Quotes About Church

free relationship—" "Truly free relationships are also responsible ones. Any attempt to deemphasize the true community of the universal Church in favor of the supposedly more democratic model of regional churches is a grave mistake. One of the consistent tactics of tyranny is to divide and neutralize its opponents, to isolate those movements or voices that stand in opposition to the dissolving of identity.

When everything is stripped down to its essential form, our faith is a belief in One who loves us; in Jesus, true God and true man, the only Christ, dwelling in the heart of His Church; in Him who was, who is, and who is to come—in You, O Lord! That is why our home is the universal Church, the throne on which you reign, a Church that is within time and yet outside of time.

The symbolism—if symbolism it was—indicated that the witnesses were types of the Church herself. Would all those who truly followed the Lord enact with their lives what was described by these passages? Would the prayers of believers be the very instruments for bringing chastisements upon unbelieving mankind? Would the Church be apparently destroyed for three and a half years? Would she rise again as the breath of God entered her? And would she then be taken up into heaven?

the devil's purpose in sowing revolution in the Church is to throw her into confusion. Thus, her attention is distracted and her energies scattered. In this way, we are weakened at precisely the moment of history when we need to be strongest.

What remains of your church is going to be handed over to the elder brother, to its rightful Lord." "God will not permit it." "Your absent god has already permitted it. Your progressives gave it over to the Christ of this age long ago. There are so many of them. How easy it was to convince them.

Was it not ordained that the Church must one day go through this second Passover?

Although Zilpha Elaw sought to save souls, not necessarily to reform society, she did suffuse her narrative with running commentary on the racism and sexism that deeply permeated her era [The Second Great Awakening]. She wrote of whites "who readily sacrifice their intelligence to their prejudices," and of "men whose whimas are law" in tne church.

Jesus said the weeds would grow with the wheat until the Judgement," Dietrich answered, "so one finds both good men and bad in the Church. By our fruits we will be known, not by what name we have called ourselves. I have come to believe that there is more grace in becoming wheat than there is in pulling weeds.

One finds both good men and bad in the Church. By our fruits we will be known, not by what name we have called ourselves. I have come to believe that there is more grace in becoming wheat then there is in pulling up weeds.

In sum, the Trinity is manifest in a creation constituted as an icon of the God who is love, and thus a creation whose very form is Church, whose highest expression is the crucified, resurrected, and glorified Christ

Theology, not morality, is the first business on the church's agenda of reform, and the church, not society, is the first target of divine criticism.

According to Revelation, in the church's worship we should remember and honor the prophets and martyrs, not veterans and fallen warriors; faithful witnesses, not loyal patriots; the One who was slain to secure our true freedom, not the ones who killed and were killed to preserve (so it is claimed) our freedom. That this self-evident truth about worship seems so odd, so radical, simply demonstrates how comfortable the church has become in bed with the beast.

The other corollary of this principle is an understanding of scriptural interpretation not merely as an academic exercise, but as an ecclesial practice. For theological interpreters, even the most technical and sophisticated academic biblical interpretation has the church as its primary location and ultimate focus. Good theological biblical scholarship is a form of prayer, communion , and, most importantly, service to the church.

In particular, the rich tradition of intentional Christian community that is also inherently missional needs to be more fully celebrated, imitated, and reimagined for its relevance to more standard forms of being the church.

As the twentieth-century theologian Emil Brunner put it, "The Church exists by mission, just as a fire exists by burning. Where there is no mission there is no Church. . . ."24

New Testament Christianity is not just a formal, polite, correct, and orthodox kind of faith and belief. No! What characterizes it is this element of love and passion, this pneumatic element, this life, this vigor, this abandon, this exuberance—and, as I say, it has ever characterized the life of the church in all periods of revival and of reawakening.

The trouble has generally been . . . that people have emphasized either experience or doctrine at the expense of the other. . . . This is something that has been happening in the church from almost the very beginning. . . . When the whole emphasis is placed upon one or the other, you either have a tendency to fanaticism and excess or a tendency toward a barren intellectualism and a mechanical and a dead kind of orthodoxy.

Let him who has done this be removed from among you" (1 Cor. 5:1–2). He even ordered that the offending, unrepentant brother be delivered "to Satan for the destruction of the flesh, so that his spirit may be saved in the day of the Lord" (v. 5).

There was no hastiness or anger in his response. He did not take the disobedience personally. He had trained many horses and mules and knew the value of patient perseverance. In the end, the twelve-month-old submitted his will to his father, sat as he was placed, and became content—even cheerful. He was now ready to quietly sit through three hours of the most boring church service a sleeping patriarch ever attended.

New City was the first church I'd ever been to in my twenty-two years as a Christian that had a substantial number of members who were economically poor, who came as full participants rather than objects of charity, who called out to be recognized as eyes or toes or thumbs of the body of Christ rather than simply as folks with empty bowls on the other side of the soup kitchen line.

From 1968 to 2001, US per capita incomes doubled. During that same time, the average church member's giving fell from 3.10 percent to 2.66 percent of their total income.

Late afternoon he pulls up outside a white painted Baptist church with a wooden cross on the front wall above a sign that reads, JESUS DOESN'T NEED TO TWEET. pg 138

The issue that captured the church was the issue of ensoulment and when it occurred during development. A church council decided to call it at conception, instead of the time frame St. Thomas Aquinas had argued in the thirteenth century, which was at around three months of gestation.

Is the church really demonstrating the new life in Christ if there is no discipline, if there is no fencing in of the Lord's table, no demand for purity of life?