Quotes about Church

Too often Jesus Christ was not my Master but a bystander I visited with at church occasionally.

Revival is not emotional extravagance where people are caught up in the moment and fall down, act bizarrely, unbiblically, and out of control. That's not revival.

When we fail to assist people responding to the gospel at church, we train our people to repeat that failure at home and at work.

Where is the church persevering in the priority of prayer?

Placing evangelistic mission above the mission of God's glory is the single most destructive error in the church today and the one from which many other errors fall out. God's own glory as the priority for your church, and every church needs no reflection on our part, only obedience. Glory is not a threat to reaching lost people but is actually the most biblical and God-honoring way to get there.

No personal quiet time, no Christian book, no community or small group or service can substitute for the absence of God coming down to meet with His church corporately.

Eventually everyone vacates church where God is not obviously present and working. Getting people back to church is pointless unless God comes back first—that's what Vertical Church is all about! Ritual church, tradition church, felt-need church, emotional-hype church, rules church, Bible-boredom church, relevant church, and many other iterations are all horizontal substitutes for God come down, we all get rocked and radically altered, Vertical Church.

Instead of seeing ourselves as people trying to connect with people, let's see the church as people trying to connect with God and help others do the same.

If spiritual formation is the purpose of the church, then personal transformation should intentionally be the purpose of the small group ministry. Bible study is great. Fellowship is wonderful. Evangelism is essential. But changing and growing to be more like Christ should be the purpose of the small group ministry.

All church activities that dilute, diminish, or detract from worship destroy Verticality, deny the priority of doxology, and forfeit what Vertical Church is all about—glory.

Vertical Church teaches its people to judge every circumstance and opportunity in terms of its potential to reveal "the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ."21 That is the goal for every person in our church

Prayer is the easiest thing to assume in church and the hardest thing to maintain.