Quotes about Church

We live in a time of crisis in the secular culture and in the church with regard to the beautiful.

Because the church has moved away from the gospel anytime you move away from the gospel, you at the same time move toward pretense, you move toward image-keeping, you move toward the need to pretend.

A church must grow larger and smaller at the same time. Larger through worship and smaller through small groups.

A healthy church is not a church that's perfect and without sin. It has not figured everything out. Rather, it's a church that continually strives to take God's side in the battle against the ungodly desires and deceits of the world, our flesh, and the devil. It's a church that continually seeks to conform itself to God's Word.

The church should not be an assembly of the self-righteous but an assembly of people who admit that they are not righteous apart from God's grace.

Part of being a Christian is recognizing that sin deceives us, and we need other believers to help us see the things we cannot see about ourselves. Joining a church, I've often said, is like throwing paint on the invisible man. New sins become visible in the course of our discipling relationships.

Given our disagreements over some points of the Bible, denominations are good, not bad, because they allow each church to follow Jesus according to conscience, and they keep strife between Christians of different convictions at bay. But if those denominations become the ultimate focus of our loyalty, then they are terrible idols. Keep clear fences but keep them low, and shake hands over them often.

Friend, what are you looking for in a church? Good music? A happening atmosphere? A traditional order of service? How about: a group of pardoned rebels . . . whom God wants to use to display his glory . . . before all the heavenly host . . . because they tell the truth about him . . . and look increasingly just like him - holy, loving, united?

Being united to Christ means being united to every Christian. But that universal union must be given a living, breathing existence in a local church.

Our individual lives alone are not a sufficient witness. Our lives together as church communities are the confirming echo of our witness.

Yet the Bible teaches that the local church is the natural environment for discipling. In fact, it teaches that the local church is itself the basic discipler of Christians. It does this through its weekly gatherings and its accountability structures (this chapter), as well as its elders and its members (next chapter). These in turn provide the context for the one-on-one discipling we have been considering so far.

The church was custom built by Jesus, and we are all works in progress. We do not expect people to get their sin in order before attending church any more than a hospital expects people to get healed before they show up.