Saturday, March 25

Strategic Ministry Planning

“A church will either multiply or divide.” Thomas Chalmers

“Discernment is not a matter of simply telling the difference between right and wrong; rather it is telling the difference between right and almost right.” Charles Haddon Spurgeon

“Regardless of how large, your vision is too small.” Thomas Chalmers

“The whole tendency of modern thought, one might say its whole moral impulse, is to keep the individual busy with endless induction—leaving little room for genuine change.” Richard Weaver

“With visions of redemption I walk against the crowd.” Arthur Quiller-Couch

“Knowledge is knowing; understanding is knowing what to do; wisdom is knowing what to do next; virtue is actually doing it. The three together are what we call repentance.” Tristan Gylberd

“Gargantuanism and the care of souls cannot coexist.” Thomas Chalmers

“Religion hath brought forth prosperity, and the daughter destroyed the mother—there is a danger, lest the enchantments of this world make them forget their errand into the wilderness: to build a city on a hill, an illumination for all the world.” Cotton Mather

“Now, in our large towns, we have the ministerial service without the pastoral; and we all know what a loose and precarious connection between ministers and people this has given rise to.” Thomas Chalmers

“Mercy has converted more souls than zeal, or eloquence, or learning, or all of them together.” Soren Kierkegaard

2 comments:

Nate Shurden said...

Dr. Grant,

Thanks for the quotes. A balm and, at the same time, a provocation to my soul.

Thought you and your readers might be interested in the current blog theme over at reformation21. It appears Chalmers is taking center stage for a few days...

www.reformation21.org/Reformation_21_Blog/57/

N8

gileskirk said...

AM: Yes, Chalmers was most assuredly speaking of missions and church planting rather than building mega-churches.

Kierkegaard gets a bad rap because he was often very Pietistic (in the Spenerian tradition) and as a result left the back door open to Neo-Orthodoxy. He was also influenced by a few other heterodox and modernist philosophical views. But, he had very much good to teach as well. Like all of us, he was off in a few places. But, there is little doubt that he was quite brilliant--and the fact is, there would have been far less resistance to Nazism during the first half of the 20th century throughout Europe if it had not been for his disciples.