Best 3954 quotes in «church quotes» category

Since the time of Voltaire and two-chamber Government, which is at bottom simply distrust and personal self-examination, and gives the popular mind that bad habit of being suspicious, the Church of France seems to have realised that books are its real enemies.

Sir, I cannot sing. I have no formal training. I do not read music. And I know this is a church - but I play a mean harmonica.

Sit back and enjoy. And remember: Always be careful what you say around your kids.

So here is what I see when we reclaim the church ladies: a woman loved and free is beautiful. She is laughing with her sisters, and together they are telling their stories, revealing their scars and their wounds, the places where they don't have it figured out. They are nurturers, creating a haven where the young, the broken, the tenderhearted, and the at-risk can flourish. These women are dancing and worshiping, hands high, faces tipped toward heaven, tears streaming. They are celebrating all shapes and sizes, talking frankly and respectfully about sexuality and body image, promising to stop calling themselves fat. They are saving babies tossed in rubbish heaps, rescuing child soldiers, supporting mamas trying to make ends meet halfway around the world, thinking of justice when they buy their daily coffee. They are fighting sex trafficking. They are pastoring and counseling. They are choosing life consistently, building hope, doing the hard work of transformation in themselves. They are shaking off the silence of shame and throwing open the prison doors of physical and sexual abuse, addictions, eating disorders, and suicidal depression. Poverty and despair are being unlocked - these women know there are many hands helping turn that key. There isn't much complaining about husbands and chores, cattiness, or jealousy when a woman knows she is loved for her true self. She is lit up with something bigger than what the world offers, refusing to be intimidated into silence or despair.

Some believe God is in the sky, Others believe God is in the church But few believe God is in them... I wonder why?

Some churches, sects, cults or religious movements are basically collective egoic entities, as rigidly identified with their mental positions as the followers of any political ideology that is closed to any alternative interpretation of reality.

Some goes to church to seek prosperity

Somehow we American pastors, without really noticing what was happening, got our vocations redefined in the terms of American careerism. We quit thinking of the parish as a location for pastoral spirituality and started thinking of it as an opportunity for advancement. Tarshish, not Nineveh, was the destination. The moment we did that, we started thinking wrongly, for the vocation of pastor has to do with living out the implications of the word of God in community, not sailing off into the exotic seas of religion in search of fame and fortune.

Some men do not know the father of 'their' children.

Some people are so sexually unattractive that the thought of masturbating turns them off.

Some people in orthodox churches in Africa take poverty as a path that leads to heaven, making christianity look unattractive.

Some people only go to church for the social life. They like having all the friends in church or getting the praises of men by doing certain things, but they don’t go there to actually worship God. They go there so others can worship THEM instead.

Sometimes I cannot say much about why I go to church other than what people who go to the gym say: I always feel better once I'm there; I feel better after; it is always good for me, not good in a take-your-vitamins way, in a chidingly moralistic way, but in a palpable way.

Sometimes it is difficult to differentiate the Christian from the man of the world. In America, for example, churchgoing has become popular, but churchgoing may not necessarily be accompanied by genuine depth in prayer and Bible study or a change in lifestyle.

Sometimes, too, when their spiritual masters, such as confessors and superiors, do not approve of their spirit and behavior (for they are anxious that all they do shall be esteemed and praised), they consider that they do not understand them, or that, because they do not approve of this and comply with that, their confessors are themselves not spiritual. And so they immediately desire and contrive to find some one else who will fit in with their tastes; for as a rule they desire to speak of spiritual matters with those who they think will praise and esteem what they do, and they flee, as they would from death, from those who disabuse them in order to lead them into a safe road—sometimes they even harbour ill-will against them. Presuming thus, they are wont to resolve much and accomplish very little. Sometimes they are anxious that others shall realize how spiritual and devout they are, to which end they occasionally give outward evidence thereof in movements, sighs and other ceremonies; and at times they are apt to fall into certain ecstasies, in public rather than in secret, wherein the devil aids them, and they are pleased that this should be noticed, and are often eager that it should be noticed more.

Sometimes the church talks about singleness as if it were similar to being chosen for Hufflepuff by the Magic Sorting Hat in Harry Potter. The good news is that you still are at Hogwarts, but the bad news is that pretty much everyone else there will avoid you and make it clear they feel sad for you and would never, ever want to be you.

Somewhere along the line, "Church" became a weekly event rather than a gathering of people who did life together.

Sometimes we can focus so much on nothing that we make it a big something of nothing

Speak it till you reach it!

So, yeah, my people figured that maybe there's something at the back of it all, a creator, a great spirit, and so we say thank you to it, because it's always good to say thank you. But we never built churches. We didn't need to. The land was the church. The land was the religion. The land was older and wiser than the people who walked on it.

Spring came late. For the children, shut in the dark, cold parsonage, adjusting to Aunt and getting over the death that brought her, the winter had seemed endless. But now the rough moor was flecked with racing cloud shadows; the maltreated holly tree had stopped weeping; the green mould on the graves had dried to an unsuggestive grey. The church could never look cheerful. It was too black, and its voice, the bell, always said 'Fu - ner -al... fu - ner- al...' even when it was only calling them to hear one of their Papa's dramatic sermons.

Spiritual maturity is not defined by how well one applies Biblical principles to “suppress sin”.

Spirituality is more about whether or not we can sleep at night than about whether or not we go to church. It is about being integrated or falling apart, about being within community or being lonely, about being in harmony with Mother Earth or being alienated from her.

Statistics indicate that the church is rapidly losing in the population explosion. There are fewer Christians per capita every day.

Stay in church, stay in prayer, stay in the Word, and stay in fellowship with other believers.

Strength of conviction for ones faith is celebrated by the church- except when that conviction runs contrary to the status quo.

Stop being the church for those who have never believed in prayers.

St Laurence gathered the poor, the blind, and the lame together in the church in Rome and brought in the rapacious Roman authorities, proclaiming, “Here are the riches of the Church!” Whenever Christians refuse to use the word “Church” as a synonym for “those in prominent roles in the clergy hierarchy,” but instead assume and take for granted that “Church” means principally the uncelebrated, the downtrodden, and the poor, the Holy Spirit is active in making the stories of Church history live in the habits of Christian speech.

Strengthen yourself in the word of God.

Stop being fake and start being real. Start being real with the people around you, and start being real with God. Churches are not Broadway musicals where we can play the role of a Christian. You may think that you can play a role with people and get away with it, but I tell you today that you can't play that role with God. He sees through your plastic smiles and fake veneers.

Stop looking back when your future is ahead of you

That which makes the church "radical" and forever "new" is not that the church tends to lean toward the left on most social issues, but rather that the church knows Jesus whereas the world does not. In the church's view, the political left is not noticeably more interesting than the political right; both sides tend towards solutions that act as if the world has not ended and begun in Jesus.

Suffice it to say, the ecclesia, the community of peace, imagined on the Galilean seashore had changed. Like a pebble tossed in a pond with ever expanding ripples, the emergence of Christianity in the urban centers of the Roman Empire forced the Church to adopt new forms and structures for mission and ministry. Jesus’s movement became a thriving principality. At the close of the third century, an organized Church had replaced a disorganized but single-minded community on a mission of peace.

Sve Crkve stoje danas u našem postmodernom krajoliku poput stabala bez lišća.

That it is Peter, the rock of the church, who incurs guilt here immediately after his own confession to Jesus Christ and after his appointment by Jesus, means that from its very inception the church itself has taken offense at the suffering Christ.

Sundays normally were hell. Or just the church pat of it, actually. It wasn't that I was afraid of God, or had anything against Him. It was just that having to be there for two to four hours made me cross, hateful, and blasphemous. Plus it seemed to me that the regulars, the good God-fearing folks, who didn't have diddly-squat, liked to pretend they had a lot to flaunt -- whereas the ones that had a whole lot showed up on holidays and funerals, in fancy cars and dressed to kill, all made possible by money they didn't tithe away every week. That's where Sunday-based faith got you -- broke and with a sore butt!

Tea Party adherents seemed to arrive at their dislike of the federal government via three routes--through their religious faith (the government curtailed the church, they felt), through hatred of taxes (which they saw as too high and too progressive), and through its impact on their loss of honor.

That it is Peter, the rock of the church, who incurs guilt here immediately after his own confession to Jesus Christ and after his appointment by Jesus, means that from its very inception the church itself has taken offense at the suffering Christ. It neither wants such a Lord nor does it, as the Church of Christ, want its Lord to force upon it the law of suffering.

That's what lay behind the feud under way in the Republic: a battle between different noble family factions in a fight for power. Serving this side or the other was of no interest to Mathias. But the consequences of a Venice under the Pope's direct control weren't at all to his liking. His beloved books would be burned by ignorant, avid priests. Men like Malachia would win. It was the same old struggle. The same fight Gheorg had chosen, the same fight that might take him to Wittenberg. But he wouldn't clear the way for Alexander VI. With what little strength he possessed, even though he was nothing more than a pawn of a chessboard, that extended farther then he could see, Mathias would help those in power smash what had all the makings of a major plot, one designed to overturn the government in power in La Serenissima. And these thoughts allowed the monk to find the first answer to the many question with which he still felt burdened. He and the Borgias did NOT share the same Church.

The basements of the churches I've loved reveal the foundation of the spiritual life to be not belief so much as engagement with the mystery lurking at the base of all things. We build a framework on top of mystery because we need someplace to live, some manner of surviving nature's fury and our mundane daily needs.

The authority of the Church was thrown over by the authority of the state. Twenty years only have passed, and the authority of the state is already thrown over by the authority of conscience. ... I fear for those yet unborn, that they are already betrayed. Robbed of the truth we can inherit, they will know their sins as only misery, and their forgiveness they will not know at all because they do not know God. Then at last men will be free of God. Then they will be slaves indeed.

The blood of Christ purchased the church.

The Bible nowhere teaches that the church will ultimately convert the whole world to Jesus Christ. There has never been a generation in history, nor will there ever be generation, in which the majority of the people will believe in Christ.

The Church acts as a sort of embassy for the government of the King. It is an outpost of the Kingdom of God surrounded by the kingdom of darkness. Just as an embassy is meant to showcase the life of a nation to the surrounding people, so the Church is meant to manifest the life of the Kingdom of God to the people around it.

The burden of sin leads you to the need for a Savior.

The central ideas of Christianity — an angry God and vicarious atonement — are contrary to every fact in nature, as also to the better aspirations of the human heart; they are, in our present stage of enlightenment, absurd, preposterous, and blasphemous propositions. Christians well know that the much-decorated statue of the Church, as it now stands, is not of pure chiseled marble, but of clay, cemented together by blood and tears and hardened in the fires of hatred and persecution. And still we hear the cry, 'The whole world for Christ'.

The Christian life is a process of better understanding what Jesus taught, learning to apply that teaching in our everyday lives, and then teaching others - people directly around us and people on the other side of the globe - to do the same.

The Christians of today are so unsubmissive to the leadership of the church, this is unbiblical.

The Church, as Jesus seems to be defining it, is the gathering of accepted brokenness. It’s not the gathering of the saved.

The Church does not need brilliant personalities but faithful servants of Jesus and the brethren. Not in the former but in the latter is the lack.