John Ortberg

Jesus had a universal concern for those who suffered that transcended the rules of the ancient world.

The day people around me stop questioning my character is the day my character begins to grow vulnerable.

Churches can become places of cynicism, resistance, and pessimism.

Skill at helping people grow spiritually, like skill at playing chess, depends on understanding and valuing differences.

Congregations shaped by the Scriptures generally have preachers who are shaped by the Scriptures.

The question isn't if someone will sign up for spiritual formation; it's just who and what our spirits will be formed by.

There are no clear boundary lines between what is physiological, what is psychological, and what is spiritual. Those are language domains that make sense and have integrity but overlap significantly.

I hate how spiritual formation gets positioned as an optional pursuit for a small special interest group within the church.

I am a political junkie. During a presidential campaign, I will often buy a couple of newspapers a day just to keep up.

When the soul is understood and attended to, we can be liberated from hurry, preoccupation, unsatisfied desires, and chronic discontent.

Those of us who preach the Scriptures, along with being nourished by it ourselves, have to figure out along with our congregations how we can incarnate the gospel in our community, or we will preach to a religious ghetto.

Tithing is a bad ceiling but an excellent floor.

Pastors have historically understood their primary battle to be not the battle to build a big church, but the battle against the power of sin.

I know that those of us who go into church work are to regard ourselves as servants, are to offer our lives as a gift.

I'm not sure ministry can ever have the urgency it requires if it is not aware of evil, both externally and internally.

'Amusement' is appealing because we don't have to think; it spares us the fear and anxiety that might otherwise prey on our thoughts.

There are usually multiple messages that could be preached from the same text.

We call an obsession with having someone's approval 'co-dependency;' the Bible's word for it is idolatry. A country can be an idol. A family can be an idol.

Jesus viewed his own destiny - to be glorified in and through death - as an expression of a kind of cosmic principle: the pathway to life runs through death.

Jesus' life as a foot-washing servant would eventually lead to the adoption of humility as a widely admired virtue.