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Bryan Gower

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recomended-community-development‎ (21)
missiology‎ (16)

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Bryan is Currently Reading

Bryan Gower is currently reading

The Forgotten Ways: Reactivating the Missional Church

by Alan Hirsch

bookshelves: currently-reading

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Apr 23, 2025 10:28AM

“We must not allow our elected officials -many beholden to unaccountable corporate elites- to bastardize and pulverize the precious word democracy as they fail to respect and act on genuine democratic ideals”
― Cornel West

tags: politics

2 likes

“Living without expectations is hard but, when you can do it, good. Living without hope is harder, and that is bad. You have got to have hope, and you mustn’t shirk it. Love, after all, 'hopeth all things.' But maybe you must learn, and it is hard learning, not to hope out loud, especially for other people. You must not let your hope turn into expectation.”
― Wendell Berry, Hannah Coulter

tags: expectations, hope

26 likes

“The alternative to the free market consumer culture is a set of covenants that supports neighborly disciplines, rather than market disciplines, as a producer of culture. These non-market disciplines have to do with the common good and abundance as opposed to self-interest and scarcity. This neighborly culture is held together by its depth of relatedness, its capacity to hold mystery, its willingness to stretch time and endure silence.”
― Walter Brueggemann, An Other Kingdom: Departing the Consumer Culture

tags: abundance, consumer-culture, relatedness

0 likes

“Grief is an element of aliveness and the answer to the denial the market demands of us. It is an index of our humanity. It is proof of the presence of our relatedness to each other. It is a communal practice that recognizes that choosing the wilderness of vulnerability, mystery, and anxiety was a good and life-affirming choice.”
― Walter Brueggemann, An Other Kingdom: Departing the Consumer Culture

tags: aliveness, grief, humanity

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“If we construct an economy where quantities are controlled, based on the belief there is never enough for all, then we must compete to determine the winners. We begin this with grades in the first grade. There is the presumption that competition is essential and so there must be a normal distribution of grades. All students cannot receive high marks. If I get an A, someone in the class must perform poorly. It is an early lesson in how the marketplace ideology works. In a community organized around abundance, competition will occur, but it is not built into the system as a core design element. In a neighborly culture, the abundance of resources becomes the design element”
― Walter Brueggemann, An Other Kingdom: Departing the Consumer Culture

tags: community

1 likes

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