“if there is no light by which we see, no Great Story that illumines our days—and no Storyteller—then we have no source… — Sarah Arthur Light Copy Share Image
“Youth in our Sunday school class can repeat almost verbatim some obscure parable we dramatized last year, and yet they forget the… — Sarah Arthur Last year Copy Share Image
“Just because your faith is shaken doesn’t mean the faith is shaken. The eternal truths of the Kingdom aren’t altered or affected… — Sarah Arthur Faith Copy Share Image
“If their imaginations are starved, you feed them; if they are thirsty, you give them something to drink. Trust the Spirit to… — Sarah Arthur Nurturing Copy Share Image
“To respect someone means to treat their ideas, personal space, belongings, and needs as equal in importance to your own, while to… — Sarah Arthur Christianity Copy Share Image
“writes Madeleine L’Engle, “in kairos we are completely un-self-conscious and yet paradoxically far more real than we can ever be when we… — Sarah Arthur Self conscious Copy Share Image
“every church can treat each discipleship class and each worship service as an opportunity for continual rehearsal of what the words, stories,… — Sarah Arthur Christian community Copy Share Image
“Part of the magic of the imagination is that it can conjure something out of nothing except the simple medium of words… — Sarah Arthur Experiencing Copy Share Image
“To those of us who pride ourselves on being “informal,” I’d encourage us to consider what story we could possibly be telling… — Sarah Arthur Next generation Copy Share Image
“Christians swim in metaphor like fish in the sea. Spiritual formation requires some measure of analogical or imaginative ability, since we are,… — Sarah Arthur Christian Copy Share Image
“But when a confirmand stands up in front of our congregation on Confirmation Sunday, we’re not asking her to talk about what… — Sarah Arthur Confirmation Copy Share Image
“As I look back on my seven years in full-time youth ministry, the experiences that were the most formative for youth weren’t… — Sarah Arthur Youth Ministry Copy Share Image
“As we already said, authors receive their ideas from somewhere; and in the case of holy scriptures, that somewhere is the mind… — Sarah Arthur Bible Copy Share Image
“The youth-pastor-as-bard is charged with expressing the language, narrative, and culture of the kingdom to listeners who think they already know what… — Sarah Arthur Bard Copy Share Image
“Funny how it all turns to theological babble the more we try to identify just exactly what we’re talking about with this… — Sarah Arthur Business Copy Share Image
“The idea behind reciting a creed is reasonably simple. If you do not say the right lines, you may not be in… — Sarah Arthur Creed Copy Share Image
“No man is saved by his imagination,” quipped nineteenth-century Scottish preacher George Morrison. “It is a question if any man is saved… — Sarah Arthur Saved Copy Share Image
“The Bible-as-narrative takes precedence over our attempts to express Christian belief in propositional or abstract terms, which is to say the stories… — Sarah Arthur Bible Copy Share Image
“Adolescents are looking for a soul-shaking, heart-waking, world-changing God to fall in love with; and if they do not find that God… — Sarah Arthur Adolescents Copy Share Image
“In partnership with playfulness, the imagination gives us the ability to find and make purposeful patterns and even plotlines: in other words,… — Sarah Arthur Imagination Copy Share Image
“Our songs and our stories do more than persuade others that an order exists: they build the house; they weave a world;… — Sarah Arthur Music Copy Share Image
“While the Witch plays her pawn, the King sacrifices Himself, and to all appearances, the game is over. But the Lion has… — Sarah Arthur Lion Copy Share Image
“For the story that shapes a child’s universe also shapes the child—and by the child, the man thereafter. The memory of a… — Sarah Arthur Children Copy Share Image
“This is why the apostles get jailed or stoned or hauled before various proconsuls and vice-whatevers. Not because they’re advancing some kind… — Sarah Arthur Apostles Copy Share Image
“Story has staying power. We remember the illustrations from Sunday’s sermon for months afterward, but by coffee hour we’re already struggling to… — Sarah Arthur Pastor Copy Share Image
“The Christian community first came up with theological abstractions because eventually we had to speak in shorthand about the complexity of God’s… — Sarah Arthur Christian community Copy Share Image
“All of us use our imaginations when it comes to faith, and all of us struggle to stay imaginatively healthy in this… — Sarah Arthur Creativity Copy Share Image
“Tell me a story,” says the poem by Robert Penn Warren. “In this century, and moment, of mania . . . Tell… — Sarah Arthur Poetry Copy Share Image
“imagination is the image-making faculty of the intellect that helps us discover, process, and creatively express coherent meaning.” — Sarah Arthur Creatively Copy Share Image
“In the end, there is a normative story that we live into as a church: the story God is telling through scripture,… — Sarah Arthur Bible Copy Share Image
“vital role of the imagination in spiritual formation is to help a young person make meaningful connections between the church, the world,… — Sarah Arthur Imagination Copy Share Image
“like story itself, worship works: it offers experiences of transcendence and timelessness, resonance and wonder, intimacy and identity, mystery and enchantment.” — Sarah Arthur Spirituality Copy Share Image
“as Flannery O’Connor put it, “In the act of writing, one sees that the way a thing is made, controls and is… — Sarah Arthur Meaning Copy Share Image
“All fairy tales, Tolkien argued, echo the gospel of Jesus Christ in some way because the gospel is the True Story; it’s… — Sarah Arthur Christianity Copy Share Image
“We sought those experiences only story can provide, experiences that our crazy college days could never give us: timelessness, transcendence, intimacy, identity,… — Sarah Arthur Experiences Copy Share Image
“Postmoderns must have the opportunity to experience the story as a story without the gospel being continually reduced to mere message.” — Sarah Arthur Christianity Copy Share Image
“The Bible-as-story works. It works in all the ways that story itself works: in offering transcendence, identity, intimacy, timelessness, wonder, and so… — Sarah Arthur Bible Copy Share Image
“Unfortunately, church leadership too often capitulates to youthful and parental pressure that would make confirmation as fluffy, fun, and noncommittal as possible.” — Sarah Arthur Leadership Copy Share Image
“Youth are natural-born storytellers. Our task in discipleship training is to steer them into a particular storytelling tradition—that is, the narrative, language,… — Sarah Arthur Christian faith Copy Share Image
“C. S. Lewis said it this way: “In reading great literature I become a thousand men and yet remain myself. . .… — Sarah Arthur Books Copy Share Image
