The history of the church has been largely a history of "believers" refusing to believe in the way of the crucified Nazarene and instead giving in to the very temptations he resisted--power, relevancy, spectacle.

People had taught me what Christians believe, but no one had told me how Christians live.