Best 3954 quotes in «church quotes» category

But wait ooo ....Alcohol(Outings & Fashion), Women/Men, Money, Thats all about it. you call this fun ? These don't satisfy ME and you both know how you feel when you are alone. IT STINKS JESUS SATISFIES, NOT CHURCH.

But we have no [Marian] apparitions cautioning the Church against, say, accepting the delusion of an Earth-centered Universe, or warning it of complicity with Nazi Germany — two matters of considerable moral as well as historical import.... Not a single saint criticized the practice of torturing and burning “witches” and heretics. Why not? Were they unaware of what was going on? Could they not grasp its evil? And why is [the Virgin] Mary always admonishing the poor peasant to inform the authorities? Why doesn’t she admonish the authorities herself? Or the King? Or the Pope?

Chiesa, piazza, osteria: lo schema nucleare di ogni paese del Friuli. La chiesa per lo spirito, la piazza per il lavoro e infine l’osteria per la socialità.

But what might a woman say about church as she? What might a woman say about the church as body and bride? Perhaps she would speak of the way a regular body moves through the world—always changing, never perfect—capable of nurturing life, not simply through the womb, but through hands, feet, eyes, voice, and brain. Every part is sacred. Every part has a function. Perhaps she would speak of impossible expectations and all the time she’s wasted trying to contort herself into the shape of those amorphous silhouettes that flit from magazines and billboards into her mind. Or of this screwed-up notion of purity as a status, as something awarded by men with tests and checklists and the power to give it and take it away. Perhaps she would speak of the surprise of seeing herself—flaws and all—in the mirror on her wedding day. Or of the reality that with new life comes swollen breasts, dry heaves, dirty diapers, snotty noses, late-night arguments, and a whole army of new dangers and fears she never even considered before because life-giving isn’t nearly as glamorous as it sounds, but it’s a thousand times more beautiful. Perhaps she would talk about being underestimated, about surprising people and surprising herself. Or about how there are moments when her own strength startles her, and moments when her weakness—her forgetfulness, her fear, her exhaustion—unnerve her. Maybe she would tell of the time, in the mountains with bare feet on the ground, she stood tall and wise and felt every cell in her body smile in assent as she inhaled and exhaled and in one loud second realized, I’m alive! I’m enfleshed! only to forget it the next. Or maybe she would explain how none of the categories created for her sum her up or capture her essence.

Change is inevitable. Progression is a choice. We all move, but are you going to move forward?

By infusing Jesus the man with the divine magic – by making him capable of earthly miracles as well as his own resurrection, the early church turned him into a god within the human world. Thus, the church reinforced the monopoly on the so-called route to heaven, i.e. salvation only through Jesus Christ. And during those days, whoever kept the keys to heaven would rule the world.

Christ did to the Jewish orthodoxy, what Buddha did to the Hindu orthodoxy.

Christianity now is in crisis, and a large part because people have marketed it as a religion of good people getting better, when in fact it is religion a bad people coping with their failure to be good.

Christian missions to India imply that India is a land of heathens, and, therefore, stands on the same level with the Andaman or the Fiji Islands. That a country which has been recognised in all ages the world over as the mother of all religions and the cradle of civilisation should be considered as pagan, shows how much ignorance prevails in Christendom. Since the Parliament of Religions, I have been studying Christian institutions, and I have also studied the way in which the Christian ministers and the missionaries are manufactured in this country, and have learned to pity them. We must not blame them too severely, because their education is too narrow to make them broad-minded. I grant that they are good-hearted, that they are good husbands and often fathers of large families, but generally they are very ignorant, especially of the history of civilisation and of the philosophy of religion of India. Most of them do not even know the history of ancient India. We know that in this age of competition, centralisation, and monopoly, very many people are forced out of business. The English say, 'The fool of the family goes into the Church'; so that when a youth is unable to make a living, he takes to missionary work, goes to India, and helps to introduce among the Hindus the doctrines of his church, which have long since been exploded by science.

Christ is pre-requisite for "Church".

Christians are famous for telling people to be "child-like" and yet one of the greatest qualities of a child (the never ending list of questions) is often discouraged.

Choosing the way of Christ not only means identifying with Christ, however; ‘it also means identifying with the stubborn, recalcitrant, and frequently offensive flock that he calls his own. . . .Yet as flawed as the people of God are, if the Lord is to be our God then his people must be our people too.

Christ said, not a single iota of the truth He gave was to be changed, then by what right do we sit in judgment on Divinity and say: This much of Your truth we will accept, because it pleases us, and this much we will reject? We are not the creators of divine truth; we are only the trustees and the guardians. God’s truths are not optional any more than the right to happiness is optional; they are not debatable any more than the multiplication table is debatable. Any sect which starts with the assumption that it has rights over God’s truth proves that it is man-made, and a religion that is man-made can be man-unmade. But a Church which is God-made cannot be man-unmade.

Church and business are compatible

Church is not for pretenders and performers. Church is a place for pastors to preach principles of the faith in order to prepare believers to face the storms of life on the stage of an unbelieving world.

Church leaders may get disappointed in ministry if they do not know God’s time.

Church wasn't designed by an architect (Technically, Jesus was a carpenter.). So why do we think of churches as buildings instead of groups of people who love Jesus?

Church comforts the lonely, those who've lost, those who grieve. It is a weekly ritual that never changes, never goes away. You can go to mass anywhere around the world -- Waseca, North Dakota, Poland, Ireland -- and the only difference would be the language. Church provides us something to cling to, the rope line tied from the barn to the house during a blizzard. No matter what swirls around you, you cannot become lost.

Church is too often the most risky place to be spiritually honest.

Church may be primarily for believers, but the gospel is for all people.

Church should be like a dating service: tell you about His heart and then give you His contact information.

Closing one’s eyes when praying doesn’t increase the odds of the prayer being answered. It merely decreases the odds of being distracted.

Christ’s church is a place to grow people up in the Lord, not to enhance our leisure time.

Church, in the New Testament sense of the word, is not a meeting we attend, but a group of which we are a part, and a group we serve within.

Coco Chanel is said to have said that a girl should be two things: who and what she is. I say a girl should do two things: what and who she wants.

Contemporary Christian church would normally think that things are impossible

Cooperate expression of your church life means a lot

Cream always rises to the top...so do good leaders".

Cultivating spiritual intimacy is essential for leaders to live a vibrant missional life.

Culture cannot be a monolithically universal phenomenon without some kind of demonic imposition of one culture over the rest of cultures. Nor is it possible to dream of a universal "Christian culture" without denying the dialectic between history and eschatology which is so central, among other things, to the eucharist itself. Thus, if there is a transcendence of cultural divisions on a universal level - which indeed must be constantly aimed at by the Church - it can only take place via the local situations expressed in and through the particular local Churches and not through universalistic structures which imply a universal Church.

Dear God, if one day I lose my hope and purpose, give me confidence that your destiny is better than anything I ever dreamed.

Dear God, save us from The Church!

Dear Church, everyone is broken, stop pretending like you're not.

Closed systems that thrive on control that is managed with sticks and carrots can't help but fail the people they claim to protect.

Come to Church right.

Coming to the END of MYSELF and all SELF effort...seems to be the very point that God steps in and shows HIMSELF to be more than ENOUGH.

Confession is a difficult discipline for us, because we all too often view the believing community as a fellowship of saints before we see it as a fellowship of sinners. We feel that everyone else has advanced so far into holiness that we are isolated and alone in our sin.

Consistently, [Yves] Congar emphasized the distinction between Tradition and traditionalism. The latter was an unyielding commitment to the past. The former was a living principle of commitment to the Beginning, a process that required creativity, inspiration, and a spirit of openness to the present as well as respect for the past. Two of Congar's works, on reform in the church and on the theology of the laity, proved especially controversial...Congar believed that reform was a vital and necessary dimension of the church. This was rooted in the distinction between the church and the kingdom of God and in the intermingling in the church of both divine and human elements. In light of the church's constant temptation to revert to institutionalism, it was always necessary to allow room for the prophetic voice, issuing from the margins, even though this might mean attending to uncomfortable truths.

Church adored Jem but had been known to bite others, often with very little warning.

Church and family are both primary influences designed by God for a purpose and when they work together, they are orange. Both are systems comprised of imperfect people—that’s why God desires to use them as a platform to tell his story of restoration and redemption to the world.

Church has believed that parents probably wont' assume responsibility for their own children's growth, so they have tried to become a parent substitute. This in turn ha s fostered parents to adopt a "drop-off" mentality. Maybe the greatest gift a church can give parents is the confidence and courage to do what God has wired them to do.

Church is not about learning how to be a moral person (though that is what the dominant narrative they hear tells them); it is a place where immoral individuals go in order to receive the grace of God.

Church leaders raised on rationalism lead ministries where the supernatural, the Vertical, is suppressed and where God Himself is at best an observer and certainly seldom, if ever, and obvious participant in church.

Don't ask God to show you the way if you're not willing to get moving.

Deception is nowhere more common than in religion. And the persons most easily and damningly deceived are the leaders. Those who deceive others are first themselves deceived, for not many, I think, begin with evil intent. The devil, after all, is a spiritual being. His usual mode of temptation is not an obvious evil but to an apparent good. The commonest forms of devil-inspired worship do not take place furtively at black masses with decapitated cats but flourish under the bright lights of acclaim and glory, in a swirl of organ music.

Deb and I were married on a snowy night - wind cross-wove a veil of snow for her then threw confetti at us as we left the lighted church...

Don't compare yourself to other Christians. Compare yourself to Christ. He is the one you follow. He is the one other Christians too follow".

Don't ever marry a person you don't truly love. Don't believe what people often say, that the love will develop in future. Those whose love develop in future are very few. If after a period of time you've been dating and the love doesn't seem to grow, I strongly advise you have to re-think.

Don’t ever forget you are beautiful, although your life, your past and your present situation may be ugly. You are beautiful.

Don’t feed your body and keep your spirit starving. Butter bread for your body and living bread for your spirit. Read the Bible every day and keep your spirit away from hunger.