In his classis 1975 book, The Problem with Wineskins, Howard Snyder writes that church buildings attest to five facts about the Western church: its immobility, inflexibility, lack of fellowship, pride and class divisions. "The gospel says 'Go,' but our church buildings say, 'Stay.'

Frost & Hirsch. THE SHAPING OF THINGS TO COME

I think we have this need to be cool, that there is this undercurrent in society that says some people are cool and some people aren't. And it is very, very important that we are cool. So, when we find somebody who is cool on television or the radio, we associate ourselves with this person to feel valid ourselves....The problem with this is that it indicates there is less value in what people believe, what they stand for; it only matters that they are cool....Because in the end, the undercurrent running through culture is not giving people value based upon what they believe and what they are doing to aid society, the undercurrent is deciding their value based upon whether or not they are cool.

Donald Miller. BLUE LIKE JAZZ.

So here is a step-by-step formula for how you, too, can go to church without getting angry:
-Pray that God will show you a church filled with people who share your interests and values.
-Go to the church God shows you.
-Don't hold grudges against any other churches. God loves those churches almost as much as He loves yours.

Donald Miller. BLUE LIKE JAZZ.

[Penny says:] They felt like they had to sell God, as if He were soap or a vacuum cleaner, and it's like they weren't listening to me; they didn't care, they just wanted me to buy their product.

[Donald says:] I have become an infomercial for God, and i don't even use the product.

Donald Miller. BLUE LIKE JAZZ.

I believe the greatest trick of the devil is not to get us into some sort of evil but rather have us wasting time. This is why the devil tries so hard to get Christians to be religious. If he can sink a man's mind into habit, he will prevent his heart from engaging God.

Donald Miller. BLUE LIKE JAZZ.

The sacrifice of selfish privacy which is daily demanded of us is daily repaid a hundredfold in the true growth of personality which the life of the Body encourages.

C.S. Lewis. MEMBERSHIP. from The Weight of Glory and Other Addresses.

The delocalizing of the church had profound effects on the very concept ofworship. Worship was no longer confined to something that the priest did in a specific holy place. Worship became something that all Christians did wherever they might happen to be during the course of a day...

the life of the puritan was in one sense a continuous act of worship pursued under an unremitting and lively sense of God's providential purposes and constantly refreshed by religious activity, personal, domestic and public.

...In Puritan ecclesiology, the visible signs of the church are defined chiefly in terms of certain activities and in relationships or fellowship among believers.

Leland Rykan. WORLDLY SAINTS.

God is a spirit and will be worshiped in spirit; that is, though He is present everywhere, yet He dwelleth lively and gloriously in the minds...and hearts of men that love His laws and trust in His promises. And wheresoever God findeth such a heart, there he heareth prayer in all places indifferently. So that outward place neither helpeth or hindereth...

William Tyndale quoted in WORLDLY SAINTS by Leland Ryken

We use organic and natural
ingredients wherever possible
and our recipes are
blissfully enefficient....

For us, brewing is not a process
of automation,
but of imagination and passion.

Dogfish Head Craft Brewery

[I wonder why people can reject automation in brewing beer when church programs often feel automatic, devoid of imagination and passion]