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Church is what you do. Church is who you are. Church is the human outworking of the person of Jesus Christ. Let's not go to Church, let's be the Church.
Bill HybelsWe worry a great deal about the problem of church and state. Now what about the church and God? Sometimes there seems to be a greater separation between the church and God than between the church and state.
Abraham Joshua HeschelI'd signed up not just for Christianity but the established Church of England. That has a particular history and I think we rather lost it in the 19th Century, we became so much part of empire and colonialism, the language of the Church Of England still reflects that Victorian time. As the 20th Century developed, not surprisingly people left the church and I can see the church's role in losing people.
Alan GreenI love the church. And the church is flawed. I think it's important that the issues of justice become important to the church. A lot of these churches don't necessarily take on justice because it affects dollars that come in. We need to start and assess the areas that we're in and not be so obsessed with becoming this big, huge church where everybody's pointing at one leader! We all should be pointing at Jesus, and if that's true we got to get to a place where the people become important to us. It kills me! It hurts me! Jesus has set the example. It's very clear!
Russell OkungThe true man of God is heartsick, grieved at the worldliness of the Church, grieved at the toleration of sin in the Church, grieved at the prayerlessness in the Church. He is disturbed that the corporate prayer of the Church no longer pulls down the strongholds of the devil.
Leonard RavenhillI believe in an America where the separation of church and state is absolute - where no Catholic prelate would tell the president (should he be Catholic) how to act. I do not speak for my church on public matters - and the church does not speak for me.
John F. KennedyI would like a more missionary church,Not so much a tranquil church, but a beautiful church that goes forward.
Pope FrancisThere is no regularly constituted church of Christ on earth, nor any person qualified to administer any church ordinances; nor can there be until new apostles are sent by the Great Head of the Church for whose coming I am seeking.
Roger WilliamsThe future of the church is also about looking back and looking at where we see these wonderful renewals and what we can learn from the early church. I think it is a really exciting time where Phyllis Tickle said every few hundred years the church needs a rummage sale where we can get rid of some of the clutter.
Shane ClaiborneThe Church desperately needs people of joy and zeal. Show me a church that is consistently obedient to this single command, and I will show you a church that is turning its world upside down.
Josh HuntChurch, the spiritual power, and the executive power are working today united in a system that confronts people. This alliance or cooperation between the spiritual power and the executive power, between the church and the government, unfortunately takes away the Church's basic mission. It takes away their right to speak on moral or ethical subjects.
Andrey ZvyagintsevIt is the wall of separation between church and state . . . that is largely responsible for religion thriving in this country, as compared to those European countries in which church and state have been united, resulting in opposition to the church by those who disapprove of the government.
Alan DershowitzI say unto you with all the soberness I can, that we stand in danger of losing our liberties, and that once lost, only blood will bring them back; and we of this church will, in order to keep the Church going forward, have more sacrifices to make, and more persecutions to endure than we have yet known. If the conspiracy comes here it will probably come in its full vigor and there will be a lot of vacant places among those who guide and direct, not only this government, but also this Church of ours.
J. Reuben ClarkIt is Peter himself that He says, 'You are Peter, and upon this rock I will build my Church.' Where Peter is, there is the Church. And where the Church, no death is there, but life eternal.
AmbroseThere is a statement often repeated in the Church, and while it is not in one of the Standard Church Works, it is accepted as church doctrine, and this is: 'As man is, God once was; as God is, man may become.'
LeGrand RichardsYou 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.
David Yonggi ChoIf we all gave all our goods to the poor, the church would fall apart. If we all hated our father and mother, as Jesus told us to, there'd be an end of the church's emphasis on the family as being the one important thing holding the whole society together. There are all sorts of ways in which the church's teachings contradict directly what Jesus says in the Gospel.
Philip PullmanAre you getting a big kick out of the Enron scandal? I find this interesting that whenever a big crisis starts, people start showing up in church. So, Ken Lay shows up in church this weekend. Church officials are still looking for the collection plates.
David LettermanThe Church does not dictate the policies of the nation. The Church proclaims the truth of God to which all these policies must conform.
Frank PavoneImagine, to become a priest there are eight years of study and preparation, and then if after a while you can't do it, you can ask for a dispensation, you leave, and everything is OK. On the other hand, to make a sacrament (marriage), which is for your whole life, three to four conferences...Preparation for marriage is very important. It's very, very important because I believe it is something that in the Church, in common pastoral ministry, at least in my country, in South America, the Church has not valued much.
Pope FrancisThe search for a "suitable" church makes the man a critic where God wants him to be a pupil. What he wants from the layman in church is an attitude which may, indeed, be critical in the sense of rejecting what is false or unhelpful but which is wholly uncritical in the sense that it does not appraise- does not waste time in thinking about what it rejects, but lays itself open in uncommenting, humble receptivity to any nourishment that is going.
C. S. LewisThe Holy Spirit, in the variety of his gifts, unites us and enables us to contribute to the building up of the Church in holiness. In this great work, each of us has a part to play; each of us, as a "living stone", is needed for the growth and the beauty of God's holy temple. Let us ask the Lord to help us to take an ever more active part in the Church's life and mission, guided by the Holy Spirit and with Jesus as our cornerstone.
Pope FrancisThe Church will be punished because the majority of her members, high and low, will become so perverted. The Church will sink deeper and deeper until she will at last seem to be extinguished, and the succession of Peter and the other Apostles to have expired. But, after this, she will be victoriously exalted in the sight of all doubters.
Nicholas of FlueMany people take exception to me and say that I'm doing black magic and things they can't do at church. But I'm doing magic that started their church.
Tony AndruzziPerhaps 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
Pope Paul VII don't trust the church or the government, and anything the church or the government tells me I assume to be a lie or a conspiracy, until proven true.
Killer MikeIf Jesus remained dead, how can you explain the reality of the Christian church and its phenomenal growth in the first three centuries of the Christian era? Christ's church covered the Western world by the fourth century. A religious movement built on a lie could not have accomplished that....All the power of Rome and of the religious establishment in Jerusalem was geared to stop the Christian faith. All they had to do was to dig up the grave and to present the corpse. They didn't.
Henry F. Schaefer, III[Pope] Francis ought to be taken at his word when he says, as he has often done, that he is a son of the Church who believes and teaches what the Catholic Church believes and teaches.
George WeigelFrom 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.
Teddy PendergrassThere are pockets of the church that will "give up," and reap a bountiful harvest. They are going to have huge success, like the church has never experienced since the Book of Acts.
John C. MaxwellGod's dream still remains unfulfilled. It was not fulfilled 2,000 years ago, or in the home of any religious leader or any American home, and today the Unification Church is here to pledge to fulfill that dream. We don't want to confine that fulfillment to our Church, but to expand it all over the world. Wouldn't that be the Kingdom of God on earth?
Sun Myung MoonSatan's strategies to stop the church will ultimately serve to spread the church. And Satan's strategies to inflict earthly pain in your life will ultimately serve to increase eternal glory with your God; 'Light momentary affliction.'
David PlattHypocrites in the Church? Yes, and in the lodge and at the home. Don't hunt through the Church for a hypocrite. Go home and look in the mirror. Hypocrites? Yes. See that you make the number one less.
Billy SundayIโm 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 elseโs applause. Thatโs a dangerous thing within the church or outside the church.
Jon ForemanWhen a church reaches up beyond its group and tries to enforce its standards upon a society that doesn't accept these standards, and perhaps for good reason, perhaps for bad reason, but anyway this is the problem we face in pluralistic society, that not necessarily every standard that every church tries to enforce upon the society is from the society's standpoint a good standard.
Reinhold NiebuhrPriesthood is the means whereby the Lord acts through men to save souls. One of the defining features of the Church of Jesus Christ, both anciently and today, is His authority. There can be no true Church without divine authority.
David A. BednarThat'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.
George WeigelWould the potential attraction to Mormonism by simply having a Mormon in the White House threaten traditional Christianity by leading more Americans to a church that some Christians believe misleadingly calls itself Christian, is an active missionary church, and a dangerous cult?
Rick SantorumThe church must acclimate to a changing world, or she will destine herself to irrelevance or even extinction. ...One of those dramatic changes in our environment is the shift from words to images. To do church in a way that is entirely text driven is the kiss of death.
Erwin McManusThe Protestant wing of the western church, which is a tiny percentage of the Body of Christ, is nearly completely (98%) unaware that the Holy Spirit is restoring contemplative prayer-center stage-to the church The Holy Spirit is restoring this precious jewel (contemplative prayer) to the body of Christ. This is the God ordained means of attaining the fullness of God.
Mike BickleThe church has been brought into the same value system as the world: fame, success, materialism and celebrity. We watch the leading churches and the leading Christians for our cues. We want to emulate the best known preachers with the biggest sanctuaries and the grandest edifices. Preoccupation with these values has perverted the church's message.
Charles ColsonSometimes the sight of someone in one faith wrestling with that faith can empower you to wrestle with another faith. For me, it was reading about how the Catholic Church wrestled with itself in the 1960s. Pope John XXIII set Nostra Aetate - the Declaration on the Relation of the Church with Non-Christian Religions - in motion. It changed the relationship between Jews and Catholics. Today, Jews and Catholics meet as friends. If you can do that, after the longest history of hatred the world has known, that empowers you as a Jew or a Muslim to wrestle with your faith.
Jonathan SacksThe last word of our Lord to the church was not the Great Commission. The last thing He said to the church was 'Repent.' He said that to five out of seven.
Vance HavnerOn many occasions I have been asked if I think persecution will come to the Western church. My answer might surprise you. I believe that if you find yourself enslaved inside a controlling church structure of legalism and bondage, then you are already being persecuted! So many Christians seem impossibly distracted from hearing God's voice. Instead of listening to that still, small voice that brings true peace and joy, they blindly follow the voices of mainstream religion. The worst kind of persecution for a Christian is when you are separated from the joy and presence of the Holy Spirit.
Brother YunI understand perfectly well why the Catholic Church preaches against abortion. But it shouldn't be the purpose of the Catholic Church to prevent non-Catholics from having abortions if they feel that abortions are morally acceptable. They can certainly only argue for what they believe to be right in the court of public opinion and try to persuade people.
Andrew SolomonI was immersed in comfortable Christianity. Years ago, I found myself living what seemed like the American church dream - pastoring a large church, living in a large house, and surrounded by all the comforts this world has to offer. But inside I had a sinking feeling that I was missing the point.
David Platt