Church Quotes - Page 6

For the Church, the option for the poor is primarily a theological category rather than a cultural, sociological, political, or philosophical one. God shows the poor "his first mercy." This divine preference has consequences for the faith life of all Christians, because we are called to have "this mind...which was in Jesus Christ" (Phil. 2:5). Inspired by this, the Church has made an option for the poor, which is understood as a "special form of primacy in the exercise of Christian charity, to which the whole tradition of the Church bears witness." This option - as Benedict XVI has taught - "is implicit in our Christian faith in a God who became poor for us, so as to enrich us with his poverty." This is why I want a Church that is poor and for the poor. They have much to teach us. Not only do they share in the sensus fidei, but in their difficulties they know the suffering Christ. We need to let ourselves be evangelized by them. The new evangelization is an invitation to acknowledge the saving power at work in their lives and to put them at the center of the Church's pilgrim way. We are called to find Christ in them, to lend our voice to their causes, but also to be their friends, to listen to them, to speak for them, and to embrace the mysterious wisdom that God wishes to share with us through them.
Pope Francis
The light of love proper to faith can illumine the question of our own time-concerning truth. Truth, nowadays, is often reduced to the subjective authenticity of the individual, valid only to the life of the individual. A common truth intimidates us, for we identify it with the intransigent demands of totalitarian systems. But if truth is a truth of love, if it is a truth disclosed in personal encounter with the Other and with others, then it can be set free from its enclosure in individuals and become part of the common good. As a truth of love, it is not one that can be imposed by force; it is not a truth that stifles the individual. Since it is born of love, it can penetrate to the heart, to the personal core of each man and woman. Clearly, then, faith is not intransigent but grows in respectful coexistences with others. One who believes may not be presumptuous; on the contrary, truth leads to humility, because believers know that, rather than ourselves possessing truth, it is truth that embraces and possesses us. Far from making us inflexible, the security of faith sets us on a journey; it enables witness and dialogue with all.
Pope Francis
A Black church that isn't inherently revolutionary is irrelevant.
Darnell Lamont Walker
As religious leaders, we are called to be true "people of dialogue," to cooperate in building peace not as intermediaries but as authentic mediators. Intermediaries seek to give everyone a discount ultimately in order to gain something for themselves. However, the mediator is one who retains nothing for himself but rather spends himself generously until he is consumed, knowing that the only gain is peace. Each one of us is called to be an artisan of peace, by uniting and not dividing, by extinguishing hatred and not holding on to it, by opening paths to dialogue and not by constructing new walls! Let us dialogue and meet one another in order to establish a culture of dialogue in the world, a culture of encounter.
Pope Francis
Don't ever marry a person you don't truly love. Don't believe what people often say, that the love will develop in future.Those whose love develop in future are very few. If after a period of time you've been dating and the love doesn't seem to grow, I strongly advise you have to re-think.
Prince Akwarandu
We cannot become starched Christians, those overeducated Christians who speak of theological matters as they calmly sip their tea. No! We must become courageous Christians and go in search of the people who are the very flesh of Christ! ... This is the [issue]: the flesh of Christ, touching the flesh of Christ, taking upon ourselves this suffering for the poor.
Pope Francis
He warned that any church that ignored reality would not survive to enjoy the divine.
Dan Brown
The Dutch Reformed Church was the state church of the apartheid regime and a fervent supporter of apartheid; it inspired and condoned rape, abduction and murder.
Dauglas Dauglas
Anybody body can be a Church goer, but there is a difference of "GOD" being in them then they being in the WORLD.
Henry Johnson Jr
Going to the extreme of inviting and welcoming people into your church in order to hear you condemn them or to know from your policy that you condemn them is not much better than bullying.
Christina Engela
It has been a great source of sadness to me to see two schools of thought within the evangelical church over many decades. Those who come glorying in manifestations of power sometimes seem dismissive of those whom they regard as “cold theologians.” I once heard a man speaking at a large conference say that theology was the enemy of the church and if only we could abandon doctrinal perspectives, the church would be a happier place. What tragic nonsense! We also see and hear those who love theological insight and savour the doctrines of Scripture expressing equally dismissive remarks about Christians who are enjoying God’s power, as though they were mere children preoccupied with experience. How I long for a recovery of true biblical Christianity where the apostle Paul, who wrote the book of Romans, also raised the dead! It seems that profound theology and great signs and wonders happily cohabited in Paul’s life and ministry.
Terry Virgo
The renewal of the Church will come from a new type of monasticism which only has in common with the old an uncompromising allegiance to the Sermon on the Mount. It is high time people banded together to do this.
Dietrich Bonhoeffer
When did we, as Christ followers, start to think that the church exists for us? When did we forget that we are the church? And that we're here for the world?
Craig Groeschel
In both roles, as journalist and as organizer, I'd learn that it's possible to fall in love with a revolution—then doubt it, fight with it, lose faith in it, and return with a sense of humor and a harder, lasting love. I would have to learn the same thing about church when I was much older, and it would be no easier.
Sara Miles
Sometimes I cannot say much about why I go to church other than what people who go to the gym say: I always feel better once I'm there; I feel better after; it is always good for me, not good in a take-your-vitamins way, in a chidingly moralistic way, but in a palpable way.
Lauren F. Winner
Mary was able to turn a stable into a home for Jesus, with poor swaddling clothes and an abundance of love. She is the handmaid of the Father who sings his praises. She is the friend who is ever concerned that wine not be lacking in our lives. She is the woman whose heart was pierced by a sword and who understands all our pain.
Pope Francis
What I think we as the church lack, though, is a place to talk about how things really are right now. In our desire to be an inspiration to one another we often veil what is true, because what is true is not always inspirational. It's not easy to watch or personally experience a marriage on the verge of divorce, or a child battling cancer, or a betrayal of the worst kind, or dreams lost in the dust, or overwhelming feelings of despair or emptiness. But these things are real. And hurting believers whose lives are in tatters need real help. If we were able to put aside our need for approval long enough to be authentic, then, surely, we would be living as the church.
Sheila Walsh
God wants the church to become an authority to bring order, righteousness and purity to the country
Sunday Adelaja
The church is called to activate the position of the believers in saving the nation for God’s glory
Sunday Adelaja
The church should become a place of regeneration and reformation
Sunday Adelaja
God allows problem to come so that the church can discover and declare Her position
Sunday Adelaja
The redemption of a country depends on the position of the church
Sunday Adelaja
If the church doesn’t start fighting corruption, it will keep flourishing in the country
Sunday Adelaja
The church’s task is to open people’s eyes so that they can see that there is nothing higher than God
Sunday Adelaja
Representatives of the churches should help guide people in resolving their crisis
Sunday Adelaja
The church must become a breeding ground for deliverers
Sunday Adelaja
The church is called by God to become God’s agent of deliverance in every nation
Sunday Adelaja
For church buildings not to be enough is to build and equip church members to send them out
Sunday Adelaja
Not to have a confused church is to teach paramount importance of the truth
Sunday Adelaja
For irrelevancy to be cancelled in the church, let kingdom priority and pursuit be restored
Sunday Adelaja
Cooperate expression of your church life means a lot
Sunday Adelaja
The Church was the one institution whose mission depended on galvanizing attention; and through its daily and weekly offices, as well as its sometimes central role in education, that is exactly what it managed to do. At the dawn of the attention industries, then, religion was still, in a very real sense, the incumbent operation, the only large-scale human endeavor designed to capture attention and use it.
Tim Wu
Malus: 'You look like a person with doubts.'Zoe: 'I wonder sometimes if any of this is real - or is it just a business, selling hope to people who can't afford it?'Malus: 'Clever people have been asking that question since the iron age, Zoe. The answer remains the same.'Zoe: 'And... ?'Malus: 'Business is good.'(A dialogue regarding the Church between a demon and a human.)
Terry Moore
Behavior speaks... When you need money, the church tells you to pray. When the church needs money, they pass around a basket.
Steve Maraboli
There is a Marian "style" to the Church's work of evangelization. Whenever we look to Mary, we come to believe once again in the revolutionary nature of love and tenderness. in her we see that humility and tenderness ar enot virtues of the weak but of the strong, who need not treat others poorly in order to feel important themselves. Contemplating Mary, we realize that she who praised God for "bringing down the mighty from their thrones" and "sending the rich away empty" (Luke 1:52-53) is also the one who brings a homely warmth to our pursuit of justice. She is also the one who carefully keeps "all these things, pondering them in heart" (Luke 2:19).Mary is able to recognize the traces of God's Spirit in events great and small. She constantly contemplates the mystery of God in our world, in human history, and in our daily lives. She is the woman of prayer and work in Nazareth, and she is also Our Lady of Help, who sets out from her town "with haste" (Luke 1:39) to be of service to others. This interplay of justice and tenderness, of contemplation and concern for others, is what makes the ecclesial community look to Mary as a model of evangelization.
Pope Francis
Those of us who are concerned about the 'church-less Christian' phenomenon ... must first look at ourselves and ask to what degree *we* have contributed to the conditions that tempt some to hit eject on the local church.
Scott Sauls
The church must integrate into the environment
Sunday Adelaja
Why is the church failing so miserably in impacting the nations of the earth?
Sunday Adelaja
However it—or the kind of extreme individualistic epistemology it embraces—can lead historians to an overly skeptical approach particularly to those sources that were intended to recount and inform events of the past, that is, testimony in this restricted sense. Particularly in Gospels scholarship there is an attitude abroad that approaches the sources with fundamental skepticism, rather than trust, and therefore requires that anything the sources claim be accepted only if historians can independently verify it…..
Richard Bauckham
Equally, it does not mean that Christian beliefs cause more distortion than other ideological beliefs. This emerged with particular clarity in engaging with the opinion that Jesus did not exist. This view is demonstrably false. It is fuelled by a regrettable form of atheist prejudice, which holds all the main primary sources, and Christian people, in contempt. This is not merely worse than the American Jesus Seminar, it is no better than Christian fundamentalism. It simply has different prejudices.
Maurice Casey
A man can do a lot of damage in the church. When someone comes here, he's got his guard up. But in church a man's wide open.
John Steinbeck
We are members of the Church of Christ
Sunday Adelaja
Pastors are over-extended taking care of a few hundred sheep in their church
Sunday Adelaja
The church must be involved in all the seven spheres of life extending the virtues and principles of the kingdom of God
Sunday Adelaja
God designed the church to facilitate the increase of his kingdom
Sunday Adelaja
The church today has reduced the Christians to a level that has made them to be too weak to make anything happen.
Sunday Adelaja
When the kingdom leaves the church, the church stops living for herself
Sunday Adelaja
Some goes to church to seek prosperity
Sunday Adelaja
The end-time church will be a worshipper of God alone
Sunday Adelaja
Does the church offer answers for the complexions of 21st century problems?
Sunday Adelaja
To be successful, you must leave the church walls behind and go out
Sunday Adelaja
God’s promise is to save the church and all who loves him
Sunday Adelaja
The church must be involved in all seven spheres of life
Sunday Adelaja
The church’s main task is to fuel having a fulfilled destiny
Sunday Adelaja
The church is to help its members mature in Christ’s calling
Sunday Adelaja
In this current generation, the church is not prospering in its mandate to extend kingdom principles throughout culture
Sunday Adelaja
It is useful to reflect that the word 'liturgy' did not originate in church or worship settings. In the Greek world it referred to publish service, what a citizen did for the community. As the church used the word in relation to worship, ti kept this 'public service' quality - working for the community on behalf of or following orders from God. As we worship God, revealed personally as Father, Son, and Holy Spirit in our Holy Scriptures, we are not doing something apart form or away from the non-Scripture=reading world; we do it for the world - bringing all creation and all history before God, presenting our bodies and all the beauties and needs of humankind before God in praise and intercession, penetrating and serving the world for whom Christ died in the strong name of the Trinity.
Eugene H. Peterson
Liturgy puts us to work along with all the others who have been and are being put to work in the world by and with Jesus following our spiritually-forming text. Liturgy keeps us in touch with all the action that has been and is being generated by the Spirit as given witness in the biblical text. Liturgy prevents the narrative form of Scripture from being reduced to private individualized consumption.Understood this way, 'liturgical' has little to do with choreography in the chancel or an aesthetics of the sublime. It is obedient, participatory, listening to Holy Scripture in the company of the holy community through time (our two-thousand years of responding to this text) and in space (our friends in christ all over the world). High-church Anglicans, revivalistic Baptists, hands-in-the-air praising charismatics, and Quakers sitting in a bare room in silence are all required to read and live this text liturgically, participating in the holy community's reading of Holy Scripture. there is nothing 'churchy' or elitist about it; it is a vast and dramatic 'story-ing,' making sure that we are taking our place in the story and letting everyone else have their parts in the story also, making sure that we don't leave anything or anyone out of the story. Without sufficient liturgical support and structure we are very apt to edit the story down to fit our individual tastes and predispositions.
Eugene H. Peterson
Because people understand that the diocese is trying to help the members of that group feel more connected to their church, the church they belong to by virtue of their baptism.
James Martin
FIRST AMENDMENT No one shall give a damn about your religion. Freedom of speech doesn’t mean you can say whatever you want about prayer and God and rules and gays, and everyone else has to take it. It means you can say whatever you want about all that, but I can then say back to you, “Your church is a cult, and all the women in it are fat.” So suck it up, Brother Daryl.
Trae Crowder

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