Quotes About Church

It's useless." "You will find it," he insisted, misinterpreting her meaning, "if your heart is open. So a way must be made for your heart to be open. I must change part of our bargain." Summer lowered her brows. "Are you planning to manipulate me again, Mr. Ollenburger?" "No manipulate. Only say this—if you teach my son, you must go to church with us. Church, like laughter, is good for the soul.

could read and I could sing. I had walked to church even though it was a long way. I needed to remember that. I tried to force myself to feel happy, but underneath the happiness I felt prickly, like my skin was stretched too tight all over. I might not be a cripple, but I didn't know who I was.

Many leaders in the church do not want to deal with things that relate to the devil.

While the official church was moribund, the house churches kept alight the flame of Christian witness. The church survived as a lay movement, often led by poorly educated Bible women who memorized Scripture and passed on the faith to family members and (if they dared) to neighbors and friends.

He was of the faith chiefly in the sense that the church he currently did not attend was Catholic.

As a little girl, Mom had a simple faith in God, which began in church and shaped many of her values and decisions. When she married Dad, she presumed they would go to church as a family—but Dad had other ideas. He didn't want his kids being corralled into any particular religion. He insisted his kids be able to make up their own minds when they were older, so he adamantly refused to let us attend even Sunday school. So Mom kept quiet and prayed in the simple way she knew how.

They give me the evil eye every Sunday. In Church. It's like they expect the altar to melt or a million locusts to fly out of my butt.

Behind every downward trend in society lies the church's permission in one form or another.

The Nazis succeeded in taking over the church, 'but gradually,' she writes, 'they became aware that something was wrong... A force was resisting them, something they could not put their hands on -- a belief.

Fear is the most socially accepted sin in the Church. Fear is a serial killer, the prime suspect in the death of more people on the planet than all other diseases combined. Fear in every form has been linked to heart disease, cancer, autoimmune disorders, mental illness and many other sicknesses. Fear is the welcome mat to demonic activity in our lives.

How can we have revival when we value a book the early Church didn't have over the Holy Spirit they did have?

Fear is the most socially accepted sin in the church. Fear is the welcome mat to demonic activity in our lives.

I auditioned for a solo in church and got it. I was about seven and I sang a song called, 'Jesus, I Heard You Had a Big House' and I remember people standing up at the end and me thinking, 'Oh, I think I'm going to like this.' That's how it all began. Sounds funny to say you got your start in church, but I did.

If the church as a whole is losing its ability to be "salt and light" in the culture, it is not because its members have no opinion of the films of Bernardo Bertolucci, no appreciation for the poetry of Emily Dickinson, and no regular slot on The Charlie Rose Show. More likely, it is because they do not have a solid grasp of the basic elements of the faith, as taught in Scripture and affirmed by the confessions and catechisms of the church.

The collapse in evangelical doctrinal consensus is intimately related to the collapse in the understanding of, and role assigned to, Scripture as God's Word spoken within the church.

A world, and a church, which is hooked on novelty like some cultural equivalent of crack cocaine needs the cold, cynical eye of the historian to stand as a prophetic witness against it.

the Christian as a Christian has a power that is to be conceived of in cross-shaped terms, and the church, as the body of believers, is also to see its power and its role in a spiritual manner.

What I am claiming is that mere Christianity, a Christianity which lacks this doctrinal elaboration, is an insufficient basis either for building a church or for guaranteeing the long-term stability of the tradition of the church, i.e. the transmission from generation to generation and from place to place of the faith once for all delivered to the saints.

Word and sacrament define the task of the pastoral office in simple, beautiful, and powerful terms.

I'll not forget that day nor the message of the Christian church that we celebrate each death as an Easter, each dying as a living, each soul, no matter how poor or sinful, as the child of royalty. At its best, the church treats people as beings of eternal worth, no less at their dying than at their birth, no less in their sins than in their virtue, no less for one than for another.

Yes, I love the church, but not because it has formed a snug cocoon around me, insulating me from the world. Just the opposite is true. It's where I've encountered my fears. It's where my faith has grown larger; pushing me over edges I didn't want to get near. It's forced me to try things that scared me to death...

Next time you're tempted to surround yourself with worshipers, go to church. In the rest of your life, seek constructive criticism.

that guy came here to confess." "Are you a priest?" "No, I am a church!

We view men's gifts as vital to the church. In contrast, we caution women to exercise their gifts discreetly to avoid causing problems or trespassing some invisible line — which changes location from church to church, sometimes even within the same denomination.