Quotes About Church

Prayer is the easiest thing to assume in church and the hardest thing to maintain. Prayer is the first thing our flesh stops when times get easy, and true prayer is the last thing we resort to when times get tough.

when we want decisions more than we want disciples, we get tares instead of true converts and Ichabod, departed glory for the church.

Our view of human problems determines who is qualified to speak to them. If sin is the primary human problem, then those with the theological and practical expertise in dealing with sin – in its varied and complex forms – should lead the way in the field of people-helping. Unless we have an accurate and robust conception of sin, the church will concede much of its work to outside professional and will be ill-equipped to cooperate with them when needed.

In healthy churches, the pastors life, not just his words, sets the tone for the church.

Church was never intended to be a place where we serve God to the exclusion of meeting with Him.

Too often Jesus Christ was not my Master but a bystander I visited with at church occasionally.

Revival is not emotional extravagance where people are caught up in the moment and fall down, act bizarrely, unbiblically, and out of control. That's not revival.

But a Vertical Church teaches its people to judge every circumstance and opportunity in terms of its potential to reveal "the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ.

When we fail to assist people responding to the gospel at church, we train our people to repeat that failure at home and at work.

Where is the church persevering in the priority of prayer?

Placing evangelistic mission above the mission of God's glory is the single most destructive error in the church today and the one from which many other errors fall out. God's own glory as the priority for your church, and every church needs no reflection on our part, only obedience. Glory is not a threat to reaching lost people but is actually the most biblical and God-honoring way to get there: • Yes, God is passionate to see the

No personal quiet time, no Christian book, no community or small group or service can substitute for the absence of God coming down to meet with His church corporately.

Eventually everyone vacates church where God is not obviously present and working. Getting people back to church is pointless unless God comes back first—that's what Vertical Church is all about! Ritual church, tradition church, felt-need church, emotional-hype church, rules church, Bible-boredom church, relevant church, and many other iterations are all horizontal substitutes for God come down, we all get rocked and radically altered, Vertical Church.

Instead of seeing ourselves as people trying to connect with people, let's see the church as people trying to connect with God and help others do the same.

If spiritual formation is the purpose of the church, then personal transformation should intentionally be the purpose of the small group ministry. Bible study is great. Fellowship is wonderful. Evangelism is essential. But changing and growing to be more like Christ should be the purpose of the small group ministry.

All church activities that dilute, diminish, or detract from worship destroy Verticality, deny the priority of doxology, and forfeit what Vertical Church is all about—glory.

Vertical Church teaches its people to judge every circumstance and opportunity in terms of its potential to reveal "the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ."21 That is the goal for every person in our church

Prayer is the easiest thing to assume in church and the hardest thing to maintain.

We preach so that people will be better worshippers, so that the nature and story of God proclaimed will result in an amplification of what provokes glory to come down. A church's ministry extends, of course, beyond the weekend worship service, but if we fail there, nothing else can succeed. That single service in a Vertical Church is like the wood-burning furnace in a factory or warehouse.

Transcendence is a healthy dose of insignificance to a race whose root sin is pride. Transcendence cuts us all down to our proper proportion before an awesome God. That you and I are not significant is a wonderful, freeing discovery, and that's what church is for.

The number, the industry, and the morality of the priesthood, and the devotion of the people have been manifestly increased by the total separation of the church from the state.

One joke has a Franciscan, a Dominican, and a Jesuit celebrating Mass together when the lights suddenly go out in the church. The Franciscan praises the chance to live more simply. The Dominican gives a learned homily on how God brings light to the world. The Jesuit goes to the basement to fix the fuses.

Why had I not understood that this was not simply the Church of the Holy Sepulchre, the church of his tomb? It was also the Church of the Resurrection.

In my years of counseling and speaking with LGBT men and women, I have heard countless stories of cruel and heartless comments made by priests in homilies or in private conversations that betray the most hateful attitudes toward LGBT people. Over and over, I would hear the same question: "How can I stay in a church that treats me like this?