It should probably not be a surprise to you by now that I deal with pride and jealousy in my life. (See this post on Amazon rankings as an example.) That’s probably why I hate it when God allows other teachers/writers/pastors to be good looking, witty, charming, intelligent–then, to top it all off, sometimes he even allows those same people to be sharp dressers. Man, I hate guys like that. It really ruins things for the simple schleps like me that don’t have it all together.

Way Well, Erwin McManus is one of those guys. And, regrettably, he’s released another great book–The Barbarian Way. To top it all off, they have a full-size picture of him on the cover…wearing cool clothes. They put light bulbs and life preservers on my book covers. Need I say more?

My pride issues aside, here are some of my favorite quotes from Erwin’s new book:

  • "God’s will for us is less about our comfort than it is about our contribution. God would never choose for us safety at the cost of significance."
  • "A world without God cannot wait for us to choose the safe path. If we wait for someone else to take the risk, we risk that no one will ever act and that nothing will ever be accomplished."
  • "In the civilized view of discipleship, everything and everyone moves toward the center. Discipleship is translated into standardizing everyone into the same pattern. We have equated the promise that we would be conformed into the image of Christ with a belief that all of us will be the same. Discipleship has become the mechanism for uniformity rather than uniqueness."
  • "The most civilized churches have really no practical concern for people outside their congregations. The brokenness of a lost and unbelieving world is not enough to inspire the painful changes necessary to make the church relevant to the world in which we live."

Go ahead. Fawn all over McManus and guys like Marcus Buckingham with his sickening British accent that makes all the women ooooh and ahhhhh. My wife still thinks I’m pretty cool, and that’s all that counts. That’s a bloody good thing.

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