Church Quotes - Page 13

He'd gone to church for forty years and was only getting worse. It seemed like this should tell God something.

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.

Without Christ a people may always have the freedom to do, but never the power to complete.

Yes an atheist priest can perfectly minister to a believing congregation and miracles can happen in that congregation. Miracles depend on the faith of the believer, not that of the officiant. A bartender who never takes alcohol can serve alcohol to his clients. What is necessary is that the priest believes he is doing the good work. The congregation needs faith and it helps them. It would be evil to deny them such a service in the name of his lack of faith. - Bangambiki Habyarimana

If your temper is violent towards your brothers and sisters in the Lord, whose kingdom are you trying to build?

The Church has an excellent appetite. She has swallowed whole countries and the questionHas never risen of indigestion. Only the Church . . . can take Ill-gotten goods without stomach-ache!

The Church, as Jesus seems to be defining it, is the gathering of accepted brokenness. It’s not the gathering of the saved.

Just please understand that everyone is going through a rough time as well. Even if they are hiding behind money or a simple smile. We are all continuously stumbling as we go about our lives. If we had perfect lives we'd all be perfect people. Only thing we can learn to do is endure or we will not be happy and happiness is the closest thing to perfect.

Preaching the Gospel in a brutal way is like telling your wife that you love her while she gets a punch right in her face.

Having true compassion for people isn't about the words that are spoken and the actions that are done. Having true compassion is an attitude from the heart that can't be faked.

Our government needs the church, because only those humble enough to admit they're sinners can bring democracy the tolerance it requires to survive

There will come a time when people hungering for the truth will seek it where it is supposedly disseminated, such as books and churches, but they will not hear the Word of the Lord. Instead of receiving a message to satisfy their spiritual longings, they will hear a sermon on some current political or social problem, or a sermonette on art and literature. And so they wander from one place to another, going from hope to despair, and eventually giving up.

What I am is a proud humanist. Atheism says what I don't accept, humanism says what I do." - Nathan Phelps

Training is an active, dynamic process lived out daily in all areas of life- not a rote exercise in memorizing verses and going to church every week.

When we become strangely silent on increasing interference of Worldly norms into Church culture and don't address it Prayerfully, Wisely and in God's Love then it will soon become a deadly snare in which not only ourselves but we will find our coming generations as well brutally trapped and suffering.

Resilient communities relied on informal networks of deep trust to contend with and heal disruption.

The church holds the key to revival. It is within our grasp.

Multitudes are now turning to Christ in all parts of the world. How unbearably tragic it would be, though, if the millions of Asia, South America and Africa were led to believe that the best we can hope for from the Way of Christ is the level of Christianity visible in Europe and America today, a level that has left us tottering on the edge of world destruction. The world can no longer be left to mere diplomats, politicians, and business leaders. They have done the best they could, no doubt. But this is an age for spiritual heroes-a time for men and women to be heroic in faith and in spiritual character and power. The greatest danger to the Christian church today is that of pitching its message TOO LOW.

You're right, Ruth. You did screw up my career. You screwed it up good. Best thing you ever did, matter of fact. But you know something? It's okay. Because if it was between the church and you, there was no contest. Even with al the ups and downs and the craziness and the shit and the maxed-out credit cards, the church never stood a chance. I chose you, Ruth. And I'm glad. There. That's what my so-called career was about. And that's what I should have said to you. And I'm sorry I didn't. I'm sorry, Ruth. I'm sorry.

Out here, the open night is my church, the trees are my congregation, the stars are my angels and the moon is the only god that I know.

We do not need them. They would hinder rather than help our praise. Sing unto him. This is the sweetest and best music. No instrument like the human voice. What a degradation to supplant the intelligent song of the whole congregation by the theatrical prettiness of a quartet, bellows, and pipes! We might as well pray by machinery as praise by it.

If the church is acceptable to this present ageand is not suffering reproach, then it is not the true church that our Lord founded.

Church comforts the lonely, those who've lost, those who grieve. It is a weekly ritual that never changes, never goes away. You can go to mass anywhere around the world -- Waseca, North Dakota, Poland, Ireland -- and the only difference would be the language. Church provides us something to cling to, the rope line tied from the barn to the house during a blizzard. No matter what swirls around you, you cannot become lost.

Clary felt suddenly annoyed. "When the self-congratulatory part of the evening is over, maybe we could get back to saving my best friend from being exsanguinated to death?""Exsanguinated," said Jace, impressed. "That's a big word.""And you're a big-""Tsk tsk," he interupted. "No swearing in church.

All too many others have been more cautious than courageous and have remained silent behind the anesthetizing security of stained-glass windows

The most frustrating thing about our doctrine in the modern church is that the unbelievers who have never been to church, the agnostics, those who are out rightly atheist, don’t have to fight with whether they are supposed to dominate the earth or not, they just go ahead and do it

Over the road there was a church: a modern gray building, which constantly played a recording of church bells. Strange it was. Why no proper bells? I never went in but I bet it was a robot church for androids, where the Bible was in binary and their Jesus had laser eyes and metal claws.

We must help young women immerse themselves in a selfless work, perhaps receiving little public praise or attention. Instead, they must feel the Lord’s great love for them and their efforts through the influence of the Holy Ghost.

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.

You will go far in the Church.""I have no desire to go far. My only ambition is to be a good priest.""You will be that, of course. Nevertheless, you will go higher. And do you know why?”“Why?”“Because,” said Orselli, “you are not afraid of worldliness. I do not mean that you are worldly. Far from it. But you have a talent for being all things to all men.

We lied to ourselves thinking in our minds we knew everything. We were deceived in believing that youthful enthusiasm could replace wizened maturity.

The top 10% of the people who are most creative, constructive and thoughtful, do not have much to do with churches. To them the canons of reason come first, making faith secondary and questionable.

You're better off believing in God they'd warn you, just in case. Because you'd hate to arrive at the gates of heaven a nonbeliever and find out the Christians had been right all along. It was a pretty ingenious line of thinking. It almost made me want to go to church. Not enough to actually go, but still.

It is very difficult sometimes to keep awake, especially at church, but there is no difficulty at all about sleeping.

God wants the church to become the initiator of the reformation and changes in the society

The fact is, it is selfish for a church to not want to grow. A church that says, “We’ve got enough people, we’ve got a nice fellowship. Our church is just the right size. We just need to focus on the members we already have.” That church is, in reality, actually saying, “The rest of the world can go to hell. We don’t care.

Before I was ordained, when I was working for the council, I thought of the first three months of the year as January, February, March. Now I think of them as Epiphany, Candlemas and Ash Wednesday.

We have created Black, White, Asian, and other racial Churches; but we fail to understand that there is only one Church and one Gospel.It is the Church and Gospel of Jesus Christ. John 1:12

You mean the day they stop needing the church," Vittoria challenged, moving toward him. "Doubt is your last shred of control. It is doubt that brings souls to you. Our need to know that life has meaning. Man's insecurity and need for an enlightened soul assuring him everything is part of a master plan. But the church is not the only enlightened soul on the planet! We all seek God in different ways. What are you afraid of? That God will show himself somewhere other than inside these walls? That people will find him in their own lives and leave your antiquated rituals behind? Religions evolve! The mind finds answers, the heart grapples with new truths. My father was on your quest! A parallel path! Why couldn't you see that? God is not some omnipotent authority looking down from above, threatening to throw us into a pit of fire if we disobey. God is the energy that flows through the synapses of our nervous system and the chambers of our hearts! God is in all things!

Far from seeking to justify, as does the Church, the necessity of torments and afflictions, he cried, in his outraged pity: 'If a God has made this world, I should not wish to be that God. The world's wretchedness would rend my heart.

Confession is a difficult discipline for us, because we all too often view the believing community as a fellowship of saints before we see it as a fellowship of sinners. We feel that everyone else has advanced so far into holiness that we are isolated and alone in our sin.

The church is missionary by nature because God through the Spirit calls, creates, and commissions the church to communicate to the world that the redemptive reign of God has broken into human history.

Does the church offer answers for the complexions of 21st century problems?

When Jesus was wrapping up his days on earth, he didn't tell us to go to church. He didn't tell us to engage in a spiritualized version of channel surfing, as we hop from place to place in search of just the right programming to entertain us. He told us to get out and actually do the stuff he'd already been doing, painting the hope of God's reign on the canvas of God's world. He told us we're artists.

People are not being reached in the context of the body of Christ--they're like newborn babies being left on a doorstep somewhere to feed and care for themselves.

The world is waiting to see what the church has to offer to this troubled society

I played my role as the good Christian girl and spared everyone the drama of an argument. But that decision to remain silent split me in two. It convinced me that I could never really be myself in church. That I had to check my heart and mind at the door.

Persecution is an enemy the Church has met and mastered many times. Indifference could prove to be a far more dangerous foe.

Did those nice church ladies come by again?" He nodded. "I asked them if a man died and then the woman remarried, and then the three of them met in heaven, would it be a sin for them to have a threesome, since they were all married in God's eye. And they decided they were late to be somewhere else.

Liturgy gathers the holy community as it reads the Holy Scriptures into the sweeping tidal rhythms of the church year in which the story of Jesus and the Christian makes its rounds century after century, the large and easy interior rhythms of a year that moves from birth, life, death, resurrection, on to spirit, obedience, faith, and blessing. Without liturgy we lose the rhythms and end up tangled in the jerky, ill-timed, and insensitive interruptions of public-relations campaigns, school openings and closings, sales days, tax deadlines, inventory and elections. Advent is buried under 'shopping days before Christmas.' The joyful disciplines of Lent are exchanged for the anxious penitentials of filling out income tax forms. Liturgy keeps us in touch with the story as it defines and shapes our beginnings and ends our living and dying, our rebirths and blessing in this Holy Spirit, text-formed community visible and invisible.When Holy Scripture is embraced liturgically, we become aware that a lot is going on all at once, a lot of different people are doing a lot of different things. The community is on its feet, at work for God, listening and responding to the Holy Scriptures. The holy community, in the process of being formed by the Holy Scriptures, is watching, listening to God's revelation taking shape before an din them as they follow Jesus, each person playing his or her part in the Spirit.

A materialistic world will not be won to Christ by a materialistic church.

Now, there are things I like just fine about church, and I don’t just mean making money. The notion of getting together as a community to remind ourselves why we shouldn’t behave like animals is a fucking great idea.

I don't care what it looks, I don't care what it feels like, I believe God.

Unless we learn how to humbly tell each other our giving stories, our churches will not learn to give.

In fact, even Tillich's socialism was accommodationist because it continued the Constantinian strategy: The way to make the church radical is by identifying the church with secular "radicals", that is, socialists.

No institutional arrangement will ever contain all that they church is. Don't look for it institutionally; look for it relationally. Certainly the New Testament talks about the priorities of that church -- Jesus as its sole head and focus, daily encouragement among believers, plural and lateral leadership, open participation, and an environment of freedom so people can grow in him.

It rains on everyone. It may be storming but there is a covering.Life may be challenging, but there is a covering.It may seem impossible, hopeless, doubtful, fear-ridden, and pain-laden, but there is a covering. There are other umbrellas, but only one is red with the blood of Jesus. We need to love Jesus more than the noise.

There is no indication that any church official suggested or supported the emperor's action against gay people. On the contrary, the only persons known by name to have been punished for homosexual acts were prominent bishops.

I will not keep quiet until a revolution is started to fight ignorance and superstitions in the church of the lord Jesus Christ and in the nation of my birth.

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