Power

"Prayer precedes power" (Dwight L. Moody from sermon "The Prayers of the Bible").

What We Have Here Is A Failure To Communicate!

"Our research shows that these types of nonhuman changes failed [i.e. team restructuring, tweaking a performance management system, etc.] more often than they succeed. That's because the real problem never was in the process, system, or structure--it was in employee behavior. The key to real change lies not in implementing a new process, but in getting people to hold one another accountable to the process. And that requires Crucial Conversations skills" (Patterson, Grenny, McMillan & Switlzer, Crucial Conversations, 13).

Prayer

"The Apostle James tells us that the prophet Elijah was a man 'subject to like passions as we are.' I am thankful that those men and women who were so mighty in prayer were just like us" (Dwight L. Moody from sermon "The Prayers of the Bible").

imago Dei

As image-bearer of God, man possesses the possibility both to create something beautiful, and to delight in it.
     -- Abraham Kuyper, Lectures on Calvinism

Getting Heard

"People who routinely hold crucial conversations and hole them well are able to express controversial and even risky opinions in a way that gets heard. Their bosses, peers, and direct reports listen without becoming defensive or angry" (Patterson, Grenny, McMillan & Switlzer, Crucial Conversations, 10).

Lit: Knowledge & Art Form

"Literature is a form of knowledge, but it is also an art form--the creation of technique and beauty for the sake of entertainment and aesthetic delight" (Leland Ryken, Thinking Christianly About Literature from The Christian Imagination, 25).

Pregnant

"Like a woman who cannot be a little pregnant, an argument cannot be partly valid or invalid but must be completely one or the other" (Louis P. Pojman, Philosophy, 15).

Conversation as Power-Source

"Our research has shown that strong relationships, careers, organizations, and communities all draw from the same source of power--the ability to talk openly about high-stakes, emotional, controversial topics" (Patterson, Grenny, McMillan & Switlzer, Crucial Conversations, 9).

Begin with Reality, Return to Reality

"Literature takes reality and human experience as its starting point, transforms it by means of the imagination, and sends readers back to life with renewed understanding of it and zest for it because of their excursions into a purely imaginary realm" (Leland Ryken, Thinking Christianly About Literature from The Christian Imagination, 24).

Where's a chill pill when you need it?

"When conversations turn from routine to crucial, we're often in trouble. . . . Two tiny organs seated neatly atop your kidneys pump adrenaline into your bloodstream. You don't choose to do this. Your adrenal glands do it, and then you have to live with it. . . . The issue at hand, the other person, and a brain that's drunk on adrenaline and almost incapable of rational thought. It's little wonder that we often say and do things that make perfect sense in the moment, but later on seem, well, stupid" (Patterson, Grenny, McMillan & Switlzer, Crucial Conversations, 5).

Respecter of Language

"Literature consists of words, first of all. Yet when Christians talk about literature, it would be easy to get the impression that literature consists of ideas. It does not. . . . A proper respect for language is a prerequisite to producing and understanding literature" (Leland Ryken, Thinking Christianly About Literature from The Christian Imagination, 24).

"Won't Back Down" - Tom Petty

"Despite the importance of crucial conversations, we often back away from them because we fear we'll make matters worse. We've become masters at avoiding tough conversations" (Patterson, Grenny, McMillan & Switlzer, Crucial Conversations, 3).

Enlarged Reality

"Literature enlarges our world of experience to include both more of the physical world and things not yet imagined, giving the "actual world" a "new dimension of depth" (C.S. Lewis, Of Other Worlds, 29)" (Donald T. Williams, Christian Poetics, Past and Present from The Christian Imagination, 17).

Crucial Day-to-Day Conversations

"The crucial conversations we're referring to are interactions that happen to everyone. They're the day-to-day conversations that affect your life" (Patterson, Grenny, McMillan & Switlzer, Crucial Conversations, 1.

Necessary Discernment

"In the real world after the fall, as in the literary worlds which represent it, good and evil are so intertwined that the responsibility of discernment cannot be realistically avoided" (Donald T. Williams, Christian Poetics, Past and Present from The Christian Imagination, 13).

Problems with Disagreement

"The root cause of many--if not most--human problems lies in how people behave when others disagree with them about high-stakes, emotional issues" (Patterson, Grenny, McMillan & Switlzer, Crucial Conversations, xiii).

Literature as Creation

"Here, then, is finally a profoundly Christian understanding of literature which does not merely salvage it for Christian use but finds the very ground of its being in explicitly Christian doctrine: creation, the imago Dei, the "cultural mandate" to subdue the earth" (Donald T. Williams, Christian Poetics, Past and Present from The Christian Imagination, 11).

Clear As Mud

"One of the tasks of philosophy is clarifying concepts" (Louis P. Pojman, Philosophy, 3).

Kudos for My Generation (Keep on ignoring the captains at the helm of the Mainline Titantic!)

Excerpt below is from an article you gotta go read.

First, it’s quite common to hear from former evangelicals now within the Mainline Protestant tradition that if evangelicals, with their persistently conservative theology, would only liberalize on such issues as biblical authority and sexual ethics—they’d find a newfound opportunity for cultural influence and increased opportunity to “reach the next generation.” The problem, however, is that the statistical evidence suggests just the opposite: It’s the liberalizing trends of American life that work to calcify vibrant, growing, and orthodox belief. The report indicates that a nominal, religious middle is simply dropping out altogether. The almost-Christianity of liberal Christianity is proving, in the long run, to not be Christianity at all. Either failing to grow or literally dying out, Mainline liberalism offers little as far as attractional gravitas once it surrenders core doctrinal beliefs to progressivism. If anything is clear from the Pew report, it’s that evangelicals should, once and for all, ignore the captains at the helm of the Mainline Titanic.

 Again, this only reinforces Carl Trueman's recent comments. "For Christians to continue to protest the world in the public square, they need first to be deeply and seriously grounded in the historic, doctrinal, and elaborate Christian faith."

How will evangelical Christians survive? How will Liberalism be overthrown? It's easy. Merely hold fast and earnestly contend for the faith handed down.

Beowulf and Wyrd

"That his work cannot now be read at all without trouble, nor understood and valued in detail without sustained effort, is due under God to wyrd [fate/personal destiny], the doom of men to live briefly in a world where all withers and is forgotten. The English language has changed -- but not necessarily improved! -- in a thousand years. Wyrd has swept away to oblivion nearly all its kin; but Beowulf survives: for a time, for as long as learning keeps any honour in its land. And how long will that be? God ana wat" [God alone knows.] (J.R.R. Tolkien, Beowulf: A Translation and Commentary, 275).

A Clear Token

"The chief of those Geatish men had accomplished all his proud vaunt before the East Danes, and had healed, moreover, all the woe and the tormenting sorrow that they had erewhile suffered and must of necessity endure, no little bitterness. Of this a clear token it was when that warrior bold had set the hand, the arm and shoulder, beneath the widespread roof -- there was Grendel's clutching limb entire" (J.R.R. Tolkien, Beowulf: A Translation and Commentary, 36).

Samson

Vivid excerpt from John Milton's Samson Agonistes.

My self, my Sepulcher, a moving Grave,
Buried, yet not exempt
By privilege of death and burial
From worst of other evils, pains and wrongs,
But made hereby obnoxious more
To all the miseries of life,
Life in captivity
Among inhuman foes.
But who are these? for with joint pace I hear
The tread of many feet stearing this way;
Perhaps my enemies who come to stare
At my affliction, and perhaps to insult,
Thir daily practice to afflict me more.

"Seriously grounded in the historic, doctrinal, and elaborate Christian faith."

Carl Trueman, over at First Things, reflects on how then shall the Church protest. Trueman's concluding thoughts.

Churches which are doctrine-lite, or which define themselves with a ten or twelve point doctrinal statement, or which portray themselves as a nice, fun supplement to the more important things of life, are rather like the little pig who built his house of straw. When the wolf blows, the house will simply vanish in the wind. For Christians to continue to protest the world in the public square, they need first to be deeply and seriously grounded in the historic, doctrinal, and elaborate Christian faith. A faith built on Wikipedia articles or reducible to 140 characters points to no lasting city.

Negative Imagery

"From Genesis to Jesus, from prophets to Paul, Bible writers sprinkle thorn imagery throughout Scripture to emphasize their message of punishment, worthlessness, and nonproductivity" (Dictionary of Biblical Imagery, 865).