Shane Claiborne Quotes & Sayings

We know the Church wasn't born 200 years ago. It's encouraging to see some of the post-denominational churches actually wanting to reconnect with the story and the prayer life of the larger Church. — Shane Claiborne

God's people are not to accumulate stuff for tomorrow but to share indiscriminately with the scandalous and holy confidence that God will provide for tomorrow. Then we need not stockpile stuff in barns or a 401(k), especially when there is someone in need. — Shane Claiborne

Karl Barth said it well: "We have to read the Bible in one hand ... and the newspaper in the other." Our faith should not cause us to escape this world but to engage it. — Shane Claiborne

Every 70-year-old needs a young person in their lives to mentor, and every 20-year-old needs a senior. — Shane Claiborne

We see God all the time here. People only hear bad things about our neighborhood. Kensington is known as the badlands. I always say you have to be careful when you call a place the badlands because that is exactly what they said about Nazareth. Nothing good can come from there. I think we see God in the margins. — Shane Claiborne

There is real value in these local congregations. For me, a lot of it is the value of the sacraments we share. In neighborhoods like ours, the churches provide stability. — Shane Claiborne

When we were starting our community a bunch of older Benedictine nuns said to us, "If you have any questions or want to pick our brains, please do - we've been doing community for about 1,500 years together so we've learned a few things." — Shane Claiborne

Recognizing that something is wrong is the first step toward changing the world. — Shane Claiborne

When the church takes affairs of the state more seriously than they do Jesus, Pax Romana becomes its gospel and the president becomes the Son of God.
— Shane Claiborne

Jesus taught us a prayer of community and reconciliation, belonging to a new people who have left the land of 'me'. — Shane Claiborne

Jesus did not send us into the world to make believers but to make disciples. — Shane Claiborne

What if evangelical mega churches became known around the world for things like providing water access for entire countries or fighting to end the AIDS pandemic? Imagine what integrity that would give to the good news we preach, especially the gospel that Jesus declares is good news to the poor. — Shane Claiborne

I think they [ monastic folks ] were going to the desert to build a new society and in a sense to build a new world, a new culture together where it was easier to be good and holy. — Shane Claiborne

Christians who have had so much to say with our mouths and so little to show with our lives. I am sorry that so often we have forgotten the Christ of our Christianity. — Shane Claiborne

De Chardin said, Above all, trust in the slow work of God. We are quite naturally impatient in everything to reach the end without delay. We would like to skip the intermediate stages. We are impatient of being on the way to something unknown, something new. And yet, it is the law of all progress that it is made by passing through some stages of instability - and that it may take a very long time. Above all, trust in the slow work of God, our loving vine-dresser. — Shane Claiborne

I like how someone once said being a Christian is not about having new ideas but having new eyes. This is the ability to have our hearts broken with the things that break the heart of God. That is part of what it means to be a Christian. — Shane Claiborne

I engage with local politics because it affects people I love. And I engage in national politics because it affects people I love. — Shane Claiborne

We're not church planters. We are community planters and, as we work in our communities, we join local churches. — Shane Claiborne

People had taught me what Christians believe, but no one had told me how Christians live, — Shane Claiborne

The church is like Noah's ark. It stinks, but if you get out of it, you'll drown. — Shane Claiborne

As Christians, we should be the best collaborators in the world. We should be quick to find unlikely allies and subversive friends, like Jesus did. — Shane Claiborne

All around you, people will be tiptoeing through life, just to arrive at death safely. But dear children, do not tiptoe. Run, hop, skip, or dance, just don't tiptoe. — Shane Claiborne

Violence is for those who have lost their imagination. — Shane Claiborne

In their pursuit of "making disciples of every nation" and baptizing all those within the empire, they stumbled into baptizing the empire itself, thus turning sacrament into sacrilege[ ... ] — Shane Claiborne

It is the church's responsibility, the government's responsibility, and the personal responsibility of every one of us to love. — Shane Claiborne

Christians are meant to be God's holy counterculture, showing the world what a society of love can look like. It is about political imagination and what it means to be the peculiar people of God. As — Shane Claiborne

I'm just not convinced that Jesus is going to say, When I was hungry, you gave a check to the United Way and they fed me. — Shane Claiborne

Love has no limits. Compassion has no party. It is the responsibility of every human being and every institution to end poverty and to interrupt injustice. — Shane Claiborne

In the beloved community of 'Our Father,' the same desperate love that a mother has for her baby or that a child has for his or her daddy is extended to all our human family. Biological love is too small a vision. Nationalism is far too myopic. A love for our own relatives or the people of our own country is not a bad things. But our love does not stop at the border. We now have a family that includes by transcends biology and geography. We have family in Iraq, Peru, Afghanistan and Sudan. We have family members who are starving and homeless, dying of AIDS and living in the midst of war. This is the new family of our Father. — Shane Claiborne

There are financial bankruptcies in many parts of the church. No question about that. But we see the possibility of reimagining and revitalizing the church. — Shane Claiborne

If you have the gift of frustration and the deep sense that the world is a mess, thank God for that; not everyone has that gift of vision. It also means that you have a responsibility to lead us in new ways. — Shane Claiborne

Biological family is too small of a vision. Patriotism is far too myopic. A love for our own relatives and a love for the people of our own country are not bad things, but our love does not stop at the border. — Shane Claiborne

The more I travel, the more I see how important it is to each population to see that their history of the good and the bad is remembered by others. — Shane Claiborne

The true atheist is the one who refuses to see God's image in the face of their neighbour. — Shane Claiborne

Not too long ago, I was speaking at Princeton, and some of the students asked me how they were to choose which issue of social justice is the most important. The question made me cringe. Issues? These issues have faces. We're talking not only about ideas but also about human emergencies. My response to the well-intentioned Princeton students was, Don't choose issues; choose people. Come play in the fire hydrants in North Philly. Fall in love with a group of people who are marginalized and suffering, and then you won't have to worry about which cause you need to protest. Then the issues will choose you. — Shane Claiborne

The greatest sin of political imagination: Thinking there is no other way except the filthy rotten system we have today. — Shane Claiborne

That stuff Jesus warned us to beware of, the yeast of the Pharisees, is so infectious today in the camps of both liberals and conservatives. Conservatives stand up and thank God that they are not like the homosexuals, the Muslims, the liberals. Liberals stand up and thank God that they are not like the war makers, the yuppies, the conservatives. It is a similar self-righteousness, just with different definitions of evildoing. It can paralyze us in judgment and guilt and rob us of life. Rather than separating ourselves from everyone we consider impure, maybe we are better off just beating our chests and praying that God would be merciful enough to save us from this present ugliness and to make our lives so beautiful that people cannot resist that mercy. — Shane Claiborne

There's something beautiful about that Scripture that says, "Your young men will see visions, your old men will dream dreams" (Acts 2:17). We need each other. There is power when the old and young dream together. — Shane Claiborne

We have not shown the world another way of doing life. Christians pretty much live like everybody else, they just sprinkle a little Jesus in along the way. — Shane Claiborne

There's an understanding of common prayer that I think we're seeing grow, more and more. When I travel, I hear from people who are deeply touched that our common prayer takes time to remember some of the terrible tragedies that have happened around the world. — Shane Claiborne

I long for people to fall in love with God and each other, and so I'm a big fan of being radically inclusive, whether that means not turning off transsexuals or folks who drive SUVs. But I also became aware of how delicate that venture can prove to be. The temptation we face is to compromise the cost of discipleship, and in the process, the Christian identity can get lost. We don't want folks to walk away. We're driven by a sincere longing for others to know God's love and grace and to experience Christian community. And yet we can end up merely cheapening the very thing we want folks to experience. This is the "cheap grace"4 that spiritual writer and fellow revolutionary Dietrich Bonhoeffer called "the most deadly enemy of the church." And he knew all too well the cost of discipleship; after all, it led to his execution in 1945 for his participation in the Protestant resistance against Hitler. — Shane Claiborne

There are folks who burn the Koran and hold signs saying, "God hates fags" and all sorts of sick things - and they often hijack the headlines with hatred. We know that is not what Christ was like. — Shane Claiborne

In closing, to those who have closed the door on religion - I was recently asked by a non-Christian friend if I thought he was going to hell. I said, 'I hope not. It will be hard to enjoy heaven without you.' If those of us who believe in God do not believe God's grace is big enough to save the whole world ... well, we should at least pray that it is. — Shane Claiborne

True fasting is not just depriving ourselves of privilege but als osharing sacrificially tob ring an end to the cycles of inequality, an end to creation's groaning and the groaning of hungry bellies. — Shane Claiborne

Jeanne de Chantal, seventeenth-century founder of the Order of the Visitation, said, No matter what happens, be gentle with yourself. — Shane Claiborne

Perhaps one of the most powerful things the contemporary church could do is to confess our sins to the world, the humbly get on our knees and repent for the terrible things we have done in the name of God. — Shane Claiborne

[Mahatma] Ghandi said in a world with so many hungry people it just makes sense that God would come as food. God sent the living bread and the living water in a world where there is so much thirst and so much hunger. — Shane Claiborne

Jesus is ready to set us free from the heavy yoke of an oppressive way of life. Plenty of wealthy Christians are suffocating from the weight of the American dream, heavily burdened by the lifeless toil and consumption we embrace. This is the yoke from which we are being set free. And as we are liberated from the yoke of global capitalism, our sisters and brothers in Guatemala, Liberia, Iraq, and Sri Lanka will also be liberated. Our family overseas, who are making our clothes, growing our food, pumping our oil, and assembling our electronics
they too need to be liberated from the empire's yoke of slavery. Their liberation is tangled up with our own. — Shane Claiborne

Discontentment is a gift. It's the stuff that changes the world. — Shane Claiborne

I just have a more holistic sense of what it means to be for life, knowing that life does not just begin at conception and end at birth, and that if I am going to discourage abortion, I had better be ready to adopt some babies and care for some mothers. — Shane Claiborne

If the devil can't steal your soul, he'll just keep you busy doing meaningless church work. — Shane Claiborne

Lord, keep us from following the gods of pride, stubbornness, vanity, sloth, greed, and comfort that beckon for our allegiance every day. You brought us through the night watches, you who neither slumber nor sleep. We pray to follow you along the path of generosity, humility, and love throughout this day. Amen. — Shane Claiborne

The more I have read the Bible and studied the life of Jesus, the more I have become convinced that Christianity spreads best not through force but through fascination. — Shane Claiborne

People always want to define you by what you do. I started saying: 'i am not too concerned with what i'm going to do. I am more interested in who i am becoming. I want to be a lover of God and people. — Shane Claiborne

To refer to the Church as a building is to call people 2 x 4's. — Shane Claiborne

We're remembering both the good and the bad in our history together in this world. This isn't an attempt to make people feel bad every morning and to force them to go stick their fingers in a wall socket. We chose these things we included as a way to point people toward the possibility of transformation even while remembering the great pain we have experienced as humanity. — Shane Claiborne

Jesus is challenging that when addressing "who is your neighbor" and he has a lot of hard things to say about family, "unless you hate your own family you are not going to be a disciple." He is challenging the limits of our compassion and our love as if someone's kid suffers it should be as devastating to us as if it were our own kid. That is what the early church said. — Shane Claiborne

One of the great dangers in political engagement is misplaced hope. — Shane Claiborne

Let's keep refusing to accept the world as it is and insisting on building the world we dream of. Don't let the haters have the last word. — Shane Claiborne

Jesus was Jewish. He went to synagogue "as was his tradition" and celebrated holy days such as Passover. But Jesus also healed on the Sabbath. Jesus points us to a God who is able to work within institutions and order, a God who is too big to be confined. God is constantly coloring outside the lines. Jesus challenges the structures that oppress and exclude, and busts through any traditions that put limitations on love. Love cannot be harnessed. — Shane Claiborne

When we realize that we are both wretched and beautiful, we are freed up to see others the same way. — Shane Claiborne

Liturgy and worship were never meant to be confined to the cathedrals and sanctuaries. Liturgy at its best can be performed like a circus or theater - making the Gospel visible as a witness to the world around us. — Shane Claiborne

Jesus sent his Spirit to empower people to realize their potential, and that should be the model for all of us in doing missionary work (Acts 1:8). When confronting the desperate situations we find in third-world countries and in troubled urban and rural areas here in America, we must realize that our objective must be to empower people and challenge them to use their gifts and actualize their potential. We have to join with them in such a way so that, as you said a moment ago, when they succeed, they can say, We did it ourselves. — Shane Claiborne

As an American, and especially as a Christian, I am convinced that a love for our own people is not a bad thing, but love doesn't stop at borders. Love is infinitely boundless and all about holy trespassing and offensive friendships. — Shane Claiborne

Irish rock star Bono has said, Grace defies reason and logic. Love interrupts, if you like, the consequences of your actions, which in my case is very good news indeed, because I've done a lot of stupid stuff. — Shane Claiborne

I always tell our community that we should attract the people Jesus attracted and frustrate the people Jesus frustrated. It's certainly never our goal to frustrate, but it is worth noting that the people who were constantly agitated were the self-righteous, religious elite, the rich, and the powerful. But the people who were fascinated by him, by his love and grace, were folks who were already wounded and ostracized - folks who didn't have much to lose, who already knew full well that they were broken and needed a Savior. — Shane Claiborne

That is the power of the Eucharist. At the communion table you have rich and poor together in the early church and they were being challenged. — Shane Claiborne

People are poor not just because of their sins; they are poor because of our sins (and people are rich because of our sins). On the wall of New Jerusalem is a sign that reads, We cannot fully recover until we help the society that made us sick recover. — Shane Claiborne

The dreams get anchored in aged wisdom not some utopian fantasy. — Shane Claiborne

Some folks may be really bummed to find that "God bless America" does not appear in the Bible. So often we do things that make sense to us and ask God to bless our actions and come alongside our plans, rather than looking at the things God promises to bless and acting alongside of them. For we know that God's blessing will inevitably follow if we are with the poor, the merciful, the hungry, the persecuted, the peacemakers. But sometimes we'd rather have a God who conforms to our logic than conform our logic to the God whose wisdom is a stumbling block to the world of smart bombs and military intelligence. — Shane Claiborne

We can also cling to the treasures of our faith and get rid of the things that are cluttering that. It is a time we are seeing some trending away from the things that were cluttering our faith. — Shane Claiborne

I have this certain reluctance when it comes to this idea that we are spiritual but not religious and we want Jesus but not the church. Why can't we have both? — Shane Claiborne

If we believe terrorists are past redemption, we should just rip up like 1/2 the New Testament because it was written by one. — Shane Claiborne

Victimization is about powerlessness, and justice is about amplifying the voices of those who have been silenced. Healing — Shane Claiborne

The history of the church has been largely a history of "believers" refusing to believe in the way of the crucified Nazarene and instead giving in to the very temptations he resisted
power, relevancy, spectacle. — Shane Claiborne

Lord, we know that you will come again in glory to raise the living and the dead. Resurrect us now from the death of comfort, complacency, sloth, and shallowness that we might witness to your love in life and death. Amen. — Shane Claiborne

There is an innocence or purity that we see in renewals and in the Mennonite church and a new an invigorated civil rights movement. — Shane Claiborne

You can't really learn God's hope like you learn the logic of an argument or the details of a story. It's more like learning to belly laugh. You catch hope from someone who has it down in their gut. — Shane Claiborne

Few people are interested in a religion that has nothing to say to the world and offers them only life after death, when what people are really wondering is whether there is life before death. — Shane Claiborne

Of all people, we Christians should be building friendships and protecting the dignity of human beings, even those of other faiths. I loved seeing Christians in Iraq stand guard as peacekeepers outside the mosques while Muslims gathered for prayer, and Muslims doing the same for Christians. — Shane Claiborne

That is part of our critique of some of the charity and service work is that we can still keep relationships at a distance by creating programs that offer services but we don't really create a reconciled community. — Shane Claiborne

Jesus lives the challenge to our gender stereotypes and prejudices, but he is also wonderfully subversive in the ways he legitimates and empowers women. — Shane Claiborne

Jesus comes from Nazareth, a town from which folks said nothing good could come. He knew suffering from the moment he entered the world as a baby refugee born in the middle of a genocide. Jesus knew poverty and pain until he was tortured and executed on a Roman cross. This is the Jesus we are called to follow. With his coming we learn that the most dangerous place for Christians to be is in comfort and safety, detached from the suffering of others. Places that are physically safe can be spiritually deadly. — Shane Claiborne

In the Bible, God uses brothel owners, pagan kings, murderers and mercenaries as instruments of good; at one point God even speaks to a guy named Balaam through his donkey. — Shane Claiborne

In fact, the Gospel shows us change comes from the bottom rather than the top, from an old rugged cross rather than a gold royal throne. — Shane Claiborne

We've heard from people all around the world, telling us that this is their reality. People need a way to connect the sometimes really hard reality in which they wake up each morning with the movement of the Spirit. — Shane Claiborne

The future of the church is also about looking back and looking at where we see these wonderful renewals and what we can learn from the early church. I think it is a really exciting time where Phyllis Tickle said every few hundred years the church needs a rummage sale where we can get rid of some of the clutter. — Shane Claiborne

There is one big misunderstanding of the monastics leaving society. — Shane Claiborne

There are some Christians who totally disengage from politics and set their minds on heaven so much that their faith is so heavenly minded that it is no earthly good. — Shane Claiborne

Lord, in our work for justice, let us not seek after martyrdom for its own sake, but neither let us turn away from your truth because we fear suffering. Give us grace to live faithfully whatever the cost. Amen. — Shane Claiborne

Mother Theresa said it is not how much we give that is important but how much love you put into doing it. So it is not just how many units of housing we create or how good our health care system is, it is that people have someone to eat dinner with and that people have someone to hold their hand when they die. That is what we are called to do and it is the love of Christ. It is relationships. — Shane Claiborne

We must take a plunge into the darkness before we can fully appreciate the light. — Shane Claiborne

Perhaps there is no more dangerous place for a Christian to be than in safety and comfort, detached from the suffering of others. — Shane Claiborne

Most good things have been said far too many times and just need to be lived. — Shane Claiborne

Lord, remind us that it is not always agitated uprisings and nonstop activity which lead to justice, but that change often comes through the quietcommitment of a small group of people. Help us raise our small body of people to set about quietly becoming the change we want to see in the world. Amen. — Shane Claiborne

Dance until they kill you, and then we'll dance some more. — Shane Claiborne

When we begin enacting the new world, the nations will follow. Nations will not lead us to peace; it is people who will lead the nation to peace as they begin to humanize the nations. — Shane Claiborne

In an age of million-dollar mansions for God, it's hard to imagine that our God prefers tents. — Shane Claiborne

I began to wonder if anyone still believed Jesus meant thos things He said. I thought if we just stopped and asked 'what if He really meant it?' it could turn the world upside down. It is a shame christians have become so normal. — Shane Claiborne

Something mystical can happen in the course of acting together that transcends words and ideologies
people who do not agree on ideas can create common ground in the act of loving. — Shane Claiborne