Mark Galli Quotes

#1. If the church is the body of Christ [who was disguised in servant form], why would we think the world would be able to pick us out of a crowd of other well-meaning organizations?

Mark Galli

#2. As is typical of this God [of Israel], he calls his people into freedom in the most unlikely place.

Mark Galli

#3. It pleases me that you teach sacred theology to the brothers, as long as - in the words of the Rule - you 'do not extinguish the Spirit of prayer and devotion' with study of this kind. - Francis of Assisi

Mark Galli

#4. To love with expectations is, in the end, an oppressive, driven thing, and people know it when they receive it. To love as God loves us
in freedom and with no strings attached
is a way to grant others a liberating gift.

Mark Galli

#5. I sometimes wonder whether our churches
living as we do in American death-denying culture, relentlessly smiling through our praise choruses
are inadvertently helping people live not as much in hope as in denial.

Mark Galli

#6. As Wade Clark Roof noted in his study, the 'weightlessness' of contemporary belief in God is a reality ... for religious liberals and many evangelicals.

Mark Galli

#7. The cost of discipleship is to live the life God has given us, serving in mundane ways the people he's put in our path.

Mark Galli

#8. Where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is freedom, says Paul. And we are most in line with the Spirit, most faithfully obedient, when instead of trying to manipulate people into faith, we simply live in that freedom and let the Spirit do the work of transformation.

Mark Galli

#9. The Good News does not hinge on words like do or change but on the powerless, irrelevant, and frightening words like belief and faith.

Mark Galli

#10. The wealthy, Jesus says, can only get into heaven through the eye of a needle; the same applies to churches wealthy in numbers and programs.

Mark Galli

#11. For his own unfathomable reasons, God chooses to disguise himself when he comes to this planet, and there have been few disguises better than the church.

Mark Galli

#12. We say we long for intimacy with God and others, and yet we structure our lives so that this becomes impossible. One might think we are avoiding intimacy, that maybe we really like our finely managed lives just the way they are.

Mark Galli

#13. God's love for us is uncoerced and so freely given that it does not demand a response. But so freely is it given that it creates freedom in the recipient, so that our response is not one of obligation or duty, nor the returning of a favor, but uncoerced love.

Mark Galli

#14. Affliction is able to drown out every earthly voice ... but the voice of eternity within a man it cannot drown. When by the aid of affliction all irrelevant voices are brought to silence, it can be heard, this voice within.

Mark Galli

#15. [denial] is an attempt to bring order to our lives.

Mark Galli

#16. The Old Testament does, in fact, seem to make a distinction between the life of a child and the life of a fetus.

Mark Galli

#17. To paraphrase Paul, God often uses the cheesy to confound the sophisticated. He regularly honors those who are confused about his leading as if they have nailed it.

Mark Galli

#18. The Christian life does not just evolve. It also requires specific decisions and public commitments to deepen our faith and obedience.

Mark Galli

#19. But the resurrection without the crucifixion is empty optimism, an optimism that gives credence to Freud's notion that wishful thinking is the sum and substance of our faith. Include the crucifixion
and our role in that bloody moment
and the whole picture changes.

Mark Galli

#20. To live [in the church] at the beck and call of marketing logic is to live in slavery.

Mark Galli

#21. He shoots higher that threatens the moon, than he that aims at a tree.

Mark Galli