Mike Cosper > Quotes

“Worship isn’t merely a yes to the God who saves, but also a resounding and furious no to the lies that echo in the mountains around us.”
― Mike Cosper, Rhythms of Grace: How the Church's Worship Tells the Story of the Gospel

“To pay attention is to attend to something, to be present. We attend because the world isn't cold and empty but filled with the presence of God. Every moment, every encounter, is meaningful and numinous. All ground is holy ground.”
― Mike Cosper, Recapturing the Wonder: Transcendent Faith in a Disenchanted World

“Far from being invulnerable and superhuman, Jesus is truly and deeply human. He is vulnerable to hunger and weariness. He is vulnerable to fear and anxiety, as the blood, sweat, and tears of Gethsemane demonstrate. He is perfect not because he never tires of the crowd and the work of ministry but because he rightly responds to weariness, withdrawing to desolate places to rest and pray. This is the hidden ground from which his ministry arises.”
― Mike Cosper, Recapturing the Wonder: Transcendent Faith in a Disenchanted World

“All human creativity is an echo of God’s creativity. When God makes man, he forms him in the dirt, breathes life into him, and sends him out in the world. We’ve been playing in the dirt ever since. Just as God took something he’d made, shaped it, breathed life and meaning into it, and transformed it into something new, so we set about our own business, taking creation, shaping it, and giving it new meaning and purpose. Clay becomes sculpture. Trees become houses. Sounds are arranged in time to become music. Oils, pigments, and canvas are arranged to become paintings. Various metals, glass, and petroleum products become iPhones. The same is true of stories. There is nothing new under the sun, and our stories—no matter how fresh and new they might feel—are all a way of “playing in the dirt,” wrestling with creation, reimagining it, working with it, and making it new. Our stories have a way of fitting into the bigger story of redemption that overshadows all of life and all of history. Because that bigger story is the dirt box in which all the other stories play.”
― Mike Cosper, The Stories We Tell: How TV and Movies Long for and Echo the Truth

“We're invited to pay attention to the enchanted world around us in a new way, to be open to the possibility of an encounter with God at every moment.”
― Mike Cosper, Recapturing the Wonder: Transcendent Faith in a Disenchanted World

“Storytelling is a great gift because humanity is a great gift, something God himself delights in.”
― Mike Cosper, The Stories We Tell: How TV and Movies Long for and Echo the Truth

“We tell stories because we’re broken creatures hungering for redemption,”
― Mike Cosper, The Stories We Tell: How TV and Movies Long for and Echo the Truth

“We do not go to church to worship. But as continuing worshipers, we gather ourselves together to continue our worship, but now in the company of brothers and sisters.5”
― Mike Cosper, Rhythms of Grace: How the Church's Worship Tells the Story of the Gospel

“Grace is easy. Life is hard. So follow Jesus if you must, seek the face of God if you must, but don't be surprised if, after a while, it feels like you've been battling angels in the darkness. Seeking God's face in a fallen world is not the easy life; it's the good life, and a good life is always a life of worthwhile stories and worthwhile struggles.”
― Mike Cosper, Recapturing the Wonder: Transcendent Faith in a Disenchanted World

“To experience the richness of life in God's kingdom, we must reorder our lives. We need to see through the shallow promises of our culture, and we need rhythms, signposts, and practices that reorient us to another world.”
― Mike Cosper, Recapturing the Wonder: Transcendent Faith in a Disenchanted World

“We’re creatures looking for meaning and purpose, and these pursuits can quickly become pseudo-religions that offer some sense of meaning or a hint of longed-for transcendence.”
― Mike Cosper, Faith Among the Faithless: Learning from Esther How to Live in a World Gone Mad

“Understanding, I believe, is a unifying force and unity is just what is unlikely to happen in a culture where people can live next to someone who fundamentally disagrees with them about life’s most important questions. Empathy says, “Okay, I don’t get understand you, but I don’t have to and I don’t have to win the argument. And don’t worry about the recycling bins while you’re out of town; I’ll take care of them.”
― Mike Cosper

“Worship in the local church (and the whole of the Christian life) exists between two worlds. We live in the light of the resurrection, but we live in a darkened world that awaits its fullest renewal in the return of Jesus and the restoration of all things. In the “already” of redemption and the “not yet” of consummation.”
― Mike Cosper, Rhythms of Grace: How the Church's Worship Tells the Story of the Gospel

“However we make it through, the hope and prayer of going through suffering are that what we find on the other side of a shattered dream or an irreversible loss is a new resilience. Less ideological. Less certain. Less grandiose for sure. But assured, with feet on solid ground, that we had never been alone and never will be. Maybe the true gift of suffering is tuning our ears to hear God’s whisper even when pain is shouting.”
― Mike Cosper, Land of My Sojourn: The Landscape of a Faith Lost and Found

“The Rise and Fall of Mars Hill. Mars Hill Seattle was planted by a handful of people in 1996. By 2013, it had become one of the largest and fastest-growing churches in the country, with anywhere from twelve to fifteen thousand people gathering in more than a dozen locations across five states. Then, on December 31, 2014, the church closed its doors forever. Mars Hill’s pastor, Mark Driscoll, is a charismatic communicator with an eye for the cultural “moment,” and he tapped into the malaise of Gen Xers with a message of purpose, certainty, and identity. He surrounded himself with an extraordinary team of musicians, graphic designers, videographers, audio engineers, and entrepreneurs, all of whom saw making Mars Hill successful as a mission from God. When Mark’s charisma and sense of authority was combined with their ability to package, brand, and distribute him via emerging streams—social media, YouTube, podcasting—Mars Hill found an international audience.”
― Mike Cosper, The Church in Dark Times: Understanding and Resisting the Evil That Seduced the Evangelical Movement

“Whoever dubbed the debate over musical style a “worship war” failed to realize that worship is always a war.”
― Mike Cosper, Rhythms of Grace: How the Church's Worship Tells the Story of the Gospel

“Christian worship is the strongest denial that can be hurled in face of the world’s claim to provide men with an effective and sufficient justification for their life.”
― Mike Cosper, Rhythms of Grace: How the Church's Worship Tells the Story of the Gospel

“I do not look at our stories as allegories or metaphors. Instead, I look at them as evidence of longing and desire. They”
― Mike Cosper, The Stories We Tell: How TV and Movies Long for and Echo the Truth

“Life with God is an invitation into a world where most of what makes sense to you crumbles. It's far richer than you imagined, far less orderly and sensible, and far more mysterious. Like Job, once you begin to see the wonder of it, you find yourself awestruck and somehow, satisfied.”
― Mike Cosper, Recapturing the Wonder: Transcendent Faith in a Disenchanted World

“Worship is an opportunity afforded through the mercy of Jesus, who met all the requirements of the law and leaves us liberated from the burden of getting it right in order to stand in the presence of God.”
― Mike Cosper, Rhythms of Grace: How the Church's Worship Tells the Story of the Gospel

“Not long ago, I attended a gathering with a congregation other than my own, and I thought my ears were going to bleed. The moment the preservice music began, the congregation collectively shuddered and stood cringing under the instrumental blast for the next thirty minutes, until the sermon began. We hoped that the volume would modulate downward after the sermon, but it didn’t. The preacher left the platform and the onslaught continued. I couldn’t resist the temptation to pull out my iPhone and use an app to check the sound levels. While the app surely isn’t the most accurate measurement, it measured sustained levels well over 110 decibels, which can be damage-inducing. (By contrast, our sound engineers at Sojourn are trained to keep sustained volume at about 90 decibels or below, at which they have varied levels of success.) The irony of this, of course, is that I was in a traditional service, and the instrument in question was a roaring pipe organ.”
― Mike Cosper, Rhythms of Grace: How the Church's Worship Tells the Story of the Gospel

“The first thing we need to acknowledge when we gather with God’s church is that the whole thing—from the entire creation to the very thought of gathering to worship the Creator—was God’s idea.”
― Mike Cosper, Rhythms of Grace: How the Church's Worship Tells the Story of the Gospel

“Each moment of our days--our meals, our conversations with friends, our escapes, obsessions, romances, and distractions--is what we make of our lives. Our habits and rhythms of life are formative not only of who we are but how we know the world, including whether we know it to be a place where God is present or absent.”
― Mike Cosper, Recapturing the Wonder: Transcendent Faith in a Disenchanted World

“Pornography is a way of democratizing the quest for sexual fulfillment, making a pantheon of sexuality available for everyone. It is also a kind of sad, pathetic effort at redemption. It is a religious event, where sacrifices are made of money and dignity, and the god of fornication promises to the priests (the porn stars and filmmakers) fame and wealth, and to the acolytes (the consumers) a transcendent and satisfying sexual experience, something “hot,” “raw,” and “real” that is otherwise unavailable in their ordinary and often lonesome lives. But again, it’s only as satisfying as a meal, and the appetite will need to be fed again and again.”
― Mike Cosper, The Stories We Tell: How TV and Movies Long for and Echo the Truth

“Whoever dubbed the debate over musical style a “worship war” failed to realize that worship is always a war. The declaration that there is one God, that his name is Jesus, and that he has died, has risen, and will come again is an all-out assault on the saviors extended at every level of culture around us. We’re”
― Mike Cosper, Rhythms of Grace: How the Church's Worship Tells the Story of the Gospel

“There is no more emphatic protest against the pride and the despair of the world than that implied in Church worship.”
― Mike Cosper, Rhythms of Grace: How the Church's Worship Tells the Story of the Gospel

“The mistake is to think that we’re rational enough to overcome the power of these images and stories. Consider,”
― Mike Cosper, The Stories We Tell: How TV and Movies Long for and Echo the Truth

“Solitude isn't an end in itself. It's rather like one-half of a breath. It's the inhale, and life in community, life among our family, neighbors, coworkers, and friends, is the exhale. It's meant to prepare us for all of life by rooting us firmly in the hiddenness that is ours in Christ, the covering of God's mercy.”
― Mike Cosper, Recapturing the Wonder: Transcendent Faith in a Disenchanted World

“As Driscoll’s celebrity rose, things inside the church grew rotten. Driscoll was temperamental and unpredictable. Staff members and volunteers faced unreasonable demands on their time. Dissenters were cast out and crushed. Policy, official language, and quasi-theological jargon emerged to keep order. A leader would disappear from the community, and the church would be ​told to avoid them. “They’d gone negative,” leaders would say, with little to no more explanation. If you asked questions, you’d be told, “Trust your elders.” That was usually all it took. If you pushed too hard, you too might be perceived as “going negative” and, in the language of Stalinist Russia, become a nonperson. For most Mars Hill members, theologizing conflict and coded language was enough to keep dissent from growing too great. While it was a little more complex for staff and leaders, the church bureaucracy prevented them from bearing too much of the burden of spiritual abuse.”
― Mike Cosper, The Church in Dark Times: Understanding and Resisting the Evil That Seduced the Evangelical Movement

“the gospel is far more than an entrance exam or a gateway; it is the center point for all of the Christian life.”
― Mike Cosper, Rhythms of Grace: How the Church's Worship Tells the Story of the Gospel