Erwin McManus Quotes

“I've worked in the business world and, as a futurist, the whole 20 years that I've led at Mosaic.”

— Erwin McManus

“I have an incredible confidence in the resilience of the human spirit and the creative ability of the Holy Spirit. So, if you can get people asking the right questions, it really will start moving in the right direction.”

— Erwin McManus

I think Christianity is the same as Buddhism and Hinduism - whenever a religion begins to say that these are the things you have to do to be loved by God, you have a religion.

— Erwin McManus

“When we look at history, we see history is made up of the heroes of their times. Yet, somehow we miss this when we put on the lens of the Scriptures.”

— Erwin McManus

“How many people just get up on Monday and do the same thing they've done every single Monday - go to work and just turn on route automatic and no longer have any meaning in their life?”

— Erwin McManus

“We are constantly learning and growing and changing. We are really an experiment. We are endeavoring to discover if a community of faith can exist purely for the good of others.”

— Erwin McManus

I think we are all trying to figure out what it means to be the Church as opposed to just doing church.

— Erwin McManus

Los Angeles has been known as the center of creativity but has often been equally known for the absence of spirituality.

— Erwin McManus

“Our job is not to change people; our job is to connect people to Jesus, and it's Jesus' job to change people.”

— Erwin McManus

“People outside of the faith really appreciate Mosaic and really love what we're doing.”

— Erwin McManus

“Promise Keepers was looking for a movement that can actualize the hope of Jesus, the hope that we see. And 'Uprising' was what they were looking for.”

— Erwin McManus

“We focus, in some ways, on how to disengage Jesus and the Bible from everything people know about Christianity as a religion.”

— Erwin McManus

We're a part of the insurrection, trying to turn Christianity upside down. We're an experimental church: God's research and development arm.

— Erwin McManus

While we would love to have no criticism, probably if we had no critique, we wouldn't be doing anything meaningful.

— Erwin McManus

“For Christians, they need to access the power of Jesus and not look at Christianity as a religion. It is our Lord Jesus that makes you change, and Christians need to actualize it and put it into practice.”

— Erwin McManus

I hope my greatest contribution will be to try to extract principles of truth that will cause us to live our lives in a more effective way and to advance Jesus' purpose in the world.

— Erwin McManus

“I love what Monet, Picasso, Van Gogh and Jesus all said - that love is really the driving principle of the creative act. In fact, they would say that great art is always inspired by love.”

— Erwin McManus

“If we keep asking the wrong questions, we are just going to get better wrong answers. The solution to lack of community isn't to give up on the community.”

— Erwin McManus

If you come at the Bible as if it's a document of encyclopedic information, you've pretty much killed any kind of life change in a seeker and unbeliever.

— Erwin McManus

“My primary assessment would be because American Christians tend to be incredibly self-indulgent, so they see the church as a place there for them to meet their needs and to express faith in a way that is meaningful for them.”

— Erwin McManus

“One of the things you'll discover ... as you listen to your own soul is that you spend a great amount of your life trying to bring meaning to your own life. And, by the way, most people are not going to church, so the place they're actually trying to find meaning in their life is at work.”

— Erwin McManus

“So much of what comes out of the faith community seems so dour and somber, and we want to say, 'Hey, we're real people. You can be a person of faith and really enjoy life and laugh.'”

— Erwin McManus

“The Bible has been trapped in modernity. Everything has to work perfectly. And if everything doesn't fit in a Lego-oriented functionality, then we don't deal with it as Christians.”

— Erwin McManus

“The reality is that every human being is placed on this planet, and one of the things that drives humans is their need for meaning, and if you can make every job meaningful, then you will guarantee that every job will be done to its highest level of excellence.”

— Erwin McManus

“There is something powerful about singing to God as an act of worship, but it is time to reframe our perspective and our language to genuinely encompass all of life as worship.”

— Erwin McManus

“True religion always moves us to serve others and to give our lives to see those oppressed find freedom.”

— Erwin McManus

“If God imagined you at birth, what makes you think He's stopped imagining you now.”

— Erwin McManus

“If our children are going to walk away from Christ, we need to raise them in such a way that they understand that to walk away from Jesus is to walk away from a life of faith, risk and adventure and to choose a life that boring, mundane and ordinary”

— Erwin McManus

“Deeper than our instinct to live is our longing to be alive.”

— Erwin McManus

If you were meant to fly, not even running really fast is that impressive.

— Erwin McManus

“Faith is the determination to create with our lives what only our hearts can conceive.”

— Erwin McManus

“The church is not here to meet our needs. We are the church here to meet the needs of the world.”

— Erwin McManus

“The limitations you are willing to accept establish the boundaries of your existence.”

— Erwin McManus

“Gratitude changes your perspective about life. You see the future, experience the present, and remember the past in a dramatically different way.”

— Erwin McManus

“When you live your life knowing the mission and calling and voice of God in your soul and you know where that compass is driving you forward, you will become a rare commodity in a world searching for direction.”

— Erwin McManus

The epicenter of creativity and imagination should be the Church, reflecting the character and glory of God.

— Erwin McManus

“The Barbarian Way was, in some sense, trying to create a volatile fuel to get people to step out and act. It's pretty hard to get a whole group of people moving together as individuals who are stepping into a more mystical, faith-oriented, dynamic kind of experience with Christ. So, I think Barbarian Way was my attempt to say, Look, underneath what looks like invention, innovation and creativity is really a core mysticism that hears from God, and what is fuelling this is something really ancient. That's what was really the core of The Barbarian Way.”

— Erwin McManus

“When we lack integrity, we use power to control. When we lead with integrity, we use power to bless.”

— Erwin McManus

“We were created to be expressions of the goodness and wholeness of God.”

— Erwin McManus

Churches all over the country have decided they love their traditions more than their children.

— Erwin McManus

The Christian faith grew through story - not text. Only later did the stories become Scripture. While the Scripture must be held in the highest regard, we must not neglect the power of story.

— Erwin McManus

“People who are fully alive look out of their minds to those who simply exist.”

— Erwin McManus

When we stop believing the world can become a better place, when we stop caring about the lives and conditions of others, we lose a part of ourselves.

— Erwin McManus

“Two thousand years ago, God started a revolt against the religion He started. So don't ever put it past God to cause a groundswell movement against churches and Christian institutions that bear His name.”

— Erwin McManus

“I guess when I really think about it, God's voice sounds a lot like my voice.”

— Erwin McManus

“The future awaits those with the courage to create it.”

— Erwin McManus

“Jesus' death wasn't to free us from dying, but to free us from the fear of death. Jesus came to liberate us so that we could die up front and then live. Jesus Christ wants to take us to places where only dead men and women can go.”

— Erwin McManus

“All the evidence you need to prove God is waiting within you to be discovered.”

— Erwin McManus

Your soul craves truth, beauty, wonder, love. Your soul craves to dream, to imagine, and even simply to understand. Your soul craves to connect, to commune, to create.

— Erwin McManus

This thing that haunts you, that never seems satisfied, the cravings in your soul that you are unable to satiate through all the success that the world can bring this is your soul screaming for God.

— Erwin McManus