Skye Jethani Quotes

In less than a century, Christians have gone from opposing over-consumption at Christmas to demanding it be done in Christ's name alone.

Let's break free from artificial relationships with unfeeling, uncaring, unloving institutions that cannot contain the unpredictable wind of God's Spirit, and focus instead on building soulish connections with real people filled with the breath of God.

The influence of consumerism has led us to confuse institutions for people, means for the mission, and programs for the Spirit's power.

Properly understood, the church is not an institution. It is the community of Jesus' followers on earth - men, women, an children filled with God's Spirit, living in communion with him, one another, and the world.

Consumer Christianity seeks to construct programs to capture God's power and produce predetermined outcomes, rather than surrender to the mysterious movement of God's grace which, like the wind or fire, is beyond our control.

Jesus says God isn't like a gumball machine; he's more like the wind: unpredictable, uncontrollable, no more containable than wind in a bottle.

The personification of institutions in our culture means the institutional church, rather than the flesh-and-blood people of God, has become the vehicle of God's mission in the world. This is salvation via institution, paradise via programs.

Advertising has formed us to give our affection not only to the products we consume, but also to the personified corporations that supply them.

We have all swallowed the cultural punch that believes institutions are both the means and the end of God's mission in the world.

Our longing to pass through the gates of eternity will not be satisfied by any external experience, but by the dwelling of God within.

The alternative to prefabricated-experience spirituality is what has been practiced by Christians for centuries: prayer.

When we expect transformation to occur through external experiences, we are opting for an inferior model of spiritual formation.

Ministries that focus on manufacturing spiritual experiences may actually be retarding spiritual growth by making people experience-dependent.

Christ's true people are branded with love.

Approaching Christianity as a brand explains why the majority of people who identify themselves as Christians live no differently than other Americans yet spend enormous amounts of money on Christian products.