He offers rest. (Buchanan)

"A typical response to threat and burden is to want to flee it. It's evacuation as the cure for trouble. If only I could get away is our mantra. Then I would be safe. Then I could enjoy my life. But what we find is that flight becomes captivity: once we begin to flee the things that threaten and burden us, there is no end to fleeing.
God's solution is surprising. He offers rest. But it's a unique form of rest. It's rest in him in the midst of our threats and our burdens. It's discovering, as David did in seasons of distress, that God is our rock and refuge right in the thick of our situation.
God, in other words, offers something better than our fantasy: he offers himself. 'Come to Me all who are weary and heavy-laden, and I will give you rest' (Matt. 11:28 NASB)."

—Mark Buchanan, The Rest of God, (Nashville, TN: Thomas Nelson, 2006), pp. 17-18.

Photo info:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/diebmx/ / CC BY-NC 2.0

Concrete Expression to Deepest Convictions (Buchanan)

"I was converted within a Low Church tradition, where the building's walls are stark, the music simple, the prayers clumsy and direct, made up as you pray them. I have only ever belonged to that tradition. And so early on I picked up the tradition's historic suspicion of High Church, where God is approached through a sometimes elaborate system of symbol and ritual--robes and candles and prayer books and lectionaries--and almost everything is scripted.
That scripting is liturgy.
Yet over time I began to realize that the Low Church is just as bound by liturgy as any church, and maybe more so because we think we're not. The Low Church enshrines--makes a liturgy of--austerity, spontaneity, informality. And we have our unwritten but nonetheless rigorously observed codes and protocols. We love our traditions, even our rigmarole, every bit as much as the next guy, only ours is more earthy, rustic, folksy.
So I changed my mind about liturgy. It certainly can become dull and rote, but so can anything--water polo, rose gardening, kite flying, even lovemaking. Even fly-fishing. Just as often, though, maybe more so, liturgy can enrich these things. At its best, liturgy comprises the gestures by which we honor transcendent reality. It helps us give concrete expression to deepest convictions. It gives us choreography for things unseen and allows us to brush heaven among the shades of earth."

—Mark Buchanan, The Rest of God, (Nashville, TN: Thomas Nelson, 2006), p. 8.

Missional in the Bible Belt

Here: http://gospeldrivenchurch.blogspot.com/2009/09/missional-in-bible-belt.html

Little Room for Community (Donovan)

A missionary facing an alien pagan culture, to be an efficient instrument of the gospel, has to have the courage to cast off the idols of the tribe, of the tribe he came from. There are many idols, but two which, I believe, particularly mesmerize the Western church, are individualism on the one hand, and love of organization on the other.
We tend to interpret Christianity either from the individual or organizational viewpoint. The love of organization and power structures has led to our ideas of lord bishops and pontiff popes and national associations of the right and of the left and ... a plethora of meetings and chapters and synods and councils and committees. Individualism has its obsessions also: individual responsibility, individual morality, individual vocation to the priesthood, self-fulfillment, individual holiness and salvation. Individualism on one side, and organization on the other, with little room for community in between.

—Vincent J. Donovan, Christianity Rediscovered, (Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books, 1978), p. 68.

John Wesley on the Impact of Reading

“What has exceedingly hurt you in time past, nay, and I fear, to this day, is want of reading. I scarce ever knew a preacher who read so little. And perhaps, by neglecting it, you have lost the taste for it. Hence your talent in preaching does not increase. It is just the same as it was seven years ago. It is lively, but not deep; there is little variety; there is no compass of thought. Reading only can supply this, with meditation and daily prayer. You wrong yourself greatly by omitting this. You can never be a deep preacher without it, any more than a thorough Christian. Oh begin! Fix some part of every day for private exercises. You may acquire the taste which you have not; what is tedious at first will afterwards be pleasant. Whether you like it or no, read and pray daily. It is for your life; there is no other way; else you will be a trifler all your days, and a pretty, superficial preacher. Do justice to your own soul; give it time and means to grow. Do not starve yourself any longer. Take up your cross and be a Christian altogether. Then will all the children of God rejoice (not grieve) over you; and in particular yours.”

John Wesley, writing to a young preacher, quoted in D. A. Carson and John D. Woodbridge, Letters Along The Way, page 169