Quotes About Church

The pluralistic spirit of the age challenges the very raison d'etre of mission in a globalized world. If Jesus is not the only way, how does that affect our desire to go to dangerous, difficult places and into hardship situations? In the face of global pluralism, the church must proclaim Jesus Christ with theological integrity, critical contextualization and countercultural preaching.

It is the doom of the Christian church to be always distracted with controversy. John Quincy Adams

Many Christians have put their trust in changing laws rather than, with God's help, changing hearts of fellow sinners for whom Christ died (1 John 2:2). The church in America often depends on legislation to do the work that God calls his people to do. The Spirit's transformation of ourselves and of those around us comes when we love God and neighbor—the very core of our Christian commitment.

But the nation of America isn't the people of God; we don't live in a theocracy. The sooner Christians realize this, the sooner the church can make a deeper impact as salt and light in society.

The gigantic being dropped deftly onto his sandaled toes in the graveyard, right next to the statue of Pipkin the church cat that had, for a brief and glorious six weeks, been the central feature of Pokemon interest in the little market town.

God says we shouldn't take advantage of the fatherless (Exodus 22:22) and that true religion looks after the fatherless (James 1:27). It's time for the church to flex some real muscle on behalf of the weak and the needy.

The church is not a theological classroom. It is a conversion, confession, repentance, reconciliation, forgiveness and sanctification center, where flawed people place their faith in Christ, gather to know and love him better, and learn to love others as he designed.

For the church to be the church—not just a place where you can find ministry but where the people are a ministering community—every believer must accept his or her role in the life of every other believer.

The church is not a theological classroom. It is a conversion, confession, repentance, reconciliation, forgiveness, and sanctification center, where flawed people place their trust in Christ, gather to know and love him better, and learn to love others as he has designed.

The church is in desperate need of a leadership community whose function is not just structured to achieve with efficiency but is more deeply shaped by the comforts and calls of the gospel of Jesus Christ.

I've accepted the fact that I'm going to be a sad man for the rest of my life because I get calls all the time of the saddest things that are happening in the church.

We were a Christian family in active participation in a vibrant church, but what we were involved in lacked one of the primary and essential ingredients of healthy New Testament Christianity: a trained, mobilized, and functioning body of Christ. It was Christianity devoid of Ephesians 4, 1 Corinthians 12, and Hebrews 3:12–13. For

For most of us, church is merely an event we attend or an organization we belong to. We do not see it as a calling that shapes our entire life.

Church leadership is a people-building ministry; to function any other way is both unbiblical and dangerous.

the true crisis in the modern evangelical church is not dissatisfaction; it's the opposite. We're all too satisfied.

If Christ is the head of his body—and he is—then everything else is just body. The most influential pastor or ministry leader is a member of the body of Christ and therefore needs what the other members of the body need.

I am persuaded that the church today has many more consumers than committed participants.

The church is a community of unfinished people living in a broken world and still in need of God's forgiving and transforming grace. The church isn't meant, for either leaders or those being led, to be comfortable; it's meant to be personally transformational.

People move from church to church as if the churches in their community are nothing more than ecclesiastical department stores. They're shopping for just the right preacher, women's ministry, youth ministry, or worship style. These Christians' relationship to the church mirrors my relationship to Macy's.

Many, many believers think of their church as a place to attend rather than something with which they are intimately involved.

Many Christians also live inside the church virtually unknown. They slip in and out of the weekly service almost unnoticed. Sure, they will exchange niceties with the people near them, and if they do that, they will learn a few cursory details about one another's lives, but they don't really have a relationship with the people with whom they worship.

If you followed the Lord for a thousand years, you would still need the ministry of the body of Christ as much as you did the day you first believed.

Not knowing is hard. It would be nice to know if that elder is going to succumb to the temptation of being divisive. It would be nice to know if the finances of the church are going to rebound. It would be nice to know how that new preaching series will be received, if those young missionaries will make all the adjustments that they need to make, or if you'll get the permits to build that needed worship space.

Churches are losing many from the current generation. Why? Because many younger people, including some of my children, see no relevance in the church. They're not looking for heaven; they want a better world. But all they're seeing is an institution trying to preserve itself through the current culture wars; pointing fingers, hating, and especially not being filled with love or mercy. Secular humanism appears much more loving than the church to so many today.