"Every time we gather [in worship]--even in the present--it is God who summons us in judgment and grace. It is not our devotion, praise, piety, or service that comes first, but God's service to us." - Horton (50)
"[God] comes not to help you 'become a better you,' but to kill you and raise you together with Christ as part of His redeemed body." - Horton (51)
"The gospel is good news. The message determines the medium....The method of delivery is suited to its content....Christ has not only appointed the message but also the methods, and, as we have seen, there is an inseparable connection between them." - Horton (55-56)
"Beware of pragmatism when it comes to missions, evangelism, and church planting. The question unfortunately for far too many is no longer, 'Is it true?' but 'Does it work?'" - Murphy (79)
"Our worship is a result of our theology, not in spite of our theology. The content of our theology drives both the content and form of worship, and these cannot be divorced." - Hyde (110)
"If the Sunday service aims primarily at evangelism, it will bore the saints. If it aims primarily at education, it will confuse unbelievers. But if it aims at praising the God who saves by grace, it will both instruct insiders and challenge outsiders. Good corporate worship will naturally be evangelistic." - Keller (quoted by Hyde, 153).
"In the gospel, God provides to us in Christ what He demands from us in the law." - Brown (161).
"The problem is that apart from the gospel (indicative), the law (imperative) cannot actually accomplish anything in us but death and despair." - Horton (quoted by Brown, 163).
"Contextualization has always been a challenge for the church. The question is how do we adapt the gospel to a surrounding culture without compromise, on one hand, and irrelevance, on the other?" - Grotenhuis (261).
"In the 1920s...J. Gresham Machen was already issuing the complaint that the obsession with 'applied Christianity' was so pervasive that soon there would be little Christianity to apply." - Horton (274).
"The gospel that has always been strange in every culture, for largely the same reasons, is still strange to us and to our neighbors. Its relevance lies not in its repetition of familiar platitudes of natural religion, sentiment, and morality but in its disturbing and liberating power to convert." - Horton (279).
"Paul's prescription is not to accomodate the gospel to this context, but to confront the context with the gospel." - Horton (280).
"We must learn to speak our own language again and take our cues from the practices God has instituted for His own work among us as He creates the kind of community that is as strange as its gospel." - Horton (281).
Giving Up Gimmicks: Reclaiming Youth Ministry from an Entertainment Culture