Quotes About Church

The church is in trouble-that's what they say anyways. The problem is most of what they call the church is not the church, and the church is not quite as in trouble as everybody thinks. As a matter of fact, the church today is absolutely beautiful-she's glorious, she's humble, she's broken, and she's confessing her sin. The problem is what everybody's calling the church today isn't the church. Basically, by and large, what's called the church today is nothing more than a bunch of unconverted church people with unconverted pastors.

I grew up in the church, Resurrection Baptist Church in Philadelphia, and my grandmother was that grandmother at the church, the one always at the church, always putting on the events. It was deeply instilled in me that every action, everything I create, everything I say and do in the world is inexorably bound to the lives of everybody I come in contact with - and it's my responsibility to put things into the world that have a positive influence on humanity.

One major difference between Mormons and evangelicals on the subject of revelation is that Latter-day Saints believe that God has appointed modern-day prophets and apostles to receive revelation for Christ's church. All church members may receive revelation appropriate for their particular callings or positions within the church and their families, but never in contradiction to church doctrine or policy. So Mormonism has both a democratic practice of revelation that would resonate with evangelicals, but also an institutional understanding of revelation foreign to evangelicalism.

There's no possibility for vitality in the church without fidelity to the gospels. If you look at the Churches throughout the world, throughout the Western world, where radical reform has been attempted, the Church has collapsed and almost disappeared. The vitality in the Church, the young people who are here in their tens of thousands, hundreds of thousands possibly, young people who belong, who adhere strongly to the central tradition of Christ and the Church.

It is not so much the case that God has a mission for his church in the world, as that God has a church for his mission in the world. Mission was not made for the church; the church was made for mission - God’s mission.

Everyone related to me in my circle was from church: church friends, church school, church activities. All my friends weren't allowed to watch MTV or go to PG-13 movies or listen to the radio, so I didn't really know anything different. That's how I was raised.

Supreme authority in both church and home has been divinely vested in the male as the representative of Christ, who is Head of the church. It is in willing submission rather than grudging capitulation that the woman in the church (whether married or single) and the wife in the home find their fulfillment.

The church which is not a missionary church will be a missing church when Jesus comes.

The usual marriage in traditional cultures was arranged for by the families. It wasn't a person-to-person decision at all. . . . In the Middle Ages, that was the kind of marriage that was sanctified by the Church. And so the troubadour idea of real person-to-person Amor was very dangerous. . . . It is in direct contradiction to the way of the Church. The word AMOR spelt backwards is ROMA, the Roman Catholic Church, which was justifying marriages that were simply political and social in their character. And so came this movement validating individual choice, what I call following your bliss.

Religion is so focused on family. These days, for many people, being gay is also focused on family. The Mormon Church is especially focused on family, and I'd have hoped, therefore, that the Mormon Church would especially have celebrated how all of these people who might have been lonely and suicidal and childless are now able to lead this other life. I would have thought it would be a cause for immense celebration. Instead it has been, obviously, a cause of great concern to the Church and its leadership.

It is the voice of the Church that is heard in singing together. It is not you that sings, it is the Church that is singing, and you, as a member of the Church, may share in its song.

I tried to give some warnings early on to a lot of my Christian followers that mixtape really wasn't targeted at the church so they would be able to understand. I wanted to wrestle with some things that I know people outside of the church wrestle through. When It comes to the church I just want to edify.

Whether [new Protestant church movements] place their emphasis on new worship styles, expressions of the Holy Spirit’s power, evangelism to seekers, or Bible teaching, these so-called new movements still operate out of the fallacious assumption that the church belongs firmly in the town square, that is, at the heart of Western culture. And if they begin with this mistaken belief about their position in Western society, all their church planting, all their reproduction will simply mirror this misapprehension.

God has a church upon the earth, who are His chosen people, who keep His commandments. He is leading, not stray offshoots, not one here and one there, but a people. The truth is a sanctifying power, but the church militant is not yet the church triumphant.

My childhood was limited to mostly gospel music. We didn't have, like, a lot of records in our house, you know. It was like my grandparents who raised me. They were pretty old-fashioned in their religious ways, so it was like church, church, church, school, school, school.

One of the primary questions in a state-church arrangement is, 'which controls which?' . . . In Norway, for example, the liberal labor government has regularly angered Church officials by making controversial ministerial appointments against the wishes of the clergy. . . . These and other actions have strained the church-state relationship almost to the breaking point. As a result, some of the bishops have advocated disestablishment.

There's a massive community in church. You have a real home. You can move to different parts of the world and you'll always find a church and a community. When you let go of church, you don't have that comfort, you don't have that safety net anymore.

The adoration of Jesus in the Most Blessed Sacrament is the end of the Church Militant, just as adoration of God in His glory is the end of the Church Triumphant. A holy rivalry, a concert of prayer, a harmony of divine service should exist between the heavenly court and the Eucharistic court here below, between the adorer and his mother the Church.

The church must never become a government factory, carrying on a nationalized industry of religion with the people as the bolts and nuts; with God reduced to the role of cramped advocate of current national policy. Surely the pages of history are replete and the examples in many a foreign country convincing that this kind of church-state union-whatever the original motives, or however noble the original purposes-winds up with a state that is less than stable and a church that is less than sanctified, and with the poor still hungry.

The holy mystery of the day of the Holy Spirit, Pentecost, is to be understood in the following manner: the spirit of man must be completed and perfected by the Holy Spirit, that is, it must be sanctified, illuminated, and divinized by the Holy Spirit. This holy mystery is realized continually in the Church of Christ and because of this the Church is really a continuous Pentecost.... From Holy Pentecost, the day of the Holy Spirit, every God-like soul in the Church of Christ is an incombustible bush which continuously burns and is inflamed with God and has a fiery tongue within it.

You could remove the powerful preaching from our church and it would still continue. You could remove the administration of pastoral care through the cell group system and the church would still continue. But if you remove the prayer life of our church it would collapse.

It is said that there is no salvation outside the Church. Who denies this? And therefore whatever things of the Church are had outside the Church do not avail unto salvation.

As the magistrate has no power to impose by his laws the use of any rites and ceremonies in any church, so neither has he any power to forbid the use of such rites and ceremonies as are already received, approved, and practised by any church; because if he did so, he would destroy the church itself; the end of whose institution is only to worship God with freedom, after its own manner.

It's not necessarily a church theme and it's not really about church. I like my album themes to be metaphors because it gives me the freedom to speak about something else that's going on in my life, so the Born Sinner thing is not about church, it's not even about religion. It's using that as canvas to get other messages across and that's what the album will be.

Every true prayer is a prayer of the Church; by means of that prayer the Church prays, since it is the Holy Spirit living in the Church, Who in every single soul 'prays in us with unspeakable groanings'.

There were positive things about the church, that is, in the European cultural sense, the architecture, the liturgy, the music, the art, such as it was, the stations of the cross in the church, the tradition, and the atmosphere of awe and mystery in the mass. The atmosphere of miracle, one of mainly mystery, that's what fascinates me.

Church is great, but I found my church here. Hugh Hefner has been nothing but a gentleman.

The Catholic religion at the time was much darker and more mysterious. The entire mass was in Latin. The church was - if you go to my church now, it's incredibly bright inside. But at - when I was young, it was very dark inside. And it was just the difference in the way that they've painted it since I've gone there. And it strives for a very different and welcoming spirit.

I sat on the piano bench next to my mother in church. Something happened before I set foot on this planet. I was crawling around inside of her. She was a church pianist. My dad was a brilliant singer. I was hearing it.

It should be recognized that this Church is not a social club. This is the kingdom of God on the earth. It is the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints. Its purpose is to bring salvation and exaltation to both the living and the dead.

I do object to the sensationalism or even the voyeurism of doing things in church or out of church.

Perhaps the Lord has called me and preserved me for this service not because I am particularly fit for it, or so that I can govern and rescue the Church from her present difficulties, but so that I can suffer something for the Church, and in that way it will be clear that he, and no other, is her guide and saviour

And so, lastly, does the very name of "Catholic", which, not without reason, amid so many heresies, the Church has thus retained; so that, though all heretics wish to be called Catholics, yet when a stranger asks where the Catholic Church meets, no heretic will venture to point to his own chapel or house.

The idea of separating church and state by the Founding Fathers of America was freedom from the domination of one form of religion, because many of them left England, because they were persecuted by the church, because they want to express their Christian faith in a different way. So it was a bit of warfare between Christians.

I am a person that believes in different emotions with music. Music can bring about different vibes on the field, off the field, urban life, going to church, leaving church. Everything the world may bring, there's a song for it to put you in the right frame of mind.

From the time I can remember my mother kept me in church. I think my first recollection of any place, being anywhere was in a church.

I'm spiritual. I'm religious. I'm a strong Christian and I'm a Catholic but I go to a Presbyterian Church. Occasionally I go to the Catholic church too. I take communion. I haven't transferred my membership or anything.

I don't believe there is a separation of church and state. I think the Constitution is very clear. The only separation is that there will not be a government church.

I’m really only responsible to make sure that one person is clapping at the end of my life. Because I feel like as a performer, a lot of times you live for everyone else’s applause. That’s a dangerous thing within the church or outside the church.

It is God’s will through His wonderful grace, that the prayers of His saints should be one of the great principal means of carrying on the designs of Christ’s kingdom in the world. When God has something very great to accomplish for His church, it is His will that there should precede it the extraordinary prayers of His people; as is manifest by Ezekiel 36:37. and it is revealed that, when God is about to accomplish great things for His church, He will begin by remarkably pouring out the spirit of grace and supplication (see Zechariah 12:10).

The Church was as concerned with this world as the next: I saw that virtually all of the achievements of Africans seemed to have come about through the missionary work of the Church.

The church doesn’t have a mission; there is a mission, and it has the church.

I think here is the irony of American history. We don't have an established church. When you have an established church nobody takes religion as seriously as we do here. We have a free market in religion. The religious groups are competing with each other.

How torturous is the "churchly" language one must speak in church - the tone, style, habit. It is all artificial; there is a total absence of a simple human language. With what a sigh of relief one leaves this world of cassocks, and kissing and church gossip. As soon as one leaves, one sees: wet bare branches, fog which floats over fields, trees, homes. Sky. Early dusk. And it all tells an incredibly simple truth.

I have the privilege of ministering in many different streams of the church. When you do that you're never going to subscribe to everything each other believe, but there's always so much common ground. The main and plain stuff you have in common, so you build upon that. I've never found a stream of the church I didn't learn something from. Every single time, even if I didn't personally agree with everything, there was something I took away, or learned, and felt like a stronger worshipper or worship leader.

That's what the liveliest parts of the world Church today - ranging from the booming Church in Africa to FOCUS missionaries on American campuses - are living: a Catholicism that has discovered that it doesn't have a mission, it is a mission.

My parents were terrific - mother was a church organist and my father was probably the most respected person in our church outside of the minister and sometimes maybe that much. The neighbors all called him - a gentleman.

Progress is born of doubt and inquiry. The Church never doubts, never inquires. To doubt is heresy, to inquire is to admit that you do not know—the Church does neither.