Mark Galli > Quotes

“God's love for us is uncoerced and so freely given that it does not demand a response. But so freely is it given that it creates freedom in the recipient, so that our response is not one of obligation or duty, nor the returning of a favor, but uncoerced love.”
― Mark Galli, Chaos and Grace: Discovering the Liberating Work of the Holy Spirit

“What we feel and how we feel is far more important than what we think and how we think. Feeling is the stuff of which our consciousness is made, the atmosphere in which all our thinking and all our conduct is bathed. All the motives which govern and drive our lives are emotional. Love and hate, anger and fear, curiosity and joy are the springs of all that is most noble and most detestable in the history of men and nations.

The opening sentence of a sermon is an opportunity. A good introduction arrests me. It handcuffs me and drags me before the sermon, where I stand and hear a Word that makes me both tremble and rejoice. The best sermon introductions also engage the listener immediately. It’s a rare sermon, however, that suffers because of a good introduction.

Mysteries beg for answers. People’s natural curiosity will entice them to stay tuned until the puzzle is solved. Any sentence that points out incongruity, contradiction, paradox, or irony will do.

Talk about what people care about. Begin writing an introduction by asking, “Will my listeners care about this?” (Not, “Why should they care about this?”)

Stepping into the pulpit calmly and scanning the congregation to the count of five can have a remarkable effect on preacher and congregation alike. It is as if you are saying, “I’m about to preach the Word of God. I want all of you settled. I’m not going to begin, in fact, until I have your complete attention.”

No sermon is ready for preaching, not ready for writing out, until we can express its theme in a short, pregnant sentence as clear as crystal. The getting of that sentence is the hardest, most exacting, and most fruitful labor of study.

We tend to use generalities for compelling reasons. Specifics often take research and extra thought, precious commodities to a pastor. Generalities are safe. We can’t help but use generalities when we can’t remember details of a story or when we want anonymity for someone. Still, the more specific their language, the better speakers communicate.

I used to balk at spending a large amount of time on a story, because I wanted to get to the point. Now I realize the story gets the point across better than my declarative statements.

Omit needless words. Vigorous writing is concise. A sentence should contain no unnecessary words, a paragraph no unnecessary sentences, for the same reason that a drawing should have no unnecessary lines and a machine no unnecessary parts. This requires not that the writer make all his sentences short, or that he avoid all detail and treat his subjects only in outline, but that every word tell. Limits—that is, form—challenge the mind, forcing creativity.

Needless words weaken our offense. Listening to some speakers, you have to sift hundreds of gallons of water to get one speck of gold.

If the sermon is so complicated that it needs a summary, its problems run deeper than the conclusion. The last sentence of a sermon already has authority; when the last sentence is Scripture, this is even more true.

No matter what our tone or approach, we are wise to craft the conclusion carefully. In fact, given the crisis and opportunity that the conclusion presents—remember, it will likely be people’s lasting memory of the message—it’s probably a good practice to write out the conclusion, regardless of how much of the rest of the sermon is written.

It is you who preaches Christ. And you will preach Christ a little differently than any other preacher. Not to do so is to deny your God-given uniqueness.

Aim for clarity first. Beauty and eloquence should be added to make things even more clear, not more impressive.

I’ll have not praise nor time for those who suppose that writing comes by some divine gift, some madness, some overflow of feeling. I’m especially grim on Christians who enter the field blithely unprepared and literarily innocent of any hard work—as though the substance of their message forgives the failure of its form.”
― Mark Galli, Preaching that Connects

“Where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is freedom," says Paul. And we are most in line with the Spirit, most faithfully obedient, when instead of trying to manipulate people into faith, we simply live in that freedom and let the Spirit do the work of transformation.”
― Mark Galli, Chaos and Grace: Discovering the Liberating Work of the Holy Spirit

“I sometimes wonder whether our churches--living as we do in American death-denying culture, relentlessly smiling through our praise choruses--are inadvertently helping people live not as much in hope as in denial.”
― Mark Galli

“To paraphrase Paul, God often uses the cheesy to confound the sophisticated. He regularly honors those who are confused about his leading as if they have nailed it.”
― Mark Galli

“As is typical of this God [of Israel], he calls his people into freedom in the most unlikely place.”
― Mark Galli, Chaos and Grace: Discovering the Liberating Work of the Holy Spirit

“[denial] is an attempt to bring order to our lives.”
― Mark Galli, Chaos and Grace: Discovering the Liberating Work of the Holy Spirit

“If the church is the body of Christ [who was disguised in servant form], why would we think the world would be able to pick us out of a crowd of other well-meaning organizations?”
― Mark Galli, Chaos and Grace: Discovering the Liberating Work of the Holy Spirit

“The Christian life does not just evolve. It also requires specific decisions and public commitments to deepen our faith and obedience.”
― Mark Galli, Chaos and Grace: Discovering the Liberating Work of the Holy Spirit

“But the resurrection without the crucifixion is empty optimism, an optimism that gives credence to Freud's notion that wishful thinking is the sum and substance of our faith. Include the crucifixion--and our role in that bloody moment--and the whole picture changes.”
― Mark Galli

“For his own unfathomable reasons, God chooses to disguise himself when he comes to this planet, and there have been few disguises better than the church.”
― Mark Galli, Chaos and Grace: Discovering the Liberating Work of the Holy Spirit

“I sometimes wonder if God calls us into the church because it represents not the people of God at their best but us at our worst. I wonder if he calls us to become embedded in this wretched institution precisely because it is wretched. And calls us to be a part of it not to reform it or save it or control it in any way, but to simply love it.”
― Mark Galli, Chaos and Grace: Discovering the Liberating Work of the Holy Spirit

“Only unconditional grace can transform a hardened heart into a grateful heart. Only a free gift can demolish any notion of quid pro quo. Only an utterly merciful act of love can fashion a new creation capable of love. As theologian Karl Barth puts it, 'As the beloved of God, we have no alternative but to love him in return.”
― Mark Galli, Chaos and Grace: Discovering the Liberating Work of the Holy Spirit

“The wealthy, Jesus says, can only get into heaven through the eye of a needle; the same applies to churches wealthy in numbers and programs.”
― Mark Galli, Chaos and Grace: Discovering the Liberating Work of the Holy Spirit

“To love with expectations is, in the end, an oppressive, driven thing, and people know it when they receive it. To love as God loves us--in freedom and with no strings attached--is a way to grant others a liberating gift.”
― Mark Galli, Chaos and Grace: Discovering the Liberating Work of the Holy Spirit

“By participating in the liturgy, we’re doing more than “attending a service.” We are entering a story—a story in which we also play a role. We are the people who have indeed been gathered. We are the people who share in God’s very life. We are the people sent forth to proclaim God’s story and to invite people into the grand story.”
― Mark Galli, Beyond Smells and Bells: The Wonder and Power of Christian Liturgy

“The liturgy is the place where we wait for Jesus to show up. We don't have to do much. The liturgy is not an act of will. It is not a series of activities designed to attain a spiritual mental state. We do not have to apply will pressure. To be sure, like basketball or football, it is something that requires a lot of practice--its rhythms do not come naturally except to those who have been rehearsing them for years. On some Sundays the soul will indeed battle to even pay attention. In the normal course of worship, we do not have to conjure up feelings or a devotional mood; we are not required to perform the liturgy flawlessly. Such anxious effort... blind us to what is really going on.

We do have to show up, and we cannot leave early. But if we will dwell there, remain in place, wait patiently, Jesus will show up.”
― Mark Galli, Beyond Smells and Bells: The Wonder and Power of Christian Liturgy

“The most carefully crafted language in our culture tends to be poetry. And poetry at its finest moments subverts our best attempts at hiding from reality...

The poetry of liturgy has just this power. The liturgy contains words that have been shaped and crafted over the centuries. It is formal speech. It is public poetry. As such it reaches into us to reveal not only the unnamed reality of our lives but the God who created us...

But even when the words of the liturgy are not literally biblical words, the words, like all truthful words, work on us over time, like a steady, unrelenting stream slowly reshapes the banks of a river. The words do something to us even when we're not paying attention.”
― Mark Galli, Beyond Smells and Bells: The Wonder and Power of Christian Liturgy

“As Wade Clark Roof noted in his study, "the 'weightlessness' of contemporary belief in God is a reality...for religious liberals and many evangelicals.”
― Mark Galli

“We say we long for intimacy with God and others, and yet we structure our lives so that this becomes impossible. One might think we are avoiding intimacy, that maybe we really like our finely managed lives just the way they are.”
― Mark Galli, Chaos and Grace: Discovering the Liberating Work of the Holy Spirit

“To live [in the church] at the beck and call of marketing logic is to live in slavery.”
― Mark Galli, Chaos and Grace: Discovering the Liberating Work of the Holy Spirit

“In our desire to be real we start thinking that authenticity is another word for spontaneity, as if everything we say at the spur of the moment is more true, more sincere than words we craft carefully. For many, the Freudian slip is considered more authentic than the measured reply. Indeed, sometimes what we blurt out thoughtlessly is actually what we mean and feel. But more often than not, what we blurt out is ill-considered and something we either need to qualify or apologize for”
― Mark Galli, Beyond Smells and Bells: The Wonder and Power of Christian Liturgy

“The Good News does not hinge on words like do or change but on the powerless, irrelevant, and frightening words like belief and faith.”
― Mark Galli, Chaos and Grace: Discovering the Liberating Work of the Holy Spirit

“Repent, for the kingdom of heaven is at hand”
― Mark Galli, Jesus Mean and Wild: The Unexpected Love of an Untamable God

“Finney stated that unbelief was a “will not,” instead of a “cannot,” and could be remedied if a person willed to become a Christian. Such rigid Calvinism, he said, “had not been born again, was insufficient, and altogether an abomination to God.”
― Mark Galli, 131 Christians Everyone Should Know

“The preached Word is an event that creates hearers; through preaching, the Word comes alive in hearers’ lives. When this happens, the Word can truly be said to be not merely a human word of a human preacher but a divine Word in which the very presence and power of Christ are mediated to us.”
― Mark Galli, Karl Barth: An Introductory Biography for Evangelicals

“The words of the liturgy, of course, are more than a beautiful tablecloth and flowers. They constitute even the meal itself. This is the feast to which we are invited in the Gathering, at which the host speaks to us in his Word, during which we are sustained by the Eucharist, from which we are sent forth in the Dismissal to gather others into the community of the Trinity and the Church, who now together anticipate the great forever feast in the kingdom that comes.”
― Mark Galli, Beyond Smells and Bells: The Wonder and Power of Christian Liturgy

“It pleases me that you teach sacred theology to the brothers, as long as—in the words of the Rule—you 'do not extinguish the Spirit of prayer and devotion' with study of this kind.” —Francis of Assisi”
― Mark Galli, 131 Christians Everyone Should Know

“insignificant is beautiful”
― Mark Galli

“Affliction is able to drown out every earthly voice…but the voice of eternity within a man it cannot drown. When by the aid of affliction all irrelevant voices are brought to silence, it can be heard, this voice within.”
― Mark Galli, 131 Christians Everyone Should Know