Only God is awesome.

— Shane Claiborne

Only Jesus would be crazy enough to suggest that if you want to become the greatest, you should become the least. Only Jesus would declare God's blessing on the poor rather than on the rich and would insist that it's not enough to just love your friends. I just began to wonder if anybody still believed Jesus meant those things he said.

— Shane Claiborne

People always want to define you by what you do. I started saying: ‘I am not too concerned with what I’m going to do. I am more interested in whom I am becoming. Furthermore, I want to be a lover of God and people.

— Shane Claiborne

Perhaps one of the most powerful things the contemporary church could do is to confess our sins to the world, they humbly get on our knees and repent for the terrible things we have done in the name of God.

— Shane Claiborne

Protesters are still on the fringes like satellites, revolving around the system. But prophets and poets lead us into a new world, beyond simply yelling at the old one.

— Shane Claiborne

Someday war and poverty will be crazy, and we will wonder how the world allowed such things to exist.

— Shane Claiborne

The church is like Noah's ark. It stinks, but if you get out of it, you'll drown.

— Shane Claiborne

The church was an international institution long before globalization.

— Shane Claiborne

The lives of the thirty thousand children who die of starvation each day is like 6 September 11ths every single day, a silent tsunami that happens every week.

— Shane Claiborne

There are congregations on nearly every corner. I'm not sure if we need more churches. What we need is a church. I say one church is better than fifty. I have tried to remove the plural form churches from my vocabulary, training myself to think of the church as Christ did, and as the early Christians did. The metaphors for her are always singular – a body, a bride. I heard one gospel preacher say it like this, as he really wound up and broke a sweat: "We've got to unite ourselves as one body. Because Jesus is coming back, and he's coming back for a bride not a harem.

— Shane Claiborne