“I learned to love people…if all I’m doing is baptizing people without loving them, something’s wrong with me.”
“We know very little about peacemaking in the evangelical space. We don’t talk about it. That’s what the liberals do or that’s what a few evangelicals do. And yet peace was core to the message of Jesus.”
“The world is so messed up right now. They’re desperate. They know the hate has to stop. And people are hungry and, you know, when I tell people about Jesus, the first response is, man, if only that were true.”
“I think we’re living in a time of tremendous tribalization in our faith, and it’s not lessening. It’s only getting stronger. And so the challenge with that is, how do we help people get outside their tribe?”
“We can’t effectively live out the gospel or share the good news when we live inside our own bubble and our own cocoon.”
“In the past, I would have started with, how am I going to share my faith with this Muslim? [This time] I started with, who is this Muslim? That’s a big difference.”
“The early church was filled with people of different religions. Can God still not see Muslims and Buddhists and Jews come to faith in Christ?”
“Here’s the thing I’ve learned about evangelism: You’re constantly seed sowing. We think because they didn’t accept Christ, we failed. That’s not true. I see people accept Christ because I sowed seed, and it takes a long time.”
“It’s one thing to love a people group you don’t know or to pray for people of a religion you don’t know. But when there’s a personal face to that faith, that’s when you start weeping.”
“We lead people to the Lord and then convince them of the Trinity. That’s problematic. The Trinity is our definition of God. We ought to be explaining the Trinity in the gospel presentation so that they know who is this God that we’re inviting them to follow.”
“Paul really had it hard. Just think about it. So why do we think it should be easy for us to build bridges with people?”
“You have to speak up about [Christian persecution in Muslim nations]…I think we have to have those conversations. I think you should have them publicly, but the real power in those conversations is privately.”
