Church Quotes
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Just as the true fruit of an apple tree is not an apple, but another tree; the true fruit of a small group is not a new Christian, but another group; the true fruit of a church is not a new group, but a new church; the true fruit of a leader is not a follower, but a new leader; the true fruit of an evangelist is not a convert, but new evangelists. Whenever this principle is understood and applied, the results are dramatic.
Ed Stetzer
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When the church finds its members falling into gross and scandalous sins, then it is time for the church to awake and cry to God for a Revival of Religion.
Charles Grandison Finney
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Now the Church is not wood and stone, but the company of believing people; one must hold to them, and see how they believe, live and teach.
Martin Luther
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I was raised Catholic and went to Catholic school until junior high. I don't believe in transmigration or anything like that. I have resentment for being forced to believe in something. I will always think of the church as an institution and not a comfort.
Alice Glass
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Consider the problem of taking showers with Christians. They are, after all, constantly going on about the business of witnessing in the hopes of making converts to their God and church. Would you want to shower with such people? You never know when they might try to baptize you.
Stanley Hauerwas
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New York is essentially a bazaar, not a Presbyterian church.
Pete Hamill
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I played for my first church service when I was nine years old. I was sufficiently tall to be able to reach the pedals. The first hymn I played was Bringing in the Sheaves, and to this day I can play it in any key. I graduated to a Hammond organ a few years later when we went to another church, and then in high school came one of the loves of my life, the pipe organ. The sound of the pipe organ still gives me a thrill, whether soft strings or drowning out the orchestra as in Strauss' Also Sprach Zarathustra.
Barbara Harbach
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The church grew, and I gained a reputation for preaching, and people came, and it was a wonderful community. But we had a building that seated 82 people, and with a congregation then approaching 400 we were up to four services on Sunday, and everyone was tired.
Barbara Brown Taylor
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Some of the greatest achievements ever have been achieved as a result of the Church. The Catholic Church. I'm not Catholic but yeah, the Church, for instance, you take a walk through the Vatican, and to your right is the double helix staircase built, I think, in 1138 or something.
Kelsey Grammer
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As soon as the Gospels were written, speech without experience began to dabble with the new facts proposed by the existence of the Church. People tried to think the new life without being touched by it first in some form of call, listening, passion or change of heart.
Eugen Rosenstock-Huessy
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The public school has become the established church of secular society.
Ivan Illich
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Depend upon it, as long as the church is living so much like the world, we cannot expect our children to be brought into the fold.
Dwight L. Moody
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[Christianity] endeavors equally to establish these two things: that God has set up in the Church visible signs to make himself known to those who should seek him sincerely, and that he has nevertheless so disguised them that he will only be perceived by those who seek him with all their heart.
Blaise Pascal
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When the gospel flourishes in the church, everything flourishes with it.
Martin Luther
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But a most pernicious error widely prevails that Scripture has only so much weight as is conceded to it by the consent of the church. As if the eternal and inviolable truth of God depended upon the decision of men!
John Calvin
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Outside of Paul’s work itself, we do not know of any organized Christian missionary work—not just for the first century, but for any century prior to the conversion of most of the empire.
As MacMullen has succinctly put it: “After Saint Paul, the Church had no mission.”
That may be hard to believe, but in fact, if you were to count every Christian missionary about whom even a single story is told, from the period after the New Testament up through the first four centuries, you would not need all the digits on one hand.
We are not talking about armies of volunteers knocking on doors. We know of three, all in a different isolated region.
And, as we will see, even the stories told of them are highly legendary.
Bart Ehrman
