Quotes about Church

When pastors don't have rich spiritual lives with Christ, they become victimized by other models of success - models conveyed to them by their training, by their experience in the church, or just by our culture.

But the standard churchy spirituality doesn't require any real action, courage, or sacrifice from its attendees.

The future belongs to those who have the courage to create it. We need a new humanity. We need a new expression of community. We need the Church to bring the world together. This makes me excited.

Christ Jesus left you this sweet key of obedience; for He left His Vicar, whom you are all obliged to obey until death. And whoever is outside his obedience is in a state of damnation.

Yes, He is ris'n who is the First and Last; Who was and is; who liveth and was dead; Beyond the reach of death He now has pass 'd, Of the one glorious Church the glorious Head.

women much like this prostitute fled toward Jesus, not away from him. The worse a person felt about herself, the more likely she saw Jesus as a refuge. Has the church lost that gift?

C. S. Lewis observed that almost all crimes of Christian history have come about when religion is confused with politics. Politics, which always runs by the rules of ungrace, allures us to trade away grace for power, a temptation the church has often been unable to resist.

As I look around on Sunday morning at the people populating the pews, I see the risk that God has assumed. For whatever reason, God now reveals himself in the world not through a pillar of smoke and fire, not even through the physical body of his Son in Galilee, but through the mongrel collection that comprises my local church and every other such gathering in God's name. (p. 68, Church: Why Bother?)

Jesus gave us a model for the work of the church at the Last Supper. While his disciples kept proposing more organization ? Hey, let's elect officers, establish hierarchy, set standards of professionalism ? Jesus quietly picked up a towel and basin of water and began to wash their feet.

We admit that we will never reach our ideal in this life, a distinctive the church claims that most other human institutions try to deny.

Be careful," warned Nietzsche, "lest in fighting the dragon you become the dragon." I see the confusion of politics and religion as one of the greatest barriers to grace. C. S. Lewis once said that almost all crimes of Christian history have come about when religion is confused with politics. Politics, which always runs by the rules of ungrace, allures us to trade away grace for power, a temptation the church has often been unable to resist.

To put the issue bluntly, are the Beatitudes true? If so, why doesn't the church encourage poverty and mourning and meekness and persecution instead of striving against them? What is the real meaning of the Beatitudes, this cryptic ethical core of Jesus' teaching?