Best 3954 quotes in «church quotes» category

Our fights should really be for the mission of the church and the mission of the family instead of trying to have bigger churches or better families. When it comes to entities that god has created specifically to make disciples and accomplish His mission (of influencing a generation to have a stronger, deeper, and more authentic relationship with God), there is the church...the family...and nothing else.

Our greatest fear as individuals & as a church should not be of failure, but of suceeding at things in life that dont really matter.

Our “ministry” should be an overflowing of our lives, an overflowing of our walk with Jesus Christ! We aren’t our ministry, it’s an byproduct of our relationship with Jesus Christ!

Our musical artistry and leadership of people need to work together to create an environment that welcomes participation instead of causing disengagement.

Our wives, our families, and our churches need godly men who have discernment--discernment to deal with life and life-issues on a spiritual level.

Out here, the open night is my church, the trees are my congregation, the stars are my angels and the moon is the only god that I know.

Over the years of being stuck in this shit hole called life, I had debated religion and church, souls and freewill, heaven and hell. I had come to a few conclusions. Mankind was too self-serving to understand what He had wanted from them. It wasn’t a million dollar church, it wasn’t perfection, it wasn’t about how many times you prayed or apologized or that one day a month where you fed the homeless. And you weren’t banished to hell for that one time you told someone to fuck off. You didn’t end up in hell for that time you were a bitch to your fellow man. It took a lot to end up there, and man worked at it with crazed enthusiasm. They worked harder at chiseling their way into hell, than any other action.

Part time christian cannot defeat a full time devil

Pastors enter congregations vocationally in order to embrace the totality of human life in Jesus' name. We are convinced there is no detail, however unpromising, in people's lives in which Christ may not work his will. Pastors agree to stay with the people in their communities week in and week out, year in and year out, to proclaim and guide, encourage and instruct as God work his purposes (gloriously, it will eventually turn out) in the meandering and disturbingly inconstant lives of our congregations. This necessarily means taking seriously, and in faith, the dull routines, the empty boredom, and the unattractive responsibilities that make up much of most people's lives. It means witnessing to the transcendent in the fog and rain. It means living hopefully among people who from time to time get flickering glimpses of the Glory but then live through stretches, sometimes long ones, of unaccountable grayness. Most pastor work takes place in obscurity: deciphering grace in the shadows, searching out meaning in a difficult text, blowing on the embers of a hard-used life. This is hard work and not conspicuously glamorous.

Pastors are over-extended taking care of a few hundred sheep in their church

Past the entrance to the cloisters (in the church of Santa Croce in Florence) is Rossellino's funerary monument to the humanist chancellor Leonardo Bruni, He was chancellor of Florence from 1427 until his death in 1444. He is shown resting on his bier, as if asleep, holding his History of Florence. His epitaph is one of the most moving ever recorded: "Historia luget, eloquentia muta est," "History herself is in mourning, and eloquence has been silenced.

Peace is my creed. Hope is my doctrine. The world is my church. Love is my religion.

People are not being reached in the context of the body of Christ--they're like newborn babies being left on a doorstep somewhere to feed and care for themselves.

People should see genuine, authentic love in the church

People think we didn't have theatres in Scotland for centuries because the Church suppressed them. Well, perhaps. But you could also argue that we had theatres in every town and village in the land: they were called kirks, and every week folk packed in to see a one-man show about life, death and the universe.

People who say we are just preaching "extreme grace" must not understand how extremely gracious our Father is.

Perhaps the strongest indictment against us as the Church is that we have settled for an Americanized version of the Church that mirrors whatever culture says, and there is no collective sense of loss, no sense of remorse. We have sinned deeply. The problem is that we haven’t got a taste of the sinfulness of racism... We don’t see the wickedness of profiling God’s people that He has created to be one and that He has created in His image (p. 75).

People will rather pass by the weak, the lame, the beggars, the orphans, the tormented, the widows and take their large offerings to church, to the man of God who already has a mansion and jets , what a shallow mindedness.

Perhaps one of the most powerful things the contemporary church could do is to confess our sins to the world, the humbly get on our knees and repent for the terrible things we have done in the name of God.

Persecution for Christians is not a possibility, it's a promise, it's not a maybe, it's a surely! Following Jesus can mean finding the trouble you've been looking for!

Pesa itolewe kwa masharti au bila masharti chukua, kwani huyo aliyeitoa si yake. Benki, kwa mfano, ikitaka kukupa mkopo itakuwa na masharti yake; chukua, iwapo utakubaliana na masharti hayo. Jambazi akikupa pesa ili ukafanyie ujambazi chukua pia. Lakini hiyo usiipeleke kanisani, ipeleke serikalini. Serikali itajua jinsi ya kupambana na huyo aliyekupa hiyo pesa, na hiyo pesa itaendelea kuimarisha ulinzi na usalama nchini. Pesa kuendelea kuimarisha ulinzi na usalama nchini ni sawa na zaka, au sadaka, na wewe utabarikiwa kwa kupata nyingine.

...people who've been hit with the gospel respond naturally with radically changed lives and hearts. The church and the ministries of the church are gospel centered when they flow from hearts that are afire with wonder at the glory and grace of God, revealed in the person of Jesus.

Persecution is an enemy the Church has met and mastered many times. Indifference could prove to be a far more dangerous foe.

Preaching the Gospel in a brutal way is like telling your wife that you love her while she gets a punch right in her face.

Pop stars AREN'T cool. Cheating on your husband or your wife isn't cool. Having no modesty with your body and no self-respect is NOT cool. It doesn't matter how pretty someone's voice is, or if they SAY they are Christian, God calls us to modesty and faithfulness, so we need to be careful to not idolize anyone that goes way off of what God wants.

Preaching the whole council of God involves man’s environment and physical being as well as his soul. There is no doubt that the church is in danger of getting off the main track and getting lost.

Raised in a completely nonreligious family, Joliot never attended any church and was a thoroughgoing atheist all his life.

Protestants at one time were confident that their free form of confession was a vast improvement upon Catholic private confession to a priest because it is voluntary, demystified, and not routinized. But amid the acids of modernity it has volunteered itself right out of existence. Demystification has dwindled into desacralization. The escape from routinization has become a convenient cover for the demise of repentance. The postmodern pastor is trying to learn anew to listen to the deeper range of feelings of others, without forgetfulness of the Word of God.

Put the masks on! I now pronounce you husband and wife!

Refusal to engage in spiritual warfare does not exempt you from being among the next casualties of war

Reconciliation is wonderful, but it’s not always possible, because it depends on a godly response from both parties. Forgiveness however depends only on us. We can forgive even if the offending party is unresponsive.

[R]eal prayer is not an excuse for laziness but, in fact, is one of the most arduous engagements I know of in ministry. Prayer is not a replacement for hard work but, in most cases, empowerment for even more fruitful work.

[re: I Corinthians 15:34,58] "The present life of the church, in other words, is not about "soul-making," the attempt to produce or train disembodied beings for a future disembodied life. It is about working with fully human beings who will be reembodied at the last, after the model of the Messiah.

Religion and spirituality can easily be intertwined; however, there is a very distinct separation between the two.

Religion, as it is generally taught all over the world, is said to be based upon faith and belief, and, in most cases, consists only of different sets of theories, and that is the reason why we find all religions quarreling with one another. These theories, again, are based upon belief. One man says there is a Supreme Being sitting above the clouds governing the whole universe, and he asks me to believe that solely on the authority of his assertion. But if you actually attempt to realize what Christ realized, the entire structure of the Church would collapse.

Religion is great at instilling the fear of hell, but awful at giving a taste of heaven.

Repentance seemed like too loose of a word. I knew I’d been wrong, but that didn’t soften the blow.

Representatives of the churches should help guide people in resolving their crisis

Resilient communities relied on informal networks of deep trust to contend with and heal disruption.

Respectable Protestant denominations retreated inside...leaving...unaffiliated madwomen to evangelize alfresco...

Reproof is unavoidable. God’s Word demands it when a brother falls into open sin. The practice of discipline in the congregation begins in the smallest circles. Where defection from God’s Word in doctrine or life imperils the family fellowship and with it the whole congregation, the word of admonition and rebuke must be ventured. Nothing can be more cruel than the tenderness that consigns another to his sin. Nothing can be more compassionate than the severe rebuke that calls a brother back from the path of sin. It is a ministry of mercy, an ultimate offer of genuine fellowship, when we allow nothing but God’s Word to stand between us, judging and succoring. Then it is not we who are judging; God alone judges, and God’s judgment is helpful and healing. Ultimately, we have no charge but to serve our brother, never to set ourselves above him, and we serve him even when we must speak the judging and dividing Word of God to him, even when, in obedience to God, we must break off fellowship with him. We must know that it is not our human love which makes us loyal to the other person, but God’s love which breaks its way through to him only through judgment. Just because God’s Word judges, it serves the person. He who accepts the ministry of God’s judgment is helped.

Repentance is a result of God's kindness, not a prerequisite to it.

Referring to the church as a building is like referring to people as two-by-fours.

Sabato ilianzishwa na Mungu siku ya saba ya uumbaji wake. Siku ya Sabato ni siku takatifu, iliyoko katika Amri Kumi za Mungu, ambayo hatuna budi kuitunza na kuiheshimu. Sheria ya Siku ya Sabato haikufa baada ya kifo cha Yesu Kristo msalabani kama Wakolosai wanavyodai. Wakolosai walifuata falsafa za kipagani, na walizileta falsafa hizo ndani ya mwili wa Kristo ambalo ni kanisa. ‘Usiiamini’ Wakolosai 2:17. Iamini Wakolosai 2:20-23, ambapo Paulo anafundisha Mataifa jinsi ya kuitunza Sabato, na 1 Wakorintho 12:27 ambayo inatoa maana halisi ya Wakolosai 2:17. ‘Mwili wako ni wa Kristo’ ni tofauti na ‘mwili wa Kristo’ na ni tofauti na kanisa. Ukiamini kama mwili wako ni wa Kristo na ni kanisa, utaitunza Sabato.

Sergeant Pietro Oliva was a good Catholic. He liked to go into a church and cross himself, genuflect to the alter, and then settle down to a little prayer and contemplation, savouring the coolness, the heavy odours, the darkness, and the sensation of being soaked in the atmosphere of centuries’ worth of devotion that hung in the tenebrous and golden air of churches.

Satan] invades the Sunday school, the Bible class, and even the pulpit. He even invades the church under cover of an orthodox vocabulary, emptying sacred terms of their biblical sense.

Scripture teaches that whether we are the offending party or the party feeling offended, we have the mandate to initiate forgiveness and reconciliation.

Selfishness is the root of all jealousy. When we are caught up thinking about ourselves, we can't think about anyone else.

Same-sex marriage has not created problems for religious institutions; religious institutions have created problems for same-sex marriage.

Send not to know For whom the bell tolls; It tolls for thee.