Leadership Questions Confronting the Church (1985) (edit title/settings)

Kuriakos27 edited the memorable quotes of Leadership Questions Confronting the Church Saturday, November 10, 2012.

• Added a quotation: “I am not convinced that the kingdom of heaven is really advanced by 'activity in the congregation' in and for itself. The teacher who spends three-fourths of her time on handwork and one-fourth on the lesson has not clarified in her mind what she is trying to accomplish. The youth leader whose major drive is 'keeping the young people busy' you should take another look at his dream. The preacher who brags that everybody is busy needs to be clear as to what is really being accomplished. The devil is also quite busy.”
• Added a quotation: “We need a dream of becoming involved in the lives of the people who are lost in ways that will remold their lives without dangling any material attraction before them. The impersonal approach is easier and perhaps more attractive for the moment. The impersonal appeal affords a basis for glowing reports, but when the air is cleared, there's little left behind.”

Kuriakos27 edited the memorable quotes of Leadership Questions Confronting the Church Saturday, November 10, 2012.

• Added a quotation: “The people who are unclear on what their dreams are or who can only state them in vague generalities will also be vague on how to proceed from where they are to where they want to be.”

Kuriakos27 edited the memorable quotes of Leadership Questions Confronting the Church Saturday, November 10, 2012.

• Added a quotation: “However, the unused abilities in any of our congregations, compared with those which we use, make the church the world's number one in efficient institution. Any business venture would fail if it harnessed only the percentage of ability at its command as does the church. Many a Christian devotes a major portion of his time to service organizations because he has found no way to find himself a place in the church's program. Many a lady whiles away her time at the soap operas or on the bridge circuit because she has found nothing to challenge her talent. In some cases we hire musicians when we have sitting in the pews musicians of equal attainment who have found no way to put their ability to the Lord's service.”

Kuriakos27 edited the memorable quotes of Leadership Questions Confronting the Church Saturday, November 10, 2012.

• Added a quotation: “In the ultimate (whether one is doing evangelistic preaching or edifying preaching), the changing of lives of the hearers is the goal. One does that as much by what he is and by his relationship with the individual, as by what he says.”
• Added a quotation: “A great deal of preaching one listens to is well presented and deals with at least semi-Biblical themes, but the man in the pew goes away no different from the condition in which he came; his emotions have not been stirred, his heart has not been melted. The preaching did not deal with a problem he was actively wrestling with nor did it convince him that he should start wrestling with one he had previously neglected.”

Kuriakos27 edited the memorable quotes of Leadership Questions Confronting the Church Saturday, November 10, 2012.

• Added a quotation: “Traditions may be innocent enough, but when they become duties, they take on an entirely different character. I am convinced that most of us could profitably give some attention to distinctions between the Gospel and our traditions that collect like moss on the tree about it. Traditions need to be recognized as traditions and not be made into binding beliefs and practices.”

Kuriakos27 edited the memorable quotes of Leadership Questions Confronting the Church Saturday, November 10, 2012.

• Added a quotation: “The church is not a club where we draw up rules of membership and of life and then guarantee that people will go to heaven by keeping them. To do so is to come pretty close to tempting God.”

Kuriakos27 edited the memorable quotes of Leadership Questions Confronting the Church Saturday, November 10, 2012.

• Added a quotation: “Actually the oral law (called the 'traditions of the elders' in Gospels), instead of being from Moses, represented the crystallization and codification of custom. Passing generations found it desirable to define and clarify obscurities in the Law. The Law said you should not work on the Sabbath. The Pharisees attempted to define work so that men would know clearly what was forbidden and what was permitted. The Law said you should not go out of your place on the Sabbath. The Pharisees defined a Sabbath Day's journey. The motivation of these rules, as the Pharisees saw them, was 'to keep men far from transgression.' That is, there is a line at which one passes from righteousness over into sin. The Pharisees were attempting so to regulate life that men would not come near that line. Their case is a perfect example of how people of good motives can go astray.”
• Added a quotation: “It is not unusual for us to get a general concept but to be a little unclear on it. When a little out of focus, we may think that other people have religious traditions but that we just go by the Bible. But unless we had someone whose task was to see that we always do things differently from the way we did them before, it is inevitable that we will develop customs, and customs prolonged are traditions.”

Kuriakos27 edited the memorable quotes of Leadership Questions Confronting the Church Saturday, November 10, 2012.

• Added a quotation: “As Jesus made it very plain and Matthew 20:25, 26, you do not become great in the kingdom of God by seizing and exercising power. You become great by rendering service. If you will distinguish yourself for your Christian graces and by the outstanding Christian service you render, you will not have to seize power. The Lord's people will willingly follow you wherever the Word of God leads; They can, with patience, be persuaded in matters of expediency; and God will be glorified by the life you live.”

Kuriakos27 edited the memorable quotes of Leadership Questions Confronting the Church Saturday, November 10, 2012.

• Added a quotation: “Leadership in the New Testament is really leadership by the consent of those lead. It is a wise leader who leads where his flock wants to go.”

Kuriakos27 edited the memorable quotes of Leadership Questions Confronting the Church Saturday, November 10, 2012.

• Added a quotation: “When one preaches, he may still speak with the authority of tradition as did the Pharisees. He may hand on those things which is parents taught him. He may give special attention to 'what our position has always been.' Such is not bad if parents and teachers happen to have taught him the truth. All of us accept many things from those who went before. However, such an authority is actually identical with that claimed by the Pharisees for the Oral Law and that claimed by the Catholics for tradition.”
• Added a quotation: “We usually accept from the commentaries those things that are congenial to the opinions we have already formed. With the conflicting voices of our world, how was the follower of tradition to distinguish which tradition he is to follow?”