281 Quotes by Rachel Held Evans

If we did nothing else,” writes Nora Gallagher, “if nothing was placed in our hands, we would have done two-thirds of what needed to be done. Which is to admit that we simply do not have all the answers; we simply do not have all the power. It is, as the saying goes, ’out of our hands.

I like how Dallas Willard put it: “We don’t believe something by merely saying we believe it,” he said, “or even when we believe that we believe it. We believe something when we act as if it were true.

In my struggle to find church, I’ve often felt that if I could just find the right denomination or the right congregation, if I could just become the right person or believe the right things, then my search would be over at last. But right’s got nothing to do with it. Waiting around for right will leave you waiting around forever. The church is God saying: “I’m throwing a banquet, and all these mismatched, messed-up people are invited. Here, have some wine.

I can’t be a Christian on my own. I need a community. I need the church.

I was a fundamentalist not because of the beliefs I held but because of how I held them: with a death grip. It would take God himself to finally pry some of them out of my hands.

But sometimes I think what the church needs most is to recover some of its weird.

When we honestly ask ourselves which person in our lives means the most to us, we often find that it is those who, instead of giving advice, solutions, or cures, have chosen rather to share our pain and touch our wounds with a warm and tender hand. – Henri Nouwen.

So why do our churches feel more like country clubs than AA? Why do we mumble through rote confessions and then conjure plastic Barbie and Ken smiles as we turn to each other to pass the peace? What makes us exchange the regular pleasantries – “I’m fine. How are you?“ – while mingling beneath a cross upon which hangs a beaten, nearly naked man, suffering publicly on our behalf?

How monotonously alike all the great tyrants and conquerors have been. How gloriously different are the saints! – C. S. Lewis.