Quotes About Church

The church has not been given authority to make commandments; it is the duty of the church to obey the commandments already made. It is not the prerogative nor the privilege of any church to modify, minimize or in any way obscure . . . any commandment, of Jesus Christ.8

Membership is the church's corporate endorsement of a person's salvation.

The greatest danger to the church today is not humanism, paganism, atheism or agnosticism. The greatest danger is not increasing hostility against our faith from the culture. Our greatest danger is apostasy on the inside, arising from false teachers- theological liberals who deny and distort biblical doctrine and lead others down the same path.

The pattern is sadly familiar in church history: a cooling of the church's love for Christ, then its replacement by a love for the things of the world, resulting in compromise and spiritual corruption, followed by a departure from the faith and loss of effective spiritual testimony.

The letter to the church at Ephesus reminds us how easily the church's early days of passionate love for Christ can grow cold as the years go by. But Christ never meant for our duty to Him, even faithful duty, to replace our love for Him. The church's "first love" for Jesus Christ has to be continually nurtured, and serve as the genuine motivation for service to our Lord.

The churches delivering experiences that exceed guests' expectations are those to which people return, again and again, until they're no longer guests but full-fledged members of the church community. When a guest thinks "Wow!" it is because he or she feels affirmed and valued. The church has said, "You matter." Accepting

When God's people fail to live our call, the church buries the gospel.

With grace and hope, the church is to inherently and commonly seek and love the forgotten, the unseen, the undesirable, the uncool. We need to do so with unexpected, tangible love, displaying counterintuitive compassion (including enemy-love) and demonstrating a capacity for magnanimous forgiveness, mercy and justice.

How the church communicates its message, how it tells and lives "the old, old story," and why and how that story matters today is all part of the work the church needs to do. How churches organize themselves and whether they snap, crackle and pop in the way some think they should is not primarily about money, size or technology. The issues are more basic: will the church embody and articulate its only legitimate identity? Will God's people live as followers of Jesus?

Waking up is the dangerous act of worship. It's dangerous because worship is meant to produce lives fully attentive to reality as God sees it, and that's more than most of us want to deal with. Yes, true worship always questions the dominant paradigms, even those within the church.

Missiologist and bishop Lesslie Newbigin uses a cluster of metaphors to describe the church as a "sign, foretaste, and instrument" of the reign of God.' If that great eschatological, multicultural congregation of Revelation is one image of God's reign, in what ways might each current congregation be a sign that points to this reality?

Many church groups have their "prison ministries" and Christians participate in numerous education and assistance programs to the incarcerated. But do they challenge the carceral state? This is the broader and deeper problematic the churches must confront. Numerous

I want to be part of a church that, as the full-orbed body of Christ, reflects the radiant beauty and attractiveness of God's love, grace, forgiveness, salvation, and hope, for this life and for an eternity of fellowship together with one another as well as with him!

The "wall of separation between church and State" is a metaphor based on bad history, a metaphor which has proved useless as a guide to judging. It should be frankly and explicitly abandoned.38

A fear of state power structured Church thought: the Caesars had killed Peter and Paul, and Jesus. The pope therefore did not have one role, but two. He had to render to God what was God's, and keep Caesar at bay.

Yet the Reich cardinals had urged Pacelli to avoid confrontation. Speaking out had only worsened conditions for the Church in the Reich, they said. Whatever he did against Hitler, he would do in the shadows.

Church teaching stated the conditions under which citizens could kill tyrants. Catholic doctrine permitted capital punishment; and though a priest himself could not shed blood, a Christian knight could wield the sword of justice at the bidding of a priest.

How sad. I've just had a walk down The Grange and passed an angry old man from my old church. He just turned round, stood, and glared, shaking his head at me. I don't understand why people are sometimes so hostile and never seem to be able to let go. This poor chap and many like him have attended church every week of their lives, and yet it seems to have had no impact whatsoever on their characters. Alas, it is a mystery indeed.

No God and no religion can survive ridicule. No political church, no nobility, no royalty or other fraud, can face ridicule in a fair field, and live.

A man is accepted into church for what he believes--and turned out for what he knows.

Baptists are only funny underwater.

It's funny - people think analysis or psychiatry is mad, and THEY go to CHURCH.

A pope going through a faith crisis would be funny to see.

I was an altar boy as a kid. And the answer is no.