I'm interested in painting the most beautifully compelling pictures and images and metaphors and stories and explanations possible that will put Jesus in language for a world that desperately needs to hear it.

In our culture, Christians are known for a number of other things... Rarely do you hear people say, 'Oh yeah, those are the people who never stop talking about love. Oh a Christian church - that's where you go if feel beaten down and kicked and someone has their boot on your neck. You go there because it's a place of healing and a place of love.'

Over the years, I've realized that I have as much in common with the performance artist, the standup comedian, the screenwriter, as I do with the theologian. I'm in an odd world where I make things and share them with people.

The myth of redemptive violence - Caesar, peace, and victory - is in people's bones so deeply, we aren't even aware of it. You crush the opposition; that's how we bring peace.

To be honest with you, I am passionate about all the people out there who want to know Jesus, they want to know God, and they are sick of a system that is hung up on a bunch of things that have nothing to do with the love of God.

We live in a world where we have friends, neighbors, brothers, sisters, aunts, uncles, people we journey with for years who are gay. And we need to love, affirm and all of us together work on the real problems that we have in the world.

When someone sets out to be controversial or provocative or shocking as an end in itself, I don't think that's a noble goal.

My experience as a pastor is lots of people have really toxic, dangerous, psychologically devastating images of God in their head, images of a God who's not good.

Suffering is traumatic and awful and we get angry and we shake our fists at the heavens and we vent and rage and weep. But in the process we discover a new tomorrow, one we never would have imagined otherwise.

Celebrity seems totally at odds with authentic community and honest, real sorts of relationships.

Every generation has to ask difficult questions about what does it mean to follow Jesus.

For a lot of people in our world today, God has become about believing the right stuff so you don't get in trouble.

I am for love, whether it's a man and a woman, a woman and a woman, a man and a man.

I believe God gives people the right to say no, to resist, to refuse, to reject, to cling to their sins, to cling to their version of their story.

I like to say that I practice militant mysticism. I'm really absolutely sure of some things that I don't quite know.

I'm very comfortable in a room with thousands of people.

If there's any place where you would express your deepest doubts, it would be church.

My parents were both very intellectually honest, straightforward, and for them, faith meant that you were fully engaged.

No one has the last word other than God.

Suffering, it turns out, demands profound imagination. A new future has to be conjured up because the old future isn't there anymore.