Church Quotes - Page 7

The departure of the church-going element had induced a more humanitarian atmosphere.

Dorothy L. Sayers

[re: I Corinthians 15:34,58] "The present life of the church, in other words, is not about "soul-making," the attempt to produce or train disembodied beings for a future disembodied life. It is about working with fully human beings who will be reembodied at the last, after the model of the Messiah.

I no longer belong to your ways. My religion is love. Every heart is my church.

David Paul Kirkpatrick

I walked down the empty Broad to breakfast, as I often did on Sundays, at a tea-shop opposite Balliol. The air was full of bells from the surrounding spires and the sun, casting long shadows across the open spaces, dispelled the fears of night. The tea-shop was hushed as a library; a few solitary men in bedroom slippers from Balliol and Trinity looked up as I entered, then turned back to their Sunday newspapers. I ate my scrambled eggs and bitter marmalade with the zest which in youth follows a restless night. I lit a cigarette and sat on, while one by one the Balliol and Trinity men paid their bills and shuffled away, slip-slop, across the street to their colleges. It was nearly eleven when I left, and during my walk I heard the change-ringing cease and, all over the town, give place to the single chime which warned the city that service was about to start.

As we open up our church meetings to God's power, they will not always follow a predetermined schedule or order. Who can outline what God might have in mind?

You don't get to turn someone's sanctuary into an unsafe space.

Darnell Lamont Walker

I don't know what God intends, or what qualifies Him to forgive me,' Sobran said

Invisible Christians in the world are only visible in church on Sunday.

Alin Sav

The church can only defend its own space by fighting, not for space, but for the salvation of the world. Otherwise the church becomes a "religious society" that fights in its own interest and thus has ceased to be the church of God in the world.

Dietrich Bonhoeffer

The Church, like the monarchy, was a valuable bastion of defense against the dangerous alliance of atheistical philosophy with political radicalism. The Bible taught the poorer orders that their lowly path had been allotted to them by the hand of God, and the Church was there to make quite certain they understood that.

Any church that emphasizes on miracles is simply telling His members that they don’t need to qualify but depend on the supernatural power.

We have compromised the integrity of the church if we only emphasise on miracles.

Any church that is overly emphasizing the role of miracles is encouraging his members to be indolent.

Any church that over emphasises miracles is encouraging laziness.

The church that emphasises on miracles are indirectly preaching that merit does not mater.

There is error in a church when miracles are made the only thing.

For his own unfathomable reasons, God chooses to disguise himself when he comes to this planet, and there have been few disguises better than the church.

To live [in the church] at the beck and call of marketing logic is to live in slavery.

Our musical artistry and leadership of people need to work together to create an environment that welcomes participation instead of causing disengagement.

Plantie is a very strong Protestant, that is to say, he's against all churches, especially the Protestant: and he thinks a lot of Buddha, Karma and Confucius. He is also a bit of an anarchist and three or four years ago he took up Einstein and vitamins.

An historic institution, which never went right, is really quite much of a miracle as an institution that cannot go wrong.

G.K. Chesterton

It's like this,' began the elder. 'All these sentences of hard labour in Siberian prisons, and formerly with flogging, too, do not reform anyone and, what's more, scarcely deter even one criminal, and, far from diminishing, the number of crimes are steadily increasing. You have to admit that. It therefore follows that society is not in the least protected, for though a harmful member is cut off automatically and exiled to some remote spot just to get rid of him, another criminal takes his place at once, and often, two, perhaps. If anything does protect society even today and indeed reforms the criminal himself and brings about his regeneration, it is, again, only the law of Christ, which reveals itself in the awareness of one's own consciousness. Only by recognizing his own guilt as a son of a Christian society, that is, of the Church, does the criminal recognize his guilt towards society itself, that is, towards the Church. The criminal today, therefore, is capable of recognizing his guilt only towards the Church, and not towards the State.

Fyodor Dostoyevsky

The Church is Christ’s witness to the world of a loving savior and His redemptive plan for man.

John Paul Warren

Shall I ask you how the church is to be filled, if a man is neither to take orders with a living, nor without?

Consistently, [Yves] Congar emphasized the distinction between Tradition and traditionalism. The latter was an unyielding commitment to the past. The former was a living principle of commitment to the Beginning, a process that required creativity, inspiration, and a spirit of openness to the present as well as respect for the past. Two of Congar's works, on reform in the church and on the theology of the laity, proved especially controversial...Congar believed that reform was a vital and necessary dimension of the church. This was rooted in the distinction between the church and the kingdom of God and in the intermingling in the church of both divine and human elements. In light of the church's constant temptation to revert to institutionalism, it was always necessary to allow room for the prophetic voice, issuing from the margins, even though this might mean attending to uncomfortable truths.

Robert Ellsberg

Where everyone is accepted equally as a brother or sister in Christ, and where there is an open forum without a set program and format, believers will be in an environment where their gifts will develop and manifest naturally.

Henry Hon

Where is Christ Jesus writings on the walls of the Church?

Lailah Gifty Akita

The church, which squatted among the headstones like a wet mother dodo, had been at various times Presbyterian, Congregationalist, Unitarian, and Universally Apocalyptic. It was now the Church of God the Utterly Indifferent.

Kurt Vonnegut Jr.

The church's primary purpose is not to make America more Christian, but to make American Christians less American and Rwandan Christians less Rwandan. We are no longer Rwandans or Americans, neither Hutu nor Tutsi. If we are in Christ, we have become part of a new creation.

Emmanuel Katongole

The story that the church has been telling for two thousand years is an outrageous tale about a man who was executed by the state but rose up from the dead. The crux of the story isn't that Jesus figured out the right answer to all the questions facing Israel in his day. What makes all the difference is that Jesus defeated the ultimate enemy and got up from the dead.

Emmanuel Katongole

We are called to be strange in the same way that the early Christian communities were strange to the world around them. The community in Antioch brought together Jews and Samaritans, Greeks and Romans, slaves and free, men and women in a way that was so confusing that people didn't know what to call them. So they called them "Christians." The only way they knew to describe their peculiar actions was to say that they were followers of an odd preacher from Galilee. The world is longing for such new and odd communities in our time. . . . I pray the time is now and that the resurrection might begin in us.

Emmanuel Katongole

In a system of full capitalism, there should be (but, historically, has not yet been) a complete separation of state and economics, in the same way and for the same reasons as the separation of state and church.

Ayn Rand

Liturgy is the means that the church uses to keep baptized Christians in living touch with the entire living holy community as it participates formationally in Holy Scripture. I want to use the word 'liturgy' to refer to this intent and practice of the church insofar as it pulls everything in and out of the sanctuary into a life of worship, situates everything past and present coherently as participation in the revelation written for us in Scripture. Instead of limiting liturgy to the ordering of the community in discrete acts of worship, I want to use it in this large and comprehensive way, the centuries-deep and continents-wide community, spread out in space and time, as Christians participate in actions initiated and formed by the words in this book - our entire existence understood liturgically, that is connectedly in the context of the three personal Father, Son, and Holy Spirit and furnished with the text of the Holy Scripture.

Eugene H. Peterson

The Church's obsession with sexual restrictions is and always has been wrong wrong wrong. Wrong to be contemptuous of naïve young women like Philomena and me. Wrong to ignore the men involved in creating "illegitimate" children. Wrong to demonize gays while knowing full well how many men and women of the Church are gay. Wrong to excuse and hide criminal priests, transferring them to new, unsuspecting parishes. Wrong to think that forbidding consensual human sexuality is more important than Christ's message of compassion and forgiveness.

Baptism is one of those more effective rites that come in with the new covenant. The fact that baptism takes the place of the multiple, complicated cleansing rites of stoicheic order is itself a sign that salvation has come to the world. And the fact that baptism does the miraculous work of binding diverse flesh into one body means that baptism is one of the rites that effects the social salvation of humanity.

The task of liturgy is to order the life of the holy community following the text of Holy Scripture. It consists of two movements. First it gets us into the sanctuary, the place of adoration and attention, listening and receiving and believing before God. There is a lot involved, all the parts of our lives ordered to all aspects of the revelation of God in Jesus.Then it gets us out of the sanctuary into the world into places of obeying and loving ordering our lives as living sacrifices in the world to the glory of God. There is a lot involved, all the parts of our lives out on the street participating in the work of salvation.

Eugene H. Peterson

The city takes a breath on Sunday. Of all that’s lost with the pursuit of what’s next, I hope we don’t lose that…

Hawksley Workman

I think this is irresponsible preaching and very dangerous, and especially when it is slanted toward children, I think it's totally irresponsible, because I see nothing biblical that points up to our being in the last days, and I just think it's an outrageous thing to do, and a lot of people are making a living—they've been making a living for 2,000 years—preaching that we're in the last days.

Charles M. Schulz

It is a promise which eminently deserves our observation that all who are united to Christ and acknowledge Him to be Christ and Mediator will remain to the end safe from all danger, for what is said of the body of the Church belongs to each of its members since they are one in Christ.

I find that I keep offering God my service when what He wants is my fellowship

John Paul Warren

God’s downward descent to us in grace reversed by our upward ascent in pragmatic enthusiasm, we are increasingly becoming a sheep without a Shepherd—and all in the name of mission. Instead of churching the unchurched, we are well on our way to even unchurching the churched.

Michael S. Horton

My sister having so much to do, was going to church vicariously, that is to say, Joe and I were going.

Charles Dickens

Fewer than half of churchgoers, including born-again Christians, felt strongly that their church demonstrates unconditional love.

The only group large enough to handle," the world's biggest, "problems is the network of millions of local churches around the world. We have the widest distribution, largest group of volunteers, local credibility, the promises of God, the power of the Holy Spirit, and the inevitability of history.

Spring came late. For the children, shut in the dark, cold parsonage, adjusting to Aunt and getting over the death that brought her, the winter had seemed endless. But now the rough moor was flecked with racing cloud shadows; the maltreated holly tree had stopped weeping; the green mould on the graves had dried to an unsuggestive grey.The church could never look cheerful. It was too black, and its voice, the bell, always said 'Fu - ner -al... fu - ner- al...' even when it was only calling them to hear one of their Papa's dramatic sermons.

Lynne Reid Banks

I remind you that there are churches so completely out of the hands of God that if the Holy Spirit withdrew from them, they wouldn't find it out for many months

And off in the far distance, the gold on the wings of the angel atop the bell tower of San Marco flashed in the sun, bathing the entire city in its glistening benediction.

[As a young man ] I came to the conclusion that the church was just a bunch of fascists that supported Franco. I stopped going on Sunday mornings and watched the birds with my father instead.

James D. Watson

Organized Christianity that fails to make a disturbance is dead.

G. Campbell Morgan

My point is, however, that churches do promote beliefs that would more appropriately find a place in a context of intellectual debate. They wind up cheerleading for highly dubious opinions on historical, scientific, and metaphysical matters, simply on the bases of emotional preference and the inertia of tradition. They demand conformity to these beliefs, and if you cannot swim with the current, then, well partner, maybe you'd be happier in another pool, another lake in fact, the one ablaze with burning sulfur.

Robert M. Price

I sometimes wonder whether our churches--living as we do in American death-denying culture, relentlessly smiling through our praise choruses--are inadvertently helping people live not as much in hope as in denial.

It is not possible to understand the NT concept of the church if we overlook the numerous metaphors used to portray it. The church is Christ's body, a temple, a family, a royal priesthood, twelve tribes, the chosen race, Abraham's children, the new creation, the bride of Christ, and so on. Bible readers should be careful not to construct their theology of the church on a single metaphor.

The lampstand was position strategically to do one things: cast its light on the table and on the bread that represented God's provision and presence. For generations the lampstand of the tabernacle stood to highlight the object that best represented God's goodness and provision, the same object that Jesus would one day use to symbolize His own body. (Jesus compares church to a lampstand in Revelation- a strong reminder of the church's responsibility). Everything about these churches 0 their teaching, practices, and work-- was challenged for one reason in Revelation: They were losing their effectiveness as God's light to their communities.

It is important to note that the lampstand in the tabernacle did not cast a broad light, illuminating everything in the tabernacle; the focus of its beam was specifically on the bread of presence. Likewise, the church is not called to illuminate everything -- its light should be concentrated on showing others who God is. For church leaders, our jobs are clear: we have to keep the wicks trimmed, the light burning, and the lampstand in its proper place. if the light begins to dim, we must immediately move into action. God's intention is for the church to be placed strategically in culture in order to show Himself to the world. Anytime the church becomes ineffective in its role to illuminate Christ, it must rekindle and reinvent itself around its core purpose.

Jesus said, " I, when I am lifted up from the earth, will draw all men to myself," knowing that the nature of a forgiving Christ on the cross would compel people to follow Him. As long as the church remains an effective platform for God's light to reveal to the world the sacrifice Jesu samde, the church will be anturally irresistible. Light is inherently inviting-- just think of a porch light left on late into the night. Light communicates comfort, warmth, and healing. It gives direction and hope so we can see better and understand more fully. Most people I meet are looking for light. The problem is that the emphasis is of too many churches has gradually shifted and changed.

If the church is the body of Christ [who was disguised in servant form], why would we think the world would be able to pick us out of a crowd of other well-meaning organizations?

To be effective the preacher's message must be alive; it must alarm, arouse, challenge; it must be God's present voice to a particular people.

Saints cannot exist without a community, as they require, like all of us, nurturance by a people who, while often unfaithful, preserve the habits necessary to learn the story of God.

Stanley Hauerwas

the Twelve Apostles are the most evident sign of Jesus' will regarding the existence and mission of his Church, the guarantee that between Christ and the Church there is no opposition: despite the sins of the people who make up the Church, they are inseparable. Therefore, a slogan that was popular some years back, 'Jesus yes, Church no,' is totally inconceivable with the intention of Christ. This individualistically chosen Jesus is an imaginary Jesus.

Pope Benedict XVI

In a church of my own we're perfect togetherI recognize you in the stained glass

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