Quotes About Church

This does not mean that the knowledge of the world, church history, theology, philosophy, and the Scriptures is without value. Such knowledge can be very useful.[105] But it is not central. Theological competence and a high-voltage intellect alone do not qualify a person to serve in God's house.

All the traditional reasons put forth for "needing" a church building collapse under careful scrutiny.[209] We so easily forget that the early Christians turned the world upside down without them (see Acts 17:6). They grew rapidly for three hundred years without the help (or hindrance) of church buildings.

If I were asked to state the great objective which Church and State are both demanding for the sake of every man and woman and child in this country, I would say that that great objective is "a more abundant life."

Some movie stars wear their sunglasses even in church. They're afraid God might recognize them and ask for autographs.

Most of us spend the first six days of each week sowing wild oats, then we go to church on Sunday and pray for a crop failure.

It is not uncommon in the church for us to urge each other to witness to our faith and sometimes we do so as though it were easy to do. It is not. Our faith is so profoundly intimate and important that we draw our breath in pain to tell the story of our faith in God. And to find the appropriate word to speak even to a receptive mind is difficult. Especially if the opportunity that presents itself comes as a total surprise.

Et depuis quand les évêques s'y connaissent-ils en femmes? —Très longue histoire. La nuit des temps —répondit l'évêque.

if the Bible was meant to say anything, it was meant to say it within a community,

The reason my husband and I became Orthodox was that our mainline denomination was energetically revising its theology; church leaders were teaching that Jesus wasn't born of a virgin, he didn't do any miracles, and he didn't rise from the dead.†† After some reading, visiting churches, praying, and a whole lot of talking, we decided to join the Orthodox Church.

Then he lost all coherence and began a hysterical giggle, compounded with a slight twitch and very pronounced emission of saliva from his mouth. When he finally fell silent, the stillness was of that horrified kind that follows a fart in a Methodist church.

When he learned from home that "all the nuns and priests along the Atlantic coast" were "putting in a lot of praying time" on his behalf, Jack was comforted but said he hoped "it won't be taken as a sign of lack of confidence in you all or the Church if I continue to duck.

In 1922, movies drew some forty million viewers weekly; by 1929 the number approached a hundred million—this at a time when the nation's population was 122 million and weekly church attendance was sixty million.

He who is near the Church is often far from God.

It is better to go skiing and think of God, than go to church and think of sport.

If we look into the matter of how Christian theology rose in the beginning, the Christian Church was always already earlier, and thus even now for each individual the Christian Church is earlier than theology.

What is fact? What records did the church, in its misguided attempt to cleanse the past of perceived contradictions, rewrite to suit its preferred narrative?

I didn't spend a lifetime studying theology, but I know that the Church was always against Ireland and for the British Empire.

Don't speak of your Protestant minister, Nor of his church without meaning or faith, For the foundation stone of his temple Was the bollocks of Henry VIII Brendan Behan

The gospel of grace nullifies our adulation of televangelists, charismatic superstars, and local church heroes. It obliterates the two-class citizenship theory operative in many American churches. For grace proclaims the awesome truth that all is gift. All that is good is ours, not by right, but by the sheer bounty of a gracious God.

And though it is true that the church must always dissociate itself from sin, it can never have any excuse for keeping any sinner at a distance

If the church remains self-righteously aloof from failures, irreligious and immoral people, it cannot enter justified into God's kingdom. But if it is constantly aware of its guilt and sin, it can live in joyous awareness of forgiveness. The promise has been given to it that anyone who humbles himself will be exalted.9

One of my realizations in such an earthy atmosphere was that many of the burning theological issues in the church were neither burning nor theological.

Put bluntly, the American church today accepts grace in theory but denies it in practice.

It deserves neither God's mercy nor men's trust. The church must constantly be aware that its faith is weak, its knowledge dim, its profession of faith halting, that there is not a single sin or failing which it has not in one way or another been guilty of.