Quotes About Congregations

Many Protestant congregations, even those with decidedly low-church pedigrees, are also appropriating liturgy in their worship. In so doing, they not only connect with historic creeds and traditions, they attract a new generation of churchgoers, many of whom have grown weary of the contemporary worship styles that dominate the baby-boomer megachurches.11

I repeat: the pressure to apply is a modernist pressure, not a biblical pressure. William Willimon observes that most congregations love hearing preaching with this application emphasis. The only problem, he says, is that such preaching is not biblical preaching. The 'subtext' of so much of this must-apply preaching is, 'You are gods unto yourselves. Through this insight, this set of principles, this well applied idea, you can save yourselves by yourselves'.

While the United States is becoming the most culturally diverse nation in the world, less than 5.5% of Christian congregations are multiethnic.

Those who belong to megachurches display as high a level of personal commitment as do those who attend small congregations.

It is important for American congregations to hold their churches accountable for what their money does in Africa.

He noted that every Sunday, in churches throughout Britain, entire congregations prayed publicly for the health of the royal family. Shouldn't they, therefore, be unusually fit, compared with the rest of us, who are prayed for only by our nearest and dearest?* Galton looked into it, and found no statistical difference. His intention may, in any case, have been satirical, as also when he prayed over randomized plots of land to see if the plants would grow any faster (they didn't).

After all, the Church had murdered itself, as with every decade more and more depressed dubiousness crept into its synods and convocations, until speaking in tongues, it beat its own skull in at the back of the vestry. Divorcees and devil-worshippers, schismatics, sodomites and self murderers -- they were all the same for the impotent figures who stood in the pulpit and peered down at pitiful congregations, their numbers winnowed out by satellite television and interest-free credit.

There are entire congregations who worship praise and praise worship but who have not yet learned to praise and worship God in Jesus Christ.

Believe it, brethren, God looks for more from England, than from most nations in the world; and for more from you that enjoy these helps, than from the dark, untaught congregations of the land (271).

In the grim blasted regions where the soil had failed or the factories were shut down, whole congregations would drift through the gates

congregations of owls seemed to be below, along with a hollow that was called a kitchen, from

Much of the conflict occurring in congregations is caused when a church calls a pastor whose gifts and passion do not match what the church has been in the past.

Many times when people leave churches we think it's a doctrinal issue, but most of the time it's a leadership issue.

It's much safer, in many congregations, to assure the faithful how our souls are saved through divine grace rather than to suggest that our societies are saved through personal and corporate aid to the poor.

Congregations shaped by the Scriptures generally have preachers who are shaped by the Scriptures.

However, the pro–civil rights orientation of white mainline Protestant and white Catholic leaders is not an accurate barometer of the influence of white supremacy among white Christians sitting in the pews. Declarations on racial justice by national institutions and hierarchies were more often than not ignored or actively flouted by local clergy and their congregations.

Defining a mono-racial church as one that has more than 80 percent of its membership consisting of a single racial group, nearly nine in ten (86 percent) congregations, which account for 80 percent of churchgoers, remain essentially mono-racial.46

Escribe Murray: "Ser padres de nuevas congregaciones…es el instinto natural de los que han nacido de nuevo por el Espíritu, de los que Él ha reunido en familias locales de cristianos

Is the Christianity we have been living out in our families, congregations, and communities a means of deeper conversion, or does it function as a vaccination against taking faith with the seriousness the Gospel demands?

evangelical clergy showed growth in giving, attendance, and even membership, for pastors who had served in a congregation three years or longer. But the most dramatic changes were in congregations served by clergy seeking less tension with the culture. Congregations with "officiant" pastors showed sharp drops for all of the measures (Finke and Stark, 2001).

people in congregations often look to a pastor as a sort of shaman. He said, "They want us to play the intermediary. They are highly dependent, if not codependent. They want us to give them 'the four steps to this, the eight keys to that, and the five insights for the other thing.

I go farther, and say, that it is plainly our duty to desire pastors and teachers to take the care of such congregations, and that God did raise up such in the church as we see it in the word.

Not enough church leaders understand and practice visionary strategic planning. According to an article in American Demographics, Gary McIntosh of the American Society for Church Growth estimates that only 20 percent of America's 367,000 congregations actively pursue strategic planning. In the same article, George Hunter, professor of evangelism and church growth at Asbury Theological Seminary, warns that churches without plans for growth invariably stagnate.[13]

There are sincere and reputable people on both sides. They disagree, but their disagreement has not undone Christianity. And neither side is blowing anyone else up over it. Week in and week out, rabbis, ministers, and priests do not stand before their congregations, preaching about the world to come and exhorting them to seek martyrdom as a fast track to heaven.