Walter Brueggemann

“The task of prophetic ministry is to nurture, nourish, and evoke a consciousness and perception alternative to the consciousness and perception of the dominant culture around us.”

N.T. Wright

"Don't despise the small but significant symbolic act. We live still in this modernist dream which says, "Unless you can change the whole thing, it's not even worth trying." That's not what Jesus did. Jesus did small but significant symbolic acts, each one of which was freighted with kingdom meaning. God probably doesn't want you to reorganize everything overnight -- learn to be symbol-makers and storytellers for the kingdom. Learn to model genuine humanness in your worship and your stewardship and your relationships -- the Church's task vis-a-vis the world is to model true humanness as a sign, as an invitation."

~ from The Challenge of Jesus, NT Wright

Dr. David Naugle

"For by divine design, God made people as His image and likeness with a multifaceted cognitive apparatus capable of investigating and knowing the cosmos. (...) 'Take upon us the mystery of things, as if we were God's spies.' (King Lear) So for this purpose, there is a compatibility between human knowers and the things to be known. And not only are human reason and the five sense adequate for logical analysis and empirical knowledge, but God has also blessed us with creativity, imagination, intuition, empathy, and emotion as cognitive powers in order to know the full range of the created order, including the divine."

from "Matters of Consequence",  Dr. David Naugle