“Your life is your theology and your sermon. Don’t preach the good news, but be the good news … Preach as you go! Preach the gospel at all times, and when necessary, use words.” Francis of Assisi

“The general tendency in Emergence Christian theology is to question with real vigor and precision whether or not the connection between faith and doctrinal precision is essential to the soul’s salvation. Dogma, yes, but doctrine, not so much. That is, do one’s brainwaves and verbal utterances actually make one’s faith? Emergence Christians can often take this even a step further and reference those places of spiritual primacy where Jesus taught (as in his judgment of the nations as told in the Gospel of Matthew, for example) that a life is what constitutes and demonstrates a disciple, rather than a mind-set.” Phyllis Tickle

“For postmodern evangelism, this means that truth is best communicated as it is lived in the life of a body of Christ out of its (his)story and its stories, not one-on-one combat via evidentiary apologetic. Instead, the church itself becomes the apologetic. As the truth of the gospel is worked out in the real lives of people living together in community, its veracity cannot be debated or individualized, it’s reality is something into which we may simply invite others to ‘come and see’ and the church thereby becomes the center for evangelism. Evangelicals often preach that what the culture needs is absolute truth, but what the culture needs is a church that believes the truth so absolutely it actually lives it out.” David Fitch

“Silence every radio and television preacher, stop every evangelical book or tract from being published, take down every evangelical website from the net and simply ask Christians to show one tangible expression of Jesus’s love to another person every day. We would be far better off.” David Di Sabatino

“Come, see a man who told me everything I ever did.
Could this be the Messiah?”
John 4:29

Moving From the Head to the Heart

• If Jesus was going to evaluate your relationship to him more by your life (your behavior) than your mind-set (your beliefs), would you need to make some changes?
• Which will be more persuasive with people you know–”absolute truth” from you, or “unconditional love?”
• Are people more or less interested in God after they spend time with you?
•  If you showed “one tangible expression of Jesus’s love to another person every day”, how different would that be from what you’re doing now?

Abba, move my “faith” into my hands and my feet.