Practical Theology Quotes

“On my journey from the fantastical to the practical, spirituality has gone from being a mystical experience to something very ordinary and a daily experience. Many don’t want this, instead they prefer spiritual grandeur, and I believe that is what keeps enlightenment at bay. We want big revelations of complexity that validates our perceptions of the divine. What a let down it was to Moses when God spoke through a burning bush! But that is exactly the simplicity of it all. Our spiritual life is our ordinary life and it is very grounded in every day experience. For me, it is the daily practice of kindness, mindfulness, happiness, and peace.”
― Alaric Hutchinson

“The Anselmian call for "faith seeking understanding" may start and gather it's energy not in rational study of past theological points but in the pursuit to make sense of our concrete and lived experiences of Jesus who finds us in a hole, knocks us from our horse, or comes to our daughter in her sleep.”
― Andrew Root, Christopraxis: A Practical Theology of the Cross

“. . . anyone who wants to elaborate relevant liberation theology must be prepared to go into the 'examination hall' of the poor. Only after sitting on the benches of he humble will he or she be entitled to enter a school of 'higher learning.”
― Leonardo Boff and Clodovis Boff

“Hope trusts in the promises of God. Hope seeks the action of God that brings forth a new reality. Optimism stands in the current reality, wishing to make the best of each individual experience. But hope stands knee deep in the history of this reality by yearning for the action of God to bring forth a new reality in which everything in this reality is reconciled and redeemed.”
― Andrew Root, Unlocking Mission and Eschatology in Youth Ministry

“In liberation theology, Marxism is never treated as a subject on its own but always from and in relation to the poor. Placing themselves firmly on the side of the poor, liberation theologians ask Marx: 'What can you tell us about the situation of poverty and ways of overcoming it?' Here Marxists are submitted to the judgment of the poor and their cause, and not the other way around.”
― Leonardo Boff and Clodovis Boff

“The evangelically poor are those who make themselves available to God in the realization of God's project in this world, and thereby make themselves into instruments and signs of the kingdom of God. The evangelically poor will establish solidarity with the economically poor and even identify with them, just as the historical Jesus did.”
― Leonardo Boff and Clodovis Boff

“Ministry is about joining God where God can be found.”
― Andrew Root, Unlocking Mission and Eschatology in Youth Ministry

“The resurrection is the promise that death will not prevail, that nothingness does not have the last word. God promises to overcome it with life... We can trust that God will overcome death because Jesus is the resurrection, because on the third day Jesus rose again, as the first of many.”
― Andrew Root, Unlocking Mission and Eschatology in Youth Ministry

“Bound as I was, not with another man’s irons, but my own iron will. My will the enemy held, and thence made a chain for me, and bound me. For of a froward will, was lust made; and a lust served, became custom; and custom not registered became necessity. By which links, as it were, joined together (whence I called it a chain) a hard bondage held me enthralled.”
― Augustine, Confessions

“We grow in holiness in the honing of our specific vocation. We can't be holy in the abstract. Instead we become a holy blacksmith or a holy mother or a holy physician or a holy systems analyst. We seek God in and through our particular vocation and place in life.

Each kind of work is therefore its own kind of craft that must be developed over time, both for our own sanctification and for the good of the community. As we seek to do our work well and hone our craft, we are developed and honed in our work. Our task is not to somehow inject God into our work but to join God in the work he is already doing in and through our vocational lives. Therefore, holiness itself is something like a craft—not an abstract state to which we ascend but an earthy wisdom and love that is part and parcel of how we spend our day.”
― Tish Harrison Warren, Liturgy of the Ordinary: Sacred Practices in Everyday Life

“The Anselmian call for "faith seeking understanding" may start and gather its energy not in rational study of past theological points but in the pursuit to make sense of our concrete and lived experiences of Jesus who finds us in a hole, knocks us from our horse, or comes to our daughter in her sleep.”
― Andrew Root, Christopraxis: A Practical Theology of the Cross

“Buddy, remember one thing 'everything is not for everyone'.”
― Saikat Narayan Dutta

“Remember one thing that, 'everything is not for everyone'.”
― Saikat Narayan Dutta

“...the whole configuration of human development needs to be reconceptualized. A lifetime ought not to be thought of in linear manner, an ascending upward gradient, or a kind of bell-shaped curve in which persons develop from one stage of helplessness as an infant through a lifetime to a final stage of helplessness in old age... In...God resides the ultimate coherence from whom each passion for understanding, each new insight, new stage, new vision of the universe, derives its ultimate intelligibility and toward which all such phenomena point.”
― James E. Loder, The Logic of the Spirit: Human Development in Theological Perspective

“The Bible does not deny that we were various things—addicts, homosexuals, hateful, prideful, pornographic masturbators—but that is what we were (past tense) (1 Cor. 6:9-11; Titus 3:3-5). The emphasis in Scripture is on what we are and what we are called to be. The Christian does not say, Hello, my name is _____ and I am an X Y or Z.” The Christian says I was dead, but now I am alive. The Christian says I am a struggling sinner, yet I am a saint. The Christians says I am a new creation; I am transformed.”
― Paul O'Brien

“And,
above all, our present goal is to know Jesus Christ as the Son of Man,
true man. But we fall short of the goal if we will not try to rescue
the question from the impasse into which it was led by the christological
discussion of the older Protestants.”
― Karl Barth, §64.2.II (pg. 83)

“Faith is not just believing but defeating unbelief too.”
― Deepak John

“The science of practical theology can inform our strategies, but it's the art of discernment that helps us know when and how to apply them.”
― Justin Ho Guo Shun, The Art and Science of Practical Theology in Ministry: A Holistic Approach

“The art of practical theology is in finding creative solutions to complex problems.”
― Justin Ho Guo Shun, The Art and Science of Practical Theology in Ministry: A Holistic Approach

“The art of ministry is in the ability to hold space for people's pain, doubts, and questions without judgment.”
― Justin Ho Guo Shun, The Art and Science of Practical Theology in Ministry: A Holistic Approach