Best 3954 quotes in «church quotes» category

Influences come from everywhere. I don't really feel like I had too many influences for the first record because I grew up listening to music in church, and that was pretty much it. I didn't really grow up listening to AC/DC and all those bands.

In general, the churches, visited by me often on weekdays... bore for me the same relation to God that billboards did to Coca-Cola; they promoted thirst without quenching it.

In her enthusiasms she had always looked for something tangible: she had always loved church for its flowers, music for its romantic words, literature for its power to stir the passions and she rebelled before the mysteries of faith just as she grew ever more restive under discipline, which was antipathetic to her nature.

In her religious role, the Queen is head of the Church of England, but in her civic role she cares for all her subjects, and no one is better at making everyone she meets feel valued.

In leadership there are always problems to be solved and tensions to be managed. When you try to solve a tension, you create a problem.

In many churches, the message of justification- how to get right with God- is preached over and over again. But much less is said about sanctification- how to live after you're converted.

In many ways, American evangelicalism is somewhat stronger today than it was in, say 1955 - certainly more mainstream and influential in the culture as a whole. But, the increased strength of evangelicalism hasn't increased fast enough to compensate for the total collapse of mainline Protestantism and the pretty steady weakening of my own Roman Catholic Church.

In many churches Christianity has been watered down until the solution is so weak that if it were poison it would not hurt anyone, and if it were medicine it would not cure anyone!

In medieval times, the Church used to sell 'indulgences' for money. This amounted to paying for some number of days' remission from purgatory, and the Church literally (and with breathtaking presumption) issued signed certificates specifying the number of days off that had been purchased. . . . And of all its money-making rip-offs, the selling of indulgences must surely rank among the greatest con tricks in history. . . .

In missional churches, the baby birds have been pushed out of the nest and are learning to fly for themselves.

In most, when you go to church, most churches when they have images of the good shepherd, they show Jesus carrying a nice fluffy lamb. Now fluffy little lambs don't stray from their mommy's. The sheep that will stray is the most obstreperous, troublesome one.

In my leadership conferences, pastors ask, "Do you have a vision for my church?" Many times they want me to give them a picture of where they should go and what their church should look like. When these pastors do this, I always feel bad.

In my own faith tradition, these questions have been very important. It has always been easiest for me to apprehend God in the natural world. I love to go to church, but when I really want to feel the presence of the divine I'm more likely to head up into the mountains.

In my opinion, advocating, allowing and practicing psychiatric and psychoanalytic dogmas within the church is every bit as pagan and heretical (and therefore perilous) as propagating the teachings of some of the most bizarre cults. The only vital difference is that the cults are less dangerous because their errors are more identifiable.

In my twenties, I was determined to change the world. In my thirties, I tried to transform the church. In my early forties, I discovered I was the problem.

In no other arena is the church at greater risk of losing its calling than in the public square

In no instance have... the churches been guardians of the liberties of the people.

In one sense what may pass between the pope and myself may be trivialities. In another sense the fact of talking trivialities is itself a portent of great significance. But the pleasantries which we exchange may, as one church leader said, be pleasantries about profundities.

In one sphere above all others, Anne Boleyn still had the power to influence him, and that was in the case of church reform. Anne was a passionate and sincere evangelical, the owner of a library of controversial reformist literature, and she was sympathetic to radical and even Lutheran ideas.

In other days people chose a church on the basis of their doctrinal convictions. Now, lacking doctrinal convictions, they choose for social reasons.

In other words, the Church acknowledges Science as the higher authority.

In our manner of speech, our plans of living, our dealings with others, our conduct and walk in the church and out of it-all should be done as becomes the gospel (Phil. 1:27).

In places where marriage's core meaning has been altered through legal action, officials are beginning to target for punishment those believers and churches that refuse to adapt.

In preaching you cannot produce at the same time the impression that you are clever and that Christ is wonderful.

In Rome, I loved seeing the Caravaggios. There are churches in Rome that have Caravaggios, and there's one, not far from Piazza Navona, that has the best, I think: St. Matthew with the money.

In regard to education, something has been done by the Provincial Legislature but to build churches, and to place clergymen is a work of greater difficulty.

In revival, God is not concerned about filling empty churches, He is concerned about filling empty hearts.

In social institutions, the whole is always less than the sum of its parts. There will never be a state as good as its people, or a church worthy of its congregation, or a university equal to its faculty and students.

Instead of being just a church that welcomes and receives by keeping the doors open, let us try also to be a church that finds new roads, that is able to step outside itself and go to those who do not attend Mass, to those who have quit or are indifferent.

Integrating in the Church doesn't mean receiving communion.

In the Catholic Church, there are many other things which most justly keep me in her bosom. The consent of peoples and nations keeps me in the Church; so does her authority, inaugurated by miracles, nourished by hope, enlarged by love, established by age. The succession of priests keeps me, beginning from the very seat of the Apostle Peter, to whom the Lord, after His resurrection, gave it in charge to feed His sheep (Jn 21:15-19), down to the present episcopate.

Institutions - government, churches, industries, and the like - have properly no other function than to contribute to human freedom; and in so far as they fail, on the whole, to perform this function, they are wrong and need reconstruction.

In the 20th century, the position of the monarch as head of the Church of England was given a meaning which it never had before. You took the fact that the monarch was head of the Church of England to mean that the British monarchy was itself a religious or moral institution and the monarchy became a symbol of national public morality.

In the Church, considered as a social organism, the mysteries inevitably degenerate into beliefs.

In the church of my heart the choir is on fire

In the church we have to deliberately let ourselves be transparent and accountable to others. We're a family.

In the conduct of our public worship where is the authority of Christ to be found? The truth is that today the Lord rarely controls a service, and the influence He exerts is very small. We sing of Him and preach about Him, but He must not interfere; we worship our way, and it must be right because we have always done it that way, as have the other churches in our group.

In the context of the "great mystery" of Christ and of the Church, all are called to respond - as a bride - with the gift of their lives to the inexpressible gift of the love of Christ, who alone, as the Redeemer of the world, is the Church's Bridegroom.

In the early days of the Mormon Church, stewardship toward the land was a priority. It was a matter of survival in the desert.

In the case of the Catholic Church, it's hard to understand how they so willfully sacrifice the children.

In the centre of a spacious table rose a pastry as large as a church, flanked on the north by a quarter of cold veal, on the south by an enormous ham, on the east by a monumental pile of butter, and on the west by an enormous dish of artichokes, with a hot sauce.

In the case Stone v. Graham, the Supreme Court ruled that - under 'separation of church and state' - it was unconstitutional for a student in school to even see a copy of the Ten Commandments.

In the Church, great wonders daily occur, such as the forgiveness of sins, triumph over death . . . the gift of righteousness and eternal life.

In the Church, when we talk about 'the world', we often create an us and them situation and end up planting the seeds of all that we feel wrong with the world in the soil of our own backyard.

In the end, the church will either declare the truth of God's Word, or it will find a way to run away from it.

In the Eucharist, the Son of God comes to meet us and desires to become one with us; eucharistic adoration is simply the natural consequence of the eucharistic celebration, which is itself the Church's supreme act of adoration.

In the month of October, the universal Church highlights her missionary vocation. Guided by the Holy Spirit she knows she is called to pursue the work of Jesus himself, proclaiming the Gospel of the Kingdom of God which is "righteousness and peace and joy in the Holy Spirit

In the near future we will not be looking back at the early church with envy because of the great exploits of those days, but all will be saying that He certainly did save His best wine for last. The most glorious times in all of history have not come upon us. You, who have dreamed of one day being able to talk with Peter, John and Paul, are going to be surprised to find that they have all been waiting to talk to you.

In the New Testament church it says they were all amazed - And now in our churches everybody wants to be amused.

In the Netherlands now, I imagine it's legal to marry your own children. Get them pregnant, and you can abort your unborn grandbabies in a free clinic that used to be a church.