Quotes About Church

By no means was it the case that the church was entirely a spiritual wasteland in the fifteenth century. The Brethren of the Common Life, a movement of renewal in the Netherlands and northern Germany, spread twin ideals of godliness and human service through its schools, charities, and writings. The best-known writing was The Imitation of Christ, usually attributed to Thomas à Kempis (ca. 1380–1471).

The earliest Protestant leaders—Luther in Germany, Zwingli in Zurich, Cranmer in England, Martin Bucer in Strasbourg, Philipp Melanchthon as Luther's closest junior colleague, Peter Martyr from Eastern Europe, John Knox in Scotland, and many more—expected, or at least hoped, that their diligent attention to the great spiritual questions would lead to a general reformation of the one Western church.

The situation in which a monarch or city council controlled the pace of reform came to be known as Erastianism, after Thomas Erastus, a learned physician in Heidelberg who, during a dispute in that city in the late 1550s between various Protestant factions, urged Frederick III of the Palatinate to pacify the situation by taking control of the church into his own hands.

As much as Anabaptist teachings anticipated later Western convictions about the separation of church and state, at least in the sixteenth century their beliefs were regarded by Catholics and Protestants alike as grave threats to the stability of European Christian society.

Roland Bainton, author of one of the best lives of Luther, once said that in Germany, Luther did all by himself what in England it took Bible-translator William Tyndale, liturgist Thomas Cranmer, preacher Hugh Latimer, hymn-writer Isaac Watts, and several generations of theologians to do.

The turning point in church history that this event symbolizes will be clear when three questions are answered: (1) How did the pope come to have power enough to crown a Roman emperor? (2) How had the king of the Franks risen to a position to be so crowned? (3) And how did this new relationship between the pope and the greatest ruler of northern Europe shape the centuries-long period of Western history usually referred to simply as Christendom?

The English Puritans who migrated to Plymouth, Boston, New Haven, and other North American sites did so in order to continue the efforts to purify self, church, and society that were being frustrated in the mother country. Of many striking features of the Puritans, one of the most remarkable was their zeal in developing a Christian mind.45

Zwingli removed the organ from his church in Zurich because he could not find in Scripture a text mandating the use of the organ in Christian worship, while Luther promoted all kinds of musical instruments in church because he saw no scriptural rule against them; plus, he felt that music offered an effective means for conveying the message of the gospel.

The church survives by the mercy of God, not because of the wisdom, purity, or consistent faithfulness of Christians.

Throughout the entire history of Christianity, problems have constantly arisen when believers equate the human acts of the church with the acts of God, when Christians assume that using the name of God to justify their actions in space and time is the same as God himself acting. But

When Christianity turns into a noun, it becomes a turnoff. Christianity was always intended to be a verb. And, more specifically, an action verb. The title of the book of Acts says it all, doesn't it? It's not the book of Ideas or Theories or Words. It's the book of Acts. If the twenty-first-century church said less and did more, maybe we would have the same kind of impact the first-century church did.

Too often the church complains about culture instead of creating it. The energy we spend on criticism is being stolen from creativity. It's sideways energy. We need fewer commentators and more innovators.

to tell the world of its true Centre, of the law of mutual sacrifice by which its parts are bound together. The Church exists to maintain the order of the nation and the order of the family.

Christian proclamation might make the gospel audible, but Christians living together in local congregations make the gospel visible (see John 13:34–35). The church is the gospel made visible.

The preaching of the Word must be absolutely central. Sound, expositional preaching is often the fountainhead of growth in a church.

God created the church, we have said, so that it might increasingly reflect the character of God as it's been revealed in his Word. In keeping with the storyline of the entire Bible, then, church discipline is the act of excluding an individual who carelessly brings disrepute onto the gospel and shows no commitment to doing otherwise.

A healthy church is a congregation that increasingly reflects God's character as his character has been revealed in his Word.

the most basic level of commitment by a Christian to his church is surprisingly substantial.

By direct command, example, implication, or principles, God's Word tells us everything we need to know about every aspect of following him in life—from dating to marriage, from working to grieving, from evangelizing to eating. What should churches do? The answer is in the Bible.

In many ways a church is simply a group of people who are living lives of love (John 13:34–35) because they all agree on how they have been loved in Christ.

The church arises only from the gospel. And a distorted church usually coincides with a distorted gospel. Whether it leads to such distortions or results from them, serious departures from the Bible's teaching about the church normally signify other, more central misunderstandings about the Christian faith.3

As long as quick numerical growth remains the primary indicator of church health, the truth will be compromised. Instead, churches must once again begin measuring success not in terms of numbers but in terms of fidelity to the Scriptures.

What about for your church? What boundaries has the gospel overrun that society fiercely respects?

But if you establish the priority of the Word, then you have in place the single most important aspect of the church's life, and growing health is virtually assured because God has decided to act by his Spirit through his Word.