Mark Lau Branson > Quotes

“the organization is shaped by the expectations of others when those others have particular images of the organization.”
― Mark Lau Branson, Memories, Hopes, and Conversations: Appreciative Inquiry and Congregational Change

“images can bring hopefulness.”
― Mark Lau Branson, Memories, Hopes, and Conversations: Appreciative Inquiry and Congregational Change

“Instead of a primary ministry of compassion for the few surviving members, they would need to focus on telling the good news of Jesus Christ in their community. Instead of preaching the Scriptures as a source of comfort to the faithful remnant, they would need to proclaim God's call for the remnant to spread the gospel to those in their community who were poor in spirit as well as in fact. Instead of taking care of their own, they would need to reach out to others. In stead of seeking consolation for themselves, they would need to make a radical commitment to live faithfully as missionaries in a hurting world that needed desperately to experience God's love and salvation." Over the next few years the church reorganized its life around small groups that were committed to an "inward journey" of spiritual practices and an "outward journey" o fa specific missional engagement. "The focus isn't on success as much as it is on building up and reaching out, inward and outward spiritual growth, lives lived in faithfulness to Jesus Christ in the midst of a non- Christian culture.”
― Mark Lau Branson, Churches, Cultures and Leadership: A Practical Theology of Congregations and Ethnicities

“Missiologist and bishop Lesslie Newbigin uses a cluster of metaphors to describe the church as a "sign, foretaste, and instrument" of the reign of God.' If that great eschatological, multicultural congregation of Revelation is one image of God's reign, in what ways might each current congregation be a sign that points to this reality?”
― Mark Lau Branson, Churches, Cultures and Leadership: A Practical Theology of Congregations and Ethnicities