Nicole Schwartz-Eck

“Our assumptions got us to where we are, but they won’t necessarily get us where we need to go. I’ve found four questions in particular are helpful when your church stops growing.”
― Carey Nieuwhof, Lasting Impact: 7 Powerful Conversations That Will Help Your Church Grow

“Thomas Aquinas (1224–74) on the virtue of courage, I happened across a vice he called pusillanimity, which means “smallness of soul.” Those afflicted by this vice, wrote Aquinas, shrink back from all that God has called them to be. When faced with the effort and difficulty of stretching themselves to the great things of which they are capable, they cringe and say, “I can’t.” In short, the pusillanimous rely on their own puny powers and focus on their own potential for failure, rather than counting on God’s grace to equip them for great work in his kingdom—work beyond anything they might have dreamed of for themselves.”
― Rebecca Konyndyk DeYoung, Glittering Vices: A New Look at the Seven Deadly Sins and Their Remedies

“In other words, questions about the validity of your ministry, your ability to do ministry, or who you are in ministry all have a causal point that has little to do with those specific questions, or is only tangentially related; the stated questions have more to do with unnamed and unexamined assumptions and expectations than the issue named on the surface. Being able to identify this underlying matter when addressing a superficial issue as presented is an important strategy for success. If you spend your time and energy tending the manifesting topic rather than the fundamental concern, this will be a significant cause, at best, for fatigue in your ministry and, at worst, for burnout. Managing the indications without addressing their root cause will also lead to a personal sense of loss—and likely an actual loss—of your own power.”
― Karoline Lewis, She: Five Keys to Unlock the Power of Women in Ministry

“while he emphasized that peace is wonderful, Rogers was not altogether starry-eyed in this first week. In fact, he seemed quite the political realist in teaching us that peacemaking will be hard work. It will certainly require the most creative thoughts our moral imagination can muster. Like Daniel Striped Tiger, we will have to move beyond typical options and come up with creative strategies that surprise and shock the warmongers we seek to influence. Peacemaking will also no doubt be time-consuming. It will require us, as it did Lady Aberlin, to take time off from our regular work to create and carry out unique plans we would not normally even consider. And peacemaking will lead us into moments of doubt and uncertainty. Like Lady Aberlin and Mister Rogers, we will find ourselves wondering whether our ideas will really work.”
― Michael G. Long, Peaceful Neighbor: Discovering the Countercultural Mister Rogers