“Stories are verbal acts of hospitality.”

“The Bible makes it clear that every time that there is a story of faith, it is completely original. God's creative genius is endless.”

“That's why I tell stories: to create readiness, to nudge the people toward receptive insight. In their present state they can stare till doomsday and not see it, listen till they're blue in the face and not get it.”

“The vocation of pastor(s) has been replaced by the strategies of religious entrepreneurs with business plans.”

“I was astonished to learn in one of these best-selling books (on church life) that the size of my church parking lot had far more to do with how things fared in my congregation than my choice of texts in preaching. I was being lied to and I knew it.”

“Classically, there are three ways in which humans try to find transcendence--religious meaning--apart from God as revealed through the cross of Jesus: through the ecstasy of alcohol and drugs, through the ecstasy of recreational sex, through the ecstasy of crowds. Church leaders frequently warn against the drugs and the sex, but at least, in America, almost never against the crowds.”

“You don't make your words true by embellishing them with religious lace. In making your speech sound more religious, it becomes less true.”