Sermon quotes on change
William Bridges
It isn’t the changes that do you in, it’s the transitions. Change is not the same as transition. Change is situational: the new site, the new boss, the new team roles, the new policy. Transition is the psychological process people go through to come to terms with the new situation. Change is external, transition is internal.
Timothy Wilson
One of the most enduring lessons of social psychology is that behavior change often precedes changes in attitude and feelings.
Cornford’s Law
Nothing is ever done until everyone is convinced that it ought to be done, and has been convinced for so long that it is now time to do something else.
Jen Hatmaker
It is incredibly tempting to disparage people who didn’t “change” with us. I have criticized the words of others when the same words came out of my own mouth just two years earlier, which is incredibly un-self-aware. We need to get better at permission and grace. What is right for us may not be right for everyone, and we don’t have to burn down the house simply because we’ve moved our things out. Other good folks probably still live there, and until one minute ago, we did too. We can bless the honorable parts of that house and express sincere gratitude for what we learned under its roof. It is unwise and shortsighted to isolate the remaining inhabitants, because there is a lot of life left, and as it turns out, we are all still neighbors.
Of Mess and Moxie: Wrangling Delight Out of This Wild and Glorious Life
Ronald A. Heifetz, Marty Linsky, Alexander Grashow
You know the adage “People resist change.” It is not really true. People are not stupid. People love change when they know it is a good thing. No one gives back a winning lottery ticket. What people resist is not change per se, but loss. When change involves real or potential loss, people hold on to what they have and resist the change.
Peter Marshall
Lord, where we are wrong, make us willing to change; where we are right, make us easy to live with.
Frederick Douglass
If there is no struggle, there is no progress.
Reinhold Niebuhr
If you don’t like something, change it. If you can’t change it, change your attitude.
R.D. Laing
We live in a moment of history where change is so speeded up that we begin to see the present only when it is already disappearing.
Millard Fillmore
It is not strange… to mistake change for progress.
Leo Tolstoy
Everyone thinks of changing the world, but no one thinks of changing himself.
Reinhold Niebuhr
God grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, the courage to change the things I can, and the wisdom to know the difference.
Anatole France
All changes, even the most longed for, have their melancholy; for what we leave behind us is a part of ourselves; we must die to one life before we can enter another.
C.S. Lewis
It may be hard for an egg to turn into a bird: it would be a jolly sight harder for it to learn to fly while remaining an egg. We are like eggs at present. And you cannot go on indefinitely being just an ordinary, decent egg. We must be hatched or go bad.
Harry Emerson Fosdick
Christians are supposed not merely to endure change, nor even to profit by it, but to cause it.
Mignon McLaughlin
It’s the most unhappy people who most fear change.
Mark Twain
The only person who likes change is a wet baby.
W.H. Auden
We would rather be ruined than changed
We would rather die in our dread
Than climb the cross of the moment
And let our illusions die.
Faith Baldwin
Time is a dressmaker specializing in alterations.
Dobby Gibson
We’re all struggling to say the same old things in new and different ways. And so we must praise the new and different ways.
Brett Hansen
Jesus insists on this willingness to change, because he knows that self-righteousness will separate us from God forever. We’re all at high risk of becoming sick with self-righteousness, and if we don’t submit to his healing, it’s terminal.
The Truth about Us: The Very Good News about How Very Bad We Are, Baker Publishing Group.
Victor Hugo
You have enemies? Why, it is the story of every man who has done a great deed or created a new idea. It is the cloud which thunders around everything that shines. Fame must have enemies, as light must have gnats.
Allen Tappe
Change will happen whether you like it or not. Positive change, however, requires choice. You can choose to accept natural change or you can choose to fight it. . . . The power to choose is yours. The responsibility for choice is yours. You have no one else to blame for the way you choose to respond to life. It is your deal.
Ed Stetzer and Mike Dodson
The majority of church members need to be involved in the change or it will soon produce resistance.
Comeback Churches: How 300 Churches Turned Around and Yours Can, Too, B&H Books, 2007.
Anne Lamott
The secret is that God loves us exactly the way we are .. . and that he loves us too much to let us stay like this.
Traveling Mercies
Ed Stetzer and Mike Dodson
Many churches never experience a comeback because they want the community to change while they remain the same. But comeback churches are different. They realize that no one remains the same when they’ve experienced a fresh touch from God.
Comeback Churches: How 300 Churches Turned Around and Yours Can, Too, B&H Books, 2007.
Addison D. Bevere
We were created for goodness and perfection. That’s why we innovate, progress, and change. But if our progress loses its purpose, it cannibalizes our humanity, leaving us distracted and disoriented.
Addison D. Bevere
If innovation and change are not fulfilling our need to connect, to belong, to express, to love, to feel alive, how can they satisfy?
Viktor Frankl
When we are no longer able to change a situation, we are challenged to change ourselves.
Man’s Search for Meaning (Boston, MA: Beach Press, 2006), 112.
Heraclitus
No man ever steps in the same river twice, for it’s not the same river and he’s not the same man.
Thomas à Kempis
Be not angry that you cannot make others as you wish them to be, since you cannot make yourself as you wish to be.
Tony Robbins
Change happens when the pain of staying the same is greater than the pain of change.”
“Change happens . . . ,” Goodreads, accessed June 26, 2021.
D. Michael Lindsay
At root, change means the partial or total abandonment of the norms, safeties, and patterns of behavior that make our lives manageable.
Taken from Hinge Moments by D. Michael Lindsay. Copyright (c) 2021 by D. Michael Lindsay. Used by permission of InterVarsity Press. www.ivpress.com
D. Michael Lindsay
There are at least three kinds of changes we face: those we wouldn’t choose but we can see coming, those we choose ourselves, and those that flood our homes at two in the morning.
Taken from Hinge Moments by D. Michael Lindsay. Copyright (c) 2021 by D. Michael Lindsay. Used by permission of InterVarsity Press. www.ivpress.com
D. Michael Lindsay
I have come to understand that to study leadership is to study the science of transitions.
Taken from Hinge Moments by D. Michael Lindsay. Copyright (c) 2021 by D. Michael Lindsay. Used by permission of InterVarsity Press. www.ivpress.com
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