John Ortberg
John Ortberg
John Ortberg, Jr.is an evangelical Christian author, speaker, and senior pastor of Menlo Park Presbyterian Church in Menlo Park, California, an evangelical church with more than 4,000 members. Ortberg has published many books including the 2008 ECPA Christian Book Award winner When the Game is Over, It All Goes Back in the Box, and the 2002 Christianity Today Book Award winner If You Want to Walk on Water, You've Got to Get Out of the Boat. Another of his publications,...
NationalityAmerican
ProfessionClergyman
Date of Birth5 May 1957
CountryUnited States of America
Jesus is why women have traveled continents, spent decades learning a strange language so they could translate the Gospel, planting churches, caring for the sick, educating the illiterate, and marching for the oppressed.
Jesus had a universal concern for those who suffered that transcended the rules of the ancient world.
Real spiritual authority has to do with the truth of the actual words being spoken, and the spirit of the person behind the words. Really, authority is about truth: honest-living truth.
Pastors have historically understood their primary battle to be not the battle to build a big church, but the battle against the power of sin.
God has decided, for his own good reasons, that people are not transformed outside of community.
Some leaders are not intimidated by opposition; they actually thrive on it. It wakes them up. It energizes them. It calls them to battle. It causes them to mobilize their thoughts and energy.
My wife is one of the most extroverted people I know. She could out-talk Oprah and Joyce Meyer simultaneously.
Churches need to figure out how they will address the spiritual lives of their staffs and leadership teams.
Skill at helping people grow spiritually, like skill at playing chess, depends on understanding and valuing differences.
Evil exists. Evil is real. One of the hallmarks of evil is that it seeks to convince its victims that it exists 'out there.'
I need an inspiration that is grounded in reality while thoroughly transcendent.
I'm not sure ministry can ever have the urgency it requires if it is not aware of evil, both externally and internally.
In the context of worship, amusement is a waste of time and a waste of life, and therefore a form of sin.
Gratitude is what we radiate when we experience grace, and the soul was made to run on grace the way a 747 runs on rocket fuel.