Quotes About Congregation

Perhaps the wisdom of birds resides, not in the individual, but in the flock, the congregation.

This experience led me to form a hypothesis: perhaps the wisdom of birds resides, not in the individual, but in the flock, the congregation. I have tried to think of an experiment that would test this theory. The problem, as I see it, is that it is impossible to know in advance when such events will occur; and so the only viable course of action is months – more likely years – of careful observation and meticulous record keeping.

I've never gotten up in front of a Muslim congregation and played the role of a religious leader, and I decline those invitations because that's not what I am.

I am humbled and deeply honored to have been asked to serve the congregants of Shearith Israel, a congregation with an incomparable history, where some of America's most distinguished rabbis have pastored and preached.

Jesus gives his life for the congregation, not the other way around.

for I cherish the greatest respect towards everybody's religious obligations, never mind how comical, and could not find it in my heart to undervalue even a congregation of ants worshipping a toad-stool...

Usually in church, when the congregation is overcome by the Holy Spirit for a moment, the people will interrupt the sermon to yell their praises, and dance for joy.

A congregation that does not pray for the ministry of its pastor," Bonhoeffer warns, "is no longer a congregation."11 He then adds, "A pastor who does not pray daily for his congregation is no longer a pastor."12

You can see the goldenrod, that most tenacious and pernicious and beauteous of all New England flora, bowing away from the wind like a great and silent congregation.

Helen laid out our fall agenda: we'd conduct a survey, we'd lead "cottage groups" with church members about the search. We'd receive anti-oppression training and create a "packet." As recording secretary, I'd write newsletter squibs to keep the congregation informed of our progress. Clearly, my vision of the search committee as a series of intense theological discussions was a chimera!

Theology is not a private subject for theologians only. Nor is it a private subject for professors. Fortunately, there have always been pastors who have understood more about theology than most professors. Nor is theology a private subject of study for pastors. Fortunately, there have repeatedly been congregation members, and often whole congregations, who have pursued theology energetically while their pastors were theological infants or barbarians. Theology is a matter for the Church.

this is a good rule of thumb: if you can't hear the congregation, you are probably too loud

Save me, redeem me with Your mercy For I have chosen to walk only in what is right. 12I will proclaim it publicly in every congregation, And because of You, Lord, I will take my stand on righteousness alone!

For Schaeffer the local church should have "two orthodoxies: first, an orthodoxy of doctrine and second, an orthodoxy of community.

the man that wandereth out of the way of understanding shall remain (i.e. even while living) in the congregation of the dead.

She would never be able to console herself that she was pressured or bullied. She never was. She trapped herself, she marched into the labyrinth of her own construction, and was too young, too awestruck, too keen to please, to insist on making her own way back. She was not endowed with, or old enough to possess, such independence or spirit. An imposing congregation had massed itself around her first certainties, and now it was waiting and she could not disappoint it at the altar.

The spiritual life of any congregation and its growth in grace will never exceed the high-water mark set by its pulpit.

The fact remains, no church can rise any higher than its pulpit.

I said tensely to the rabbis on that call, "If I were a rabbi and someone wanted to pray with me, I would meet with them in a bus shelter." Soon thereafter the rabbis let me know I that was not a "good fit" for the congregation. My congregation essentially broke up with me, and returned to me my membership dues.

Like most ministers, Peter was not the best judge of his own sermons. Almost invariably when he thought he had written one of his best, the rest of us did not rate it so highly. And, when on Saturday night he was bemoaning a terrible sermon, he could be pretty sure his congregation would think it terrific. How other people rated his sermons was a constant source of astonishment to him. That's what keeps me humble, he often said.

one who felt himself to occupy morally that vast middle space of Laodicean neutrality which lay between the Communion people of the parish and the drunken section,—that is, he went to church, but yawned privately by the time the congregation reached the Nicene creed, and thought of what there would be for dinner when he meant to be listening to the sermon.

He [Rabbi Menasha Levaartov] was one of those men who, even in the years of peace, would have advised his congregation that while God may well be honored by the inflexibility of the pious, he might also be honored by the flexibility of the sensible.

A pastor stands at the crossroads of a congregation's conflicted conscience. It is a congested intersection, this place. Standing in the middle of it can be dizzying, frightening, awful, especially under the intense scrutiny that comes with religious controversy. You have to keep your wits about you to discern whether the groaning in your gut echoes the groaning of the Spirit.

I've been working for years in my local congregation to undermine the idea that the conservative-liberal divide is reliable shorthand for "faithful to God" vs. "unfaithful to God.