Authentic Community Quotes & Sayings

I fully recognize there is an urgent need for constructing the _strategic we-nes-in-sameness_ and promoting the _solidarity of sameness_. The sheer realization of the inextricable interconnectedness of I-ness/me-ness and we-ness/us-ness is the round for an authentic solidarity with one another in spite of and regardless of the difference. — Namsoon Kang

God's people are the stage upon which His forgiveness becomes visible. They are never more authentic than when they ask for forgiveness and forgive others. — Matt Chandler

We are animal. We are Earth. We are water. We are a community of human beings living on this planet together. And we forget that. We become disconnected, we lose our center point of gravity, that stillness that allows us to listen to life on a deeper level and to meet each other in a fully authentic and present way. — Terry Tempest Williams

I walk into so many places where Christians are gathered and I get all excited, only to find that the fellowship among these Believers is dead! There is no openness, no authenticity. — Alan De Jager

Evangelism is intrinsically relational, the outcome of love of neighbor, for to love our neighbor is to share the love of God holistically. The proper context for evangelism is authentic Christian community, where the expression of loving community is the greatest apologetic for the gospel. Holiness - being given to God and God's mission in this world - is a way of life that is expressly concerned with evangelism. — Elaine A. Heath

Believer, your life is too essential to waste on pettiness or word wars, greed or ladder climbing, anger or bitterness, fear or anxiety, regret or disappointment. Life is too short. We must run, not walk, the way of Isaiah 58, embracing authentic faith manifested through mercy and community. Living on mission requires nothing less. It is a grand adventure, a true voyage into the kingdom of God. Would you lose days, months, years pointing fingers and quarreling, or would you rather break yokes of oppression? Imagine what would happen if we all chose the latter. — Jen Hatmaker

Wherever we are, we can call for and create these kinds of settings for authentic dialogue. This is the seedbed of social change. In a voiced community, we all flourish. But it's not easy. Revolutionary patience and persistence is required. It can be messy, it is unpredictable, and change, especially structural change takes time - time and leadership and the will of an engaged community. What is needed? In a word, courage. — Terry Tempest Williams

We're all looking for an authentic way to be engaged in the community, engaged in politics, engaged in national discussion - and so, we're clunky. We're all clunky. But it's better than not doing it. — Mona Simpson

If we are unfaithful to true self, we will extract a price from others. We will make promises we cannot keep, build houses from flimsy stuff, conjure dreams that devolve into nightmares, and other people will suffer - if we are unfaithful to true self. — Parker J. Palmer

In a world where superficial relationships are the norm, real and authentic community is refreshing. — David Bouchard

Jesus often calls us to risk. He asks us to be vulnerable, to be authentic, so others can see Him in and through us. — Mary E. DeMuth

Authentic architecture is not the incarnation of the spirit of the age but of the spirit, full stop. — Leon Krier

I am going to be blunt now, but I feel it is warranted: Christians who aren't willing to confess their faults to each other are either full of pride, or they have no clue of the power of prayer! — Alan De Jager

No matter the location of the build site, the religion, gender or ethnicity of the homeowners or volunteers, there is a sense of authentic community that links Habitat partners. It's exactly this kind of shared commitment that has sustained Habitat for three decades, and, similarly, it will be a renewed commitment that's necessary to meet the challenges ahead. I don't have to remind you that the need for decent housing is immense. Our tenacity is equally vast. — Jonathan Reckford

One trend I see is the rejection of growth for self-discovery and the pursuit of authentic community. So we keep whittling our spiritual community to a smaller and smaller and more exclusive inner circle. The problem is if the diagnoses are wrong, so will be the cure. — Erwin McManus

Someone once asked a desert father named Abba Anthony, "What must one do to please God?" The first two pieces of advice were expected: Always be aware of God's presence, and always obey God's Word. But the third was surprising: "Wherever you find yourself - do not easily leave." The idea was that community is hard, authentic friendship is hard, patience in work is hard - so leaving will always look more attractive in the short run. But over the long haul, leaving easily has a tendency to produce people who live in a pattern of giving up. Do not easily leave. — John Ortberg Jr.

I really admire Airbnb as a pioneer of the sharing economy and for building community. They've found an elegant way to help hosts make more money and for guests to have authentic experiences. It brings those people together in a unique way. — Logan Green

Disclosing one's "deep, dark secrets" makes them no less deep or dark or secret than any other petty flaw. — Alan De Jager

Millennials aren't look for a hipper Christianity ... We're looking for a truer Christianity, a more authentic Christianity. Like every generation before ours and every generation after, we're looking for Jesus - the same Jesus who can be found in the strange places he's always been found: in bread, in wine, in baptism, in the Word, in suffering, in community, and among the least of these. — Rachel Held Evans

Remember also that the great complaint carnival is not a celebration; it's a bandwagon of misery. Our complaints trivialize our experience - both at work and in our personal lives. When we complain, we disconnect. When we complain, we hold whatever or whoever we're complaining about as a shield between us. We perpetuate an old community of victimization and helplessness. But when we take the time to communicate about our fears and insecurities - our real lives - we connect on a deeper, authentic level. When we connect through this deeper humanness, we create a new community of support and possibility — Alex Pattakos

I believe that what separates us all from one another is simply society itself, or, if you like, politics. This is what raises barriers between men, this is what creates misunderstanding.
If I may be allowed to express myself paradoxically, I should say that the truest society, the authentic human community, is extra-social - a wider, deeper society, that which is revealed by our common anxieties, our desires, our secret nostalgias. The whole history of the world has been governed by nostalgias and anxieties, which political action does no more than reflect and interpret, very imperfectly. No society has been able to abolish human sadness, no political system can deliver us from the pain of living, from our fear of death, our thirst for the absolute. It is the human condition that directs the social condition, not vice versa. — Eugene Ionesco

If you are feeling constrained by a group that you belong to, ask yourself,
"How can I participate in this community and still be who I am? — Gina Greenlee

Authentic community is the sweet aroma of the gifts offered to our Lord on the day of His birth. — Alan De Jager

Celebrity seems totally at odds with authentic community and honest, real sorts of relationships. — Rob Bell

Perhaps true hangs increased the space in one's heart, creating openness that allowed for authentic community. — Wm. Paul Young

I continue to dream and pray about a revival of holiness in our day that moves forth in mission and creates authentic community in which each person can be unleashed through the empowerment of the Spirit to fulfill God's creational intentions. — John Wesley

As stripped of our ancestral knowledge as we Settlers seem to be, we defy the position of patriarchal dominance and undermine the notion of cultural superiority when we reclaim the roots of our authentic indigenity. It is our birthright as human beings to declare our true status as People of the Earth (as it is for all cultural groups), and if we collectively reject the delusional separation from nature that Empire has forced upon us, we move back into right relationship with Earth Community. Anchoring ourselves deeply into our earth-honoring culture and reclaiming our EIK (European Indigenous Knowledge) is a powerful blow against the monolith of cultural imperialism. (Page 43, Chapter 6, "We All Have IK") — Pegi Eyers

Human beings long for connection, and our sense of usefulness derives from the feeling of connectedness. When we are connected - to our own purpose, to the community around us, and to our spiritual wisdom - we are able to live and act with authentic effectiveness. — Michael Meade

An authentic response to who God is and what He's done ... What we do is useful to the extent that it provides an ability for our community to voice things back to God. If it's unsuccessful in that, then it's just self-indulgence. — Crowder

The authentic rebel knows that the silencing of all his adversaries is the last thing on earth he wishes: their extermination would deprive him and whoever else remains alive from the uniqueness, the originality, and the capacity for insight that these enemies being human also have and could share with him. If we wish the death of our enemies, we cannot talk about the community of man. In the losing of the chance for dialogue with our enemies, we are the poorer. — Rollo May

The Christian community, therefore, is that community that freely becomes oppressed, because they know that Jesus himself has defined humanity's liberation in the context of what happens to the little ones. Christians join the cause of the oppressed in the fight for justice not because of some philosophical principle of "the Good" or because of a religious feeling of sympathy for people in prison. Sympathy does not change the structures of injustice. The authentic identity of Christians with the poor is found in the claim which the Jesus-encounter lays upon their own life-style, a claim that connects the word "Christian" with the liberation of the poor. Christians fight not for humanity in general but for themselves and out of their love for concrete human beings. — James H. Cone