Quotes About Churches

Unless we learn how to humbly tell each other our giving stories, our churches will not learn to give.

Suppose churches taught that God is happy and that he is the source of all happiness. Suppose Christians believed that God calls them to view work, play, music, food, and drink as gracious gifts from God's hand to be responsibly enjoyed within the parameters of his commands.

Imagine if our churches were known for being communities of Jesus-centered happiness, overflowing with the sheer gladness of what it means to live out the good news of great joy. Imagine if our children brought their friends to church and their comment was, "Those people seem so nice . . . and happy.

Nothing is more poisonous than the spirit of entitlement that permeates our culture and sometimes, sadly, our churches.

This song is called 'To Be a Martyr for the Lord.' It's very popular in house churches.

There are many churches that teach doctrine, and that is good. We all need a strong foundation of good solid doctrine. But along with that doctrine, we also need to know how to live our lives. If

The scent of these arm-pits aroma finer than prayer,This head more than churches, bibles, and all the creeds.

The genius of the United States is not best or most in its executives or legislatures, nor in its ambassadors or authors or colleges, or churches, or parlors, nor even in its newspapers or inventors, but always most in the common people.

The weariness and serenity of the churches just now make it a good time to study the prophets and get rid of tired misconceptions. The dominant conservative misconception, evident in manifold bumper stickers, is that the prophet is a fortune-teller, a predictor of things to come (mostly ominous), usually with specific reference to Jesus.

The failure of churches to continue Jesus' struggle to overcome domination is one of the most damning apostasies in its history. With some thrilling exceptions, the churches of the world have never yet decided that domination is wrong.

Yet it should not be forgotten that construction of churches and cathedrals helped create and deepen markets for many artisanal and engineering skills. In the same way that military spending of the nation-state during the Cold War unintentionally helped incubate the Internet, so the building of medieval cathedrals led to spin-offs of other kinds, the incubation of commerce. The Church was a principal customer of the building trades and artisans.

Churches closing at a rate of six thousand per year in North America are not doing so because of worship style or form of government or methodology. They are failing because regardless of your preference on those points, it's pointless to deny the true cause behind debates and divisions—a failure to love.

Only 9 percent of evangelicals tithe to their churches. • Eight hundred new church plants survive each

In no instance have the churches been guardians of the liberties of the people.

Humor can help churches humble. It puts the community in touch with its inevitable limitations as a human organization, and its fundamental reliance to God. That leads us to God through the gateway of humility.

Within South Korean Christian churches, there has been an explosion of ministries of pastoral care and counseling in recent decades. Every family has its own story of trauma to tell, and many people seek understanding of how they can find healing for their trauma. In situations of trauma, people seek religious answers to why things have happened as they have, and what resources will bring the possibility of surviving and thriving again. Within the interreligious context

The Contributions of Korean Christian Churches Korean Christians have unique contributions to make to our understanding of pastoral theology and counseling. Pastoral counselors and theologians from the United States should look to the South Korean Christian churches and other Asian churches for conversation partners about the nature of care and healing in today's world.

Historian Garry Wills later captured the 1950s liberal Catholic's affinity for "steel and glass fish-shaped churches, and driftwood-swirl Madonnas, and wrought-iron abstract tracery for the stations of the cross (artily photographed in Jubilee)."31

Of course, there are those churches today that are inspired by the real living presence of Christ, but as a whole, Christianity needs new life breathed into it. It needs to be challenged to awaken from the old structures that confine spirit, so that the perennial spirit of awakening can flourish once again.

Unfortunately, when we turn to religion, often the churches box us in even more. They tell us that we are inherently flawed, that we need to be forgiven for this sin, this stain that we carry. The first and most important function of religion is to connect you with the mystery of life and the mystery of your own being. When religion fails to do this, it has betrayed its primary mission, and all we are left with is dogma and belief.

I think the churches in this country need to be revitalized; they need that challenging presence of Jesus that says, "It's important that you realize the truth of your being. There are profound consequences to living in darkness." As Jesus says in the Gospel of Thomas, "If you do not bring forth what is within you, what you do not bring forth will destroy you.

Men are so superior about their Latin," said Mrs. Blair. "But all the same I notice that when you ask them to translate inscriptions in old churches, they can never do it! They hem and haw, and get out of it somehow.

I feel that if I could sweep all this away . . . all the buildings and the sects and the fierce squabbling churches . . . that I might see Christ's quiet figure riding into Jerusalem on a donkey--and believe in him.

men have never seemed to object to women going off to difficult missionary assignments in the far corners of the earth. The matter of women preachers became a problem only when women wanted to be pastors back home, in the sometimes affluent neighborhoods that typically had churches pastored by men.