quote · Legacy record
Family is the one human institution we have no choice over. We get in simply by being born, and as a result we are involuntarily thrown together with a menagerie of strange and unlike people. Church calls for another step: to voluntarily choose to band together with a strange menagerie because of a common bond in Jesus Christ. I have found that such a community more resembles a family than any other human institution. Henri Nouwen once defined a community as “a place where the person you least want to live with always lives.” His definition applies equally to the group that gathers each Thanksgiving and the group that congregates each Sunday morning. (p. 64-65, Church: Why Bother?)
Family is the one human institution we have no choice over. We get in simply by being born, and as a result we are involuntarily thrown together with a menagerie of strange and unlike people. Church calls for another step: to voluntarily choose to band together with a strange menagerie because of a common bond in Jesus Christ. I have found that such a community more resembles a family than any other human institution. Henri Nouwen once defined a community as “a place where the person you least want to live with always lives.” His definition applies equally to the group that gathers each Thanksgiving and the group that congregates each Sunday morning. (p. 64-65, Church: Why Bother?)
Approximate author period: c. 1949 AD · modern
Meaning not yet available
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- Author or tradition
- Philip Yancey
Attribution: attributed - Country attributed
- Not established
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- Approximate author period: c. 1949 AD · modern
Approximate author-period anchor from documented birth year 1949; activity date not established; Wikidata Q552966, https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q552966 (accessed 2026-10-08). Not a quotation composition date.
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Supplied reference C; CSV row 292560; supplied attribution, independently unverified
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