Mark Galli Quotes & Sayings

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

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

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

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

I like a tranquil, even-keeled, self-controlled God. A God who doesn't fly off the handle at the least provocation. A God who lives one step above the fray. A God who has that British stiff upper lip even when disaster is looming. When I read my Bible, though, I keep running into a different God, and I'm not pleased. This God says he "hates" sin. Well, he usually yells it. Read the prophets. It's just one harangue after another, all in loud decibels. And when the shouting is over, then comes the pouting ... When all else fails, he throws himself in front of the car. — Mark Galli

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

To live [in the church] at the beck and call of marketing logic is to live in slavery. — Mark Galli

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

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

This is part of what it means to become holy, to be refined by fire. Difficulties and sufferings are God's form of hazing. Sometimes it gets so hard, we think Him cruel. But He's only looking for men and women who will keep their cool when things go horribly wrong, a people prepared to dash into burning rooms to rescue those about to be engulfed in flames. — Mark Galli

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

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

In our desire to be real we start thinking that authenticity is another word for spontaneity, as if everything we say at the spur of the moment is more true, more sincere than words we craft carefully. For many, the Freudian slip is considered more authentic than the measured reply. Indeed, sometimes what we blurt out thoughtlessly is actually what we mean and feel. But more often than not, what we blurt out is ill-considered and something we either need to qualify or apologize for — Mark Galli

By participating in the liturgy, we're doing more than "attending a service." We are entering a story - a story in which we also play a role. We are the people who have indeed been gathered. We are the people who share in God's very life. We are the people sent forth to proclaim God's story and to invite people into the grand story. — Mark Galli

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

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

The most carefully crafted language in our culture tends to be poetry. And poetry at its finest moments subverts our best attempts at hiding from reality ...
The poetry of liturgy has just this power. The liturgy contains words that have been shaped and crafted over the centuries. It is formal speech. It is public poetry. As such it reaches into us to reveal not only the unnamed reality of our lives but the God who created us ...
But even when the words of the liturgy are not literally biblical words, the words, like all truthful words, work on us over time, like a steady, unrelenting stream slowly reshapes the banks of a river. The words do something to us even when we're not paying attention. — Mark Galli

The liturgy is the place where we wait for Jesus to show up. We don't have to do much. The liturgy is not an act of will. It is not a series of activities designed to attain a spiritual mental state. We do not have to apply will pressure. To be sure, like basketball or football, it is something that requires a lot of practice
its rhythms do not come naturally except to those who have been rehearsing them for years. On some Sundays the soul will indeed battle to even pay attention. In the normal course of worship, we do not have to conjure up feelings or a devotional mood; we are not required to perform the liturgy flawlessly. Such anxious effort ... blind us to what is really going on.
We do have to show up, and we cannot leave early. But if we will dwell there, remain in place, wait patiently, Jesus will show up. — Mark Galli

Only unconditional grace can transform a hardened heart into a grateful heart. Only a free gift can demolish any notion of quid pro quo. Only an utterly merciful act of love can fashion a new creation capable of love. As theologian Karl Barth puts it, 'As the beloved of God, we have no alternative but to love him in return. — Mark Galli

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

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

He shoots higher that threatens the moon, than he that aims at a tree. — Mark Galli

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

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

The road to hell is paved with reasonable religion with a non-anxious god. Most days, I'm pretty happy driving down that road. But I keep running into this Crazy Fellow along the way. At every stop light, he jumps up and down to get my attention. He pounds on my window asking me where the heck I think I'm going. He stands on the front bumper, shouting at me to turn around. When all else fails, he throws himself in front of the car. He's such a drama queen. — Mark Galli

I've come to believe that God, in His wisdom, allows martyrdom in every generation in part because, without them, the reality of Christ's death for us becomes increasingly blurry ... As we look at [the martyrs], the mist that sometimes enshrouds first-century Golgotha is burned away, and we see ... the Lord nailed to the cross. — Mark Galli

I sometimes wonder if God calls us into the church because it represents not the people of God at their best but us at our worst. I wonder if he calls us to become embedded in this wretched institution precisely because it is wretched. And calls us to be a part of it not to reform it or save it or control it in any way, but to simply love it. — Mark Galli

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

[denial] is an attempt to bring order to our lives. — Mark Galli

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

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