Dwell Quotes

“Koinonia is often translated by the word “fellowship,” but that is too thin a word for many of us (especially those with memories of bad potluck dinners in the fellowship hall). Koinonia is a rich word that refers to shared life lived in intimate community. It is sharing one another’s joys and burdens. It is walking together in the details of daily life. Apart from a deep experience of koinonia, our corporate worship gathering too easily devolves into a kind of individual spectator experience that we all happen to have in the same time and place week after week.”
― Barry D Jones, Dwell: Life with God for the World

“A spirituality that is not inherently missional is a truncated vision of life with the triune God. At the same time, any vision of missional life or missional church that neglects the cultivation of dynamic dependence on and intimacy with the living God runs the risk of becoming mere activism. Spirituality and mission belong inseparably together, like breathing in and breathing out.”
― Barry D. Jones, Dwell: Life with God for the World

“Worship that doesn’t lead us to give our lives away for the glory of God and the good of other people hasn’t been true worship.”
― Barry D Jones, Dwell: Life with God for the World

“But to be reminded that human beings are created to worship God also involves being reminded that proper worship entails a certain kind of life. Our identity entails a vocation, a calling, to represent the reign of God. To be made in the image of God is not so much a property of our humanity as it is a task, a mission.”
― Barry D Jones, Dwell: Life with God for the World

“One great threat to authentic Christian worship that many congregations face in North America today is that our gatherings become therapeutic rather than transformative. It’s far easier to sing songs, pray prayers and preach sermons that help us feel better about ourselves and the world than to sing songs, pray prayers and preach sermons that call for deep change in us so that we might become agents of deep change in the world.”
― Barry D Jones, Dwell: Life with God for the World

“It’s far easier to sing songs, pray prayers and preach sermons that help us feel better about ourselves and the world than to sing songs, pray prayers and preach sermons that call for deep change in us so that we might become agents of deep change in the world.”
― Barry D Jones, Dwell: Life with God for the World

“One great threat to authentic Christian worship that many congregations face in North America today is that our gatherings become therapeutic rather than transformative.”
― Barry D Jones, Dwell: Life with God for the World

“to be reminded that human beings are created to worship God also involves being reminded that proper worship entails a certain kind of life. Our identity entails a vocation, a calling, to represent the reign of God. To be made in the image of God is not so much a property of our humanity as it is a task, a mission.”
― Barry D Jones, Dwell: Life with God for the World

“Koinonia is a rich word that refers to shared life lived in intimate community. It is sharing one another’s joys and burdens. It is walking together in the details of daily life. Apart from a deep experience of koinonia, our corporate worship gathering too easily devolves into a kind of individual spectator experience that we all happen to have in the same time and place week after week.”
― Barry D Jones, Dwell: Life with God for the World

“In one of the periods of history when the church’s relationship to the surrounding cultural environment was at its most hostile, the church grew by a remarkable rate of approximately forty percent per decade.1 According to one Christian apologist writing around the year 200, “Beauty of life causes strangers to join the ranks. . . . We do not preach great things; we live them.”2 Theirs was a life with God for the world. And the world noticed.”
― Barry D Jones, Dwell: Life with God for the World