Quotes About Church

The renewal of the Church will depend on the renewal of our prayer life.

It is because baptism is a real insertion of human beings into the ascended manhood of Christ that the Church is Christ's own body, flesh of his flesh and bone of his bones.

John Taylor, the third Prophet and President of the Mormon Church, had this to say about the African-American in Journal of Discourses 22:304: "After the flood we are told that the curse that had been pronounced upon Cain was continued through Ham's wife, as he had married a wife of that seed. And why did it pass through the flood? Because it was necessary that the devil should have a representation upon the earth as well as God......

Joseph Smith was able to convince his faithful followers that he was even greater than Jesus Christ. He said: I have more to boast of than ever any man had. I am the only man that has ever been able to keep a whole church together since the days of Adam. A large majority of the whole have stood by me. Neither Paul, John, Peter, nor Jesus ever did it. I boast that no man ever did such a work as I! The followers of Jesus ran away from Him; but the Latter-day Saints never ran away from me yet.19

Thus the Mormon dilemma: Outside the Church is no salvation,' yet inside the Church there is no hope either, for no one who is honest with himself could ever pretend to meet its impossible standards of personal righteousness.

Some Church leaders have come up with ingenious explanations for the complete failure to find any evidence supporting the Book of Mormon. In a March 25, 1964, address, Fletcher B.Hammond said: `:.. The Gentiles have not yet received the Book of Mormon by faith... and until they do... it appears that empirical facts will not be allowed to come forth as evidence of the truthfulness of the Book of Mormon... ."'S

The institutionalizing of the church is essentially its immunization to an evangelistic impulse.

Change requires decision making, and decision making requires action. Most churches don't make turnarounds because they never get to the action. Discussion only begets more discussion. Together, and led by the pastor, the church must decide on a course of action.

Church leaders—including pastoral staff, elders, deacons, and leadership teams—must see community as a biblical nonnegotiable, an essential for transformation, a necessity for building lives that stand the test of time.

We need to stop presenting community as just another option for the religious consumer and start presenting it as God's will for everyone. It should be seen as the reality of those within the church and the refuge for those without.

when we have every right (after all it's "our church"), when we have always done it that way (no reason to change if we like it), and when we are in prominent positions (we have earned it), we can easily make it about us.

The health, long-term mission, and viability of the church are not going to be determined by those who gather on Sunday morning. The future of the church will be determined by the depth of its disciples.

If Southern Baptist churches sent just 1 percent of their members to reach the nations and peoples of the world, instead of five thousand there would be 160,000 missionaries (according to our reported membership of sixteen million in 2009). The support should not be a problem—not financially, logistically, or in human resources. Could not 99 percent of the church adequately support the 1 percent sent to the nations to fulfill the mission of God?

The central conclusion is that the American church is dying due to lack of strong spiritual leadership. In this time of unprecedented opportunity and plentiful resources, the church is actually losing influence. The primary reason is the lack of leadership. Nothing is more important than leadership."

Culturally appropriate evangelism answers the actual questions being asked by a given culture rather than those questions the church believes the culture should ask.

The church stands no hope of engaging the age of outrage unless we root out the lie that the solution to sin lies anywhere outside of the gospel of Jesus Christ. He is "the true God and eternal life" (1 John 5:20). Salvation is not coming on Air Force One. And Jesus will not come riding on a donkey or an elephant. Those who fail to see such things have been lost to the idolatry of the moment.

you cannot "save" a church without focusing on the important things that make it a church—scriptural authority, biblical leadership, teaching and preaching, ordinances, covenant community, and mission.

The passion of the church and every follower of Christ should be that all peoples have an opportunity to hear, understand, and respond to the gospel.

become part of culture, proclaim the Good News, be the presence of Christ, and contextualize biblical life and church for that culture—they are missional churches.

In his work The Book of Church Growth, Thom Rainer explained, "Prayer is the power behind the principles. There simply is no more important principle in church growth than prayer. The prayers of the early church unleashed the power of God to add thousands to the church. It happened then. It is happening in some churches today. And it can happen in your church."13

have heard plenty of sermons that address the problem of pornography, but I can count on one hand the number of times a pastor or Sunday school teacher discussed a more comprehensive online discipleship.

Fasting is by far the most neglected spiritual discipline, with roughly 80 percent of churchgoing Protestants saying they have not fasted in the past six months.[21]

Therefore, it is vital for churches to provide a clear target explaining the attitudes and behaviors of a disciple; you must have a clear definition of disciple.

You can preach heresy at a lot of churches, and people will not object. Leaders can lead double lives, and people will let it be. But, change the order of service, and it's time for a fight.