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No coffee shops or fog machines required [for church].
Rachel Grace Held -
Millennials aren't looking for a hipper Christianity.
Rachel Grace Held
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Sometimes you have to be forced away from your work to realize youve made too much of it, to remember it doesnt define you.
Rachel Grace Held -
Whenever we show others the goodness of God, whenever we follow our Teacher by imitating His posture of humble and ready service, our actions are sacred and ministerial. To be called into the priesthood, as all of us are, is to be called to a life of presence, of kindness.
Rachel Grace Held -
God and the Gay Christian is a game changer. Prepare to be challenged and enlightened, provoked and inspired.
Rachel Grace Held -
We're (millennials) looking for a truer Christianity, a more authentic Christianity.
Rachel Grace Held -
Perhaps we could push beyond these legalistic gender roles if we spent less time worrying about “acting like men” and “acting like women,” and more time acting like Jesus.
Rachel Grace Held -
When [Jesus] wanted fully to explain what his forthcoming death was all about He didn't give a theory. He didn't even give them a set of Scriptural texts. He gave them a meal.
Rachel Grace Held
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As a Christian, my highest calling is not motherhood; my highest calling is to follow Christ.
Rachel Grace Held -
We need to stop building our churches around categories and start building them around people.
Rachel Grace Held -
We could not become like God, so God became like us. God showed us how to heal instead of kill, how to mend instead of destroy, how to love instead of hate, how to live instead of long for more. When we nailed God to a tree, God forgave. And when we buried God in the ground. God got up.
Rachel Grace Held -
Church is a moment in time when the kingdom of God draws near, when a meal, a story, a song, an apology, and even a failure id made holy by the presence of Jesus among us and within us.
Rachel Grace Held -
Doubt is a difficult animal to master because it requires that we learn the difference between doubting God and doubting what we believe about God. The former has the potential to destroy faith; that latter has the power to enrich and refine it. The former is a vice; the latter a virtue.
Rachel Grace Held -
The church is the last place we want to be sold another product, the last place we want to be entertained.
Rachel Grace Held
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In an age of information overload ... the last thing any of us needs is more information about God. We need the practice of incarnation, by which God saves the lives of those whose intellectual assent has turned them dry as dust, who have run frighteningly low on the Bread of Life, who are dying to know more God in their bodies. Not more about God. More God.
Rachel Grace Held -
You can't get too far into the Gospels without noticing that Jesus made a pretty lousy apologist.
Rachel Grace Held -
We are not spared death, but the power of death has been defeated. The grip of sin has been loosed. We are invited to share the victory, to follow the path of God back to life.
Rachel Grace Held -
I don't know why Christians keep fighting over which is better-singleness or marriage-when it seems rather obvious, both from Scripture and from Church history, that both can glorify God.
Rachel Grace Held -
No step taken in faith is wasted, not by a God who makes all things new.
Rachel Grace Held -
What a comfort to know that God is a poet.
Rachel Grace Held
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One of the most destructive mistakes we Christians make is to prioritize shared beliefs over shared relationship, which is deeply ironic considering we worship a God who would rather die than lose relationship with us.
Rachel Grace Held -
I'm a Christian because Christianity names and addresses sin. It acknowledges the reality that the evil we observe in the world is also present within ourselves. It tells the truth about the human condition - that we're not okay.
Rachel Grace Held -
Church attendance may be dipping, but God can survive the Internet age. After all, He knows a thing or two about resurrection.
Rachel Grace Held -
But if the world is watching, we might as well tell the truth. And the truth is, the church doesn't offer a cure. It doesn't offer a quick fix. The church offers death and resurrection. The church offers the messy, inconvenient, gut-wrenching, never-ending work of healing and reconciliation.
Rachel Grace Held