Church Quotes
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Our society trains us to think of marriage as a contractual arrangement. If one party fails to fulfill his or her end, the contract is null and void. Increasingly children are raised in a contractual environment. When contractual thinking dominates our horizon, we can even make Jesus or the church an asset we think we can manage.
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Anybody who had come up with a new concept would have been under suspicion for being out of step with the tradition or out of step with the teachings of the church.
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Every country gets the circus it deserves. Spain gets bullfights. Italy the Church. America Hollywood.
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It's curious that the Church has become the most tightfisted at the very time in history when God has provided most generously. There's considerable talk about the end of the age, and many people seem to believe that Christ will return in their lifetime. But why is it that expecting Christ's return hasn't radically influenced our giving? Why is it that people who believe in the soon return of Christ are so quick to build their own financial empires--which prophecy tells us will perish--and so slow to build God's kingdom?
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There are hours when the Church must say NO to those who should ask communion with her, in the doing of her work, upon the basis of compromise.
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Officially, the New Testament church at an early stage took seriously their responsibility for widows who lacked family or other resources. The office of deacon was instituted initially to address this pressing need.
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The goal of this office will not be to favor one religious group over another - or even religious groups over secular groups. It will simply be to work on behalf of those organizations that want to work on behalf of our communities, and to do so without blurring the line that our founders wisely drew between church and state.
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I started singing at the age of 4, at my grandfather's church in McKinney, Texas. It was called Greater Hope Holiness Church. My first solo was "Jesus Loves Me."
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The Christian church does not need more popular preaching, but more unpopular preaching.
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I went to the little church in the country after ten years in the city. And part of my dream was to sit on people's front porches with glasses of iced tea, and all that happened. I was able to send birthday cards to everyone in the parish and able to know everyone who was there on Sunday by name. And that was what I'd been looking for.
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I'm not a pastor; I've never been on staff at a church.
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Millions of Christians can and do go through life attending church, listening to sermons, reciting the creeds and never confront the seeming contradictions, redaction and myths passed off as verifiable history.
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Unfortunately, the Church's position on most contemporary issues makes it hard to take them seriously.
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We live in a relativistic culture, where people are more con- cerned with being liked than being truthful. In A Sweet and Bitter Providence, John Piper does an outstanding job of bibli- cally defending key truths that the church often ignores. He gives us an example of how to take a bold and educated stand on issues of race, purity, and God's sovereignty.
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Someone has said that the marks of a strong church are wet eyes, bent knees, and a broken heart. We'll never be powerful until we let God be God and jealously guard His honor.
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Walk through this with me. Through this church birthed of blood and muscle where every move our arms take, every breath we swallow is worship. Bend with me. There are bones in our throats. If we choke it is only on songs.
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Most people already know what they're doing wrong. When I get them to church I want to tell them that you can change.
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Surely you know that if a man can't be cured of churchgoing, the next best thing is to send him all over the neighbourhood looking for the church that "suits" him until he becomes a taster or connoisseur of churches.
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Scientists were rated as great heretics by the church, but they were truly religious men because of their faith in the orderliness of the universe.
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God bless the Methodist Church - bless all the churches - and blessed be God, Who, in this our great trial, giveth us the churches.
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In other words, the Church acknowledges Science as the higher authority.
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If you live today, you breath in nihilism ... it's the gas you breathe. If I hadn't had the Church to fight it with or to tell me the necessity of fighting it, I would be the stinkingest logical positivist you ever saw right now.
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It would be inaccurate, however, to say that my childhood was untroubled. The normal fears and worries of every child were in me developed to a high degree; every day was an awesome prospect. I was uneasy about practically everything: the uncertainty of the future, the dark of the attic, the panoply and discipline of school, the transitoriness of life, the mystery of the church and of God, the frailty of the body, the sadness of afternoon, the shadow of sex, the distant challenge of love and marriage, the far-off problem of a livelihood.
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I have a much wider, freer view about spirituality. I feel that people need to pursue it on their own, personally. You know, let it be theirs - a personal relationship with their soul, or their God, or with their church.
