Quotes About Churches

Our churches condemn the Pelagians and others who teach that without the Holy Spirit, by natural power alone, we are able to love God above all things and do God's commandments according to the letter.

He was in awe of the thirst that people had for someone to tell them that everything was going to be all right. He marveled at the gullibility and vulnerability of his fellow humans. No wonder the churches called them sheep. They were woolly-headed pack animals being herded around for the benefit of whoever knew how to control the dogs.

If the early Christian accounts of dramatic signs make these works seem foreign and foreboding to segments of modern Western academia,[85] they are nevertheless welcome in many of the dynamic churches of Africa, Latin America, and Asia, which believe that they share their experiences.

All Christian churches in China practice some form of healing, including Three-Self churches. In fact, according to some surveys, 90% of new believers cite healing as a reason for their conversion. This is especially true in the countryside where medical facilities are often inadequate or non-existent. —Edmond Tang

Vietnam was the defining event for my generation. It spilled over into all facets of American life - into music, into the pulpits, in churches of our country. It spilled over into the city streets, police forces. And even if you were born late in the generation, Vietnam was still part of your childhood.

In academia, I discovered that issues and insights, commonplace among the scholars, are viewed as highly controversial and even as 'heresy' in the churches.

A wise man can do no better than to turn from the churches and look up through the airy majesty of the wayside trees with exultation, with resignation, at the unconquerable, unimplicated sun.

Now listen. Faith is like oxygen. It keeps you afloat at all times. Sometimes you need it. Sometimes you don't. but when you do need it you better be practiced at having faith, otherwise it won't work. That's why the missionaries built all the churches. Before we got those churches we weren't practicing enough. That's what prayers are for—practice, children. Practice.

Our wives, our families, and our churches need godly men who have discernment--discernment to deal with life and life-issues on a spiritual level.

Obedience to the law, even unjust laws, had become one of the most egregious ways that ministers and their churches had become conformed to their culture.

Diligence, hard work, perseverance, excellence are the values that will make us have quality churches that will make us bring kingdom of God to the earth.

because many churches are negligent and disobedient when it comes to maintaining the purity of the faith or the community.

It is no secret that Christians lack scriptural discernment in most areas of their lives; yet, they continue to resist any doctrinal teaching that will help them remedy the situation. They refuse to hear "what the Spirit [is saying] to the churches" (Revelation 2:7).

Numbers are essential, but not absolutely essential to strength. For many churches are numerically strong but lamentably weak spiritually. Numbers, then, are no display of spiritual power or strength.

Many churches offer more entertainment than worship, more uniformity than diversity, more exclusivity than outreach, more law than grace.

Stoning prophets and erecting churches to their memory afterwards has been the way of the world through the ages. Today we worship Christ, but the Christ in the flesh we crucified. —Mahatma Gandhi

the New Testament holds up the model of a church whose activities exist primarily for the sake of outsiders. What keeps us from becoming the church God had in mind?

When I listened to public prayers in evangelical churches, I heard people telling God what to do, combined with thinly veiled hints on how others should behave. When

But for us this also means that in place of the spread of our Orthodox, Roman Catholic or Protestant churches we have to put a passion for the kingdom of God. Mission doesn't mean `compelling them to come in'! It is the invitation to God's future and to hope for the new creation of all things: `Behold, I am making all things new' - and you are invited to this divine future for the world!

on the other hand, the Constantinian imperial churches condemned early Christian millenarianism only because they saw themselves in the Christian imperium as `the holy rule' of Christ's Thousand Years' empire. So every future hope for a different, alternative kingdom of Christ was feared and condemned as heresy.

In America today, there are over 1.1 million nonprofit organizations, and almost all are 501(c)(3)s. There are about 370,000 churches. Just twenty years ago, in 1995, there were 500,000 active 501(c)(3)s and about 370,000 churches. What these numbers show is that in twenty years the competition has nearly doubled. Each year finds the number of nonprofits in America growing.

But I want to be sure they know the difference between fluff and substance, between cleverness and excellence. Now and again I see a restaurant try to lift itself to success by reinventing its ambiance, introducing a new menu and rearranging its tables when quite clearly what it needs is better food. Often churches and preachers follow the same course. No wonder such efforts end in disappointment.

The quickest route to heresy and error is "relevant" evangelism. Good-hearted motivations that try to shape the church for the needs of man and not the glory of God are the death of biblical churches.

Paul embodied principles of leadership that he also described in his letters. He certainly thought the life of individual believers and churches ought to resemble a solid foundation on Christ (see 1 Corinthians 3:9-17). Looking at Paul's life, we can see leadership all the more clearly.