Back To Church Quotes

#1. I've always had God, but now I want to go back to church for the sense of community and that feeling of positive thinking, a place where I can think about being a better person.

Julianne Hough

#2. If I start going back to church, I'd have to stop the smoking and drinking, and I wouldn't be able to curse any more.

Katherine Heigl

#3. I know people will say that it's because of the accident that I came back to church-well, they're right. I'm not too proud to know when a problem is bigger than I am.

Sharon M. Draper

#4. Philanthropy is lost. The human spirit is suppressed. Most people want a legacy; they want to give something back, a library, a hospital wing, a donation to their church. This is a form of socialism that must go.

Lindsey Graham

#5. I read all the speeches of the pope, his commentaries, and if the pope continues this way, I will go back to praying and go back to the church, and I'm not joking,

Raul Castro

#6. I only had one thought as the blackness closed in, drawing me back to my beloved earth. I was going back to the life I'd known before, the life I'd missed and longed for ... but there in Xavier's arms, I was already home.

Alexandra Adornetto

#7. His eyes widened. "You didn't go back to town, did you?"
"No. I went to church."
"Ah, well. That explains it," he blurted. "I mean ... well ... Two hours of sermons is enough to dim anyone's sparkle.

Laura Bickle

#8. Separation of church and state is the big club pulled out to beat back the Christians .

David Barton

#9. I remembered a scripture they read us from the Bible about God not putting more on us than we could bear. I was beginning to wonder if that was just for those people who went to church every Sunday and prayed before they went to bed at night. Because he wasn't holding back any punches with me.

Abbi Glines

#10. Our point is that to reJesus the church, we need to go back to the daring, radical, strange, wonderful, inexplicable, unstoppable, marvelous, unsettling, disturbing, caring, powerful God-Man.

Michael Frost

#11. Paradox
/pera,daks/ noun
1. Being told to wake up and come back to reality by your family and friends, while being dragged to church to hear a lesson on Jonah and the whale, followed by a sermon on believing in things you can't see without faith.

Shannon L. Alder

#12. Back in his Chicago Senate days, when he was seeking greater black credibility, Obama was happy enough to attend the Reverend Jeremiah Wright's Trinity United Church of Christ.

Tina Brown

#13. I think people are transient. Back in the early church, there was a 'stick and stay' mentality. In this day and time, people have a fast food mentality of ministry. If it doesn't fit them or if it doesn't fit in their schedule, they'll move on to something else. That's a norm in today's time.

Marvin Sapp

#14. JACE WAYLAND," she said. "Explain yourself."
Jace was glaring at the cat. "I told you to bring me to Alec! Backstabing Judas."
Church rolled onto his back, purring contentedly.

Cassandra Clare

#15. I've always felt at home in the Church. Catholics are often more laid back than they are given credit for - presumably because at the back of their minds they realize that, if necessary, they can always confess everything to their local priest.

Jens Spahn

#16. 897Archer lifted his gaze heavenward as he tilted the dun-colored hat back on his head. "I say my prayers," Archer sighed. "I go to church when I can and I even take old women to the grocery store when they need me to. And this is the thanks I get.

Lora Leigh

#17. Have you by any chance an edition of St. Ignatius's treatise against the Gnostics?" he asked in a low clear voice.
The young assistant looked gravely back. "Not for sale, I'm afraid," he said. "Nor, if it comes to that, the Gnostic treatises against St. Ignatius."
"Quite," Anthony answered.

Charles Williams

#18. We get along, we talk music.Lenny Kravitz took me to Harlem to see this little jazz show in the back of a church. It was just shitty fluorescent lights and a small stage piano, but this band tore it up.

Penn Dayton Badgley

#19. It's really important to me to go to church, which is sometimes tough when I get back from road trips late on Saturday night, but I try to make it a priority to go every week.

Jeremy Lin

#20. And Oskar was kneeling at the left side-altar, trying to teach the boy Jesus how to drum, but the rascal wouldn't drum, offered no miracle. Oskar had sworn back then and swore again outside the locked church door: I'll teach him to drum yet. Sooner or later.

Gunter Grass

#21. You talk of being a believer, but you can't seem to trust anyone, not even God. You cling to your wealth as your security and carry the baggage of being unworthy, even though God loves you and has forgiven you. You should have listened a little closer to that sermon in church a couple of weeks back.

Colleen Coble

#22. If you read back in the Bible, the letter of the apostle Paul to the church of Thessalonia, he said that in the latter days before the end of the age that the Earth would be caught up in what he called the birth pangs of a new order.

Pat Robertson

#23. How can we say that the Church wishes to bring us back into the Dark Ages? The Church was the only thing that ever brought us out of them.

G.K. Chesterton

#24. So many people come to church with a genuine desire to hear what we have to say, yet they are always going back home with the uncomfortable feeling that we are making it too difficult for them to come to Jesus.

Dietrich Bonhoeffer

#25. We lied to ourselves thinking in our minds we knew everything. We were deceived in believing that youthful enthusiasm could replace wizened maturity.

Anna M. Aquino

#26. Every day people are straying away from the church and going back to God.

Lenny Bruce

#27. Until we start thinking in terms of revolution instead of compromise the Church will continue to pat itself on the back with token steps of renewal.

Mike Yaconelli

#28. Whatever," he said. "Like you care. I'm gone. Have a nice motorcycle ride back to your church where you can have fun pretending to be some kind of saint we all know you aren't.

Tiffany Reisz

#29. People are leaving the church and going back to God.

Lenny Bruce

#30. The church is so subnormal that if it ever got back to the New Testament normal it would seem to people to be abnormal.

Vance Havner

#31. The couch and I were what I would describe as frenemies. I loved to hate it. It was too small for my frame. I had tried to tell my wife that fact when we bought it off of Craigslist, but she assured me that it went perfectly with our room decor and it was a good deal.

Anna M. Aquino

#32. Until the Quiet Revolution gave women back their bodies and Quebeckers back their lives. It invited the church to leave the womb and restrict itself to the altar. It almost worked.

Louise Penny

#33. I am convinced if the church went back to the main task of proclaiming the Gospel it would see people being converted to Christ, and it would have a far greater impact on the social, moral, and psychological needs of people than anything else it could possibly do.

Billy Graham

#34. If you were to look back at me as a school kid you'd see a very quiet little church mouse kind of character.

John Lydon

#35. Church was doing what he often did when dropped - lying on his back with all four legs in the air, pretending to be dead in order to induce guilt in his owners.

Cassandra Clare

#36. I wish that we might get back to worship again. Then when people come into the church they will instantly sense that they have come among holy people, God's people. They can testify, 'Of a truth God is in this place'

Aiden Wilson Tozer

#37. If the Savior had come back to earth at the beginning of the fifth century A.D., I doubt whether he would have recognized the Christian Church as the one that claimed descent from that which he had established, so far had it gone astray.

Milton R. Hunter

#38. Jesus is coming back for a church without a spot or a wrinkle. His righteous blood covers the spots and the wrinkles of those who believe unto righteousness, allowing once sinful men to be holy.

Monica Johnson

#39. Lord, clear the church of all the rot and rubbish the devil has imposed on her, and bring us back to apostolic methods.

Archibald Brown

#40. The most he would do was to promise that the gates of hell should not prevail against it. It is about all that, looking back on the history of the Church, one can feel that they have not done.

Charles Williams

#41. Fat Charlie wondered what Rosie's mother would usually hear in a church. Probably just cries of "Back! Foul best of Hell!" followed by gasps of "Is it alive?" and a nervous inquiry as to whether anybody had remembered to bring the stakes and hammers.

Neil Gaiman

#42. She wasn't really going to church anywhere, but she remained a contemporary evangelical to the back teeth. She had lost her faith while still managing to hang on to all the platitudes.

Douglas Wilson

#43. We sometimes idealize the early church and want our churches to go back to the simple, old ways. We need to carefully read the history. Harmony takes work.

Jerry B. Jenkins

#44. The Church has been foreordained of God to become that people who will become so glorified that we can bring Christ back to the earth. This glorified church must make the earth God's footstool before Jesus can come again.

Earl Paulk

#45. I've always been funny. I look back in the day, when I would take the mic from my dad in church and just start goin', at age six, the first time I did it. I think 14 was when I knew I wanted to do it and promote my own comedy shows at the church. Then, everyone would come.

Brandon T. Jackson

#46. If you have to give a carnival to get people to come to church, then you will have to keep giving carnivals to keep them coming back.

Charles Spurgeon

#47. It's time for a new Reformation in the Church
to call the Church back to the authority of the Word of God, beginning in Genesis.

Ken Ham

#48. Obviously, you're trying to peel through 20 centuries of theology, speculations, church doctrine and storytelling. I'm trying to get back to the absolute basic story of who was Jesus, what did he say, what was he teaching, and what did he do.

Jay Parini

#49. When Christians are caught in sin, they do not need isolation or amputation; they need restoration. The proper thing to do is to help them confess their sins and find forgiveness in Christ, and then welcome them back into the fellowship of the church.

Philip Graham Ryken

#50. Back then, Black churches were a small piece of peace. Church was a world where, even with its imperfections, the offer of equality and common humanity was the sustenance needed to make it through the rest of the week in a society that deemed them less than human.

Janelle Gray

#51. I looked up at the wall. My bachelor's degree had been in History. Films like Back to the Future and Quantum Leap had been some of my favorite programs. Could time travel really be possible? This seemed too unreal.

Anna M. Aquino

#52. When Jesus Christ comes back, it is not the liberal politicians who ought to be trembling, it's the pastors ... because so many men have built their 'ministries' on the dry dead bones of
unconverted church members.

Paul Washer

#53. My wishing star glowed slightly and winked back at me. I could almost hear its voice, tinkling like wind chimes and church bells, reassuring me that everything would return to normal.

Erica Sehyun Song

#54. The penalty for summoning the dead back to earth is death; if the summoned spirit does not kill its summoner, be assured the Church will.

Stacia Kane

#55. We went to church every Sunday. I do think it's my duty to give back. That's why I'm involved with St. Jude's Children's Research Hospital and the Make-a-Wish Foundation.

Jesse McCartney

#56. When serious people of good faith disagree, they've got to go back into the narratives and come at it again. One of the problems in the church is that people are not willing to do that. People have arrived at a place where they think they have got the answer.

Walter Brueggemann

#57. As the church get older and older it becomes harder to keep evangelism on the front burner because of all the competing issues that keeps pushing it back.

Gary Rohrmayer

#58. A Puritan believed it was necessary to venture back to the absolute beginning of Christianity, before the church had been corrupted by centuries of laxity and abuse, to locate divine truth.

Nathaniel Philbrick

#59. Felt other Christian charities and ministries of compassion were wrong in showing the love of Christ. No, many were doing a wonderful job. But I felt the local church should be the center for outreach, and we needed to bring the balance back.

K.P. Yohannan

#60. Teenagers who do not go to church are adored by God, but they don't get to meet some of the people who love God back.

Anne Lamott

#61. That's the biggest purpose of religious gathering: permission to look terrible in public. We used to go to church to confess our worst behaviour, to be heard and forgiven, then to be redeemed and accepted back into our community
Chuck Palahniuk in interview with TMO

Chuck Palahniuk

#62. Looking back, I am grateful for so many friends who helped me in my youth to gain a testimony of the restored Church of Jesus Christ. First, I exercised simple faith in their testimonies, and then I received the divine witness of the Spirit to my mind and to my heart.

Dieter F. Uchtdorf

#63. Some go to Church, proud humbly to repent, And come back much more guilty than they went: One way they look, another way they steer, Pray to the Gods; but would have Mortals hear; And when their sins they set sincerely down, They'll find that their Religion has been one.

Edward Young

#64. I cried out at the sudden visitation of pain, everyone in a silent church standing in a rustle of suits and dresses to bend back their longest fingernail.

Eric Sennevoight

#65. The Church is or should go back to being a community of God's people, and priests, pastors and bishops, who have the care of souls, are at the service of the people of God.

Pope Francis

#66. I moved back to Buffalo in 2009, and I had this moment where I wanted to have the best of both worlds. I wanted to be able to be in church and cook at home but then still get on a plane and fly back to New York and be this supermodel.

Jessica White

#67. What's really neat about the Orthodox church is that it's like walking back in time 2,000 years to the time of the Apostles, when they created these services. You walk into that and it's really like ... living it. They have maintained the truth ever since the beginning.

Troy Polamalu

#68. Hearing Mass is the ceremony I most favor during my travels. Church is the only place where someone speaks to me and I do not have to answer back.

Charles De Gaulle

#69. Talk Back? That's really what it's called? You're supposed to walk into some church basement and say, 'I'm here to learn how to Talk Back'?

Catherine Gilbert Murdock

#70. How ironic that returning to a raw and ancient form of worship is now seen as new and even cutting edge. We are simply going back to a vintage form of worship which has been around for as long as the church has been in existence.

Dan Kimball

#71. I know one gay ex-Mormon who is a talented, self-destructive alcoholic. Whenever he is drunk and going on a tear, we are back to the Mormon Church and his being thrown out of the Mormon Church and growing up with this sense of being evil.

Andrew Solomon

#72. The minute you decide to get back in the business the church was commissioned for in the first place, you will pray for boldness.

Andy Stanley

#73. During the ten years I lived in the U.K., I frequently attended an Anglican church just outside of London. I enjoyed the energetic singing and the thoughtful homilies. And yet, I found it easy to be a pew warmer, a consumer, a back row critic.

Gary Hamel

#74. We come to the house of the Lord to study the Word of the Lord and learn how to live according to the teachings of our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ, so when we step out of the church building and enter back into the activities of life, we can conquer the hindrances and attacks against us.

Mark T. Barclay

#75. Looking back to the earlier centuries of the church, most of the great teachers were also bishops and vice versa. It's only fairly recently that the church has had this great divide.

N. T. Wright

#76. I would sit in the back at church every Sunday trying to hide, and just when I thought I'd gotten through the service without her [grandmother] calling on me to sing 'His Eye Is On The Sparrow,' she'd always call me up

Brooke Valentine

#77. Again, a conversation with the doctor. We always come back to the same point: "The church may not mix in politics." he says. And I tell him that when you are a Christian and profess that God is almighty, there is no single area of life from which you can eliminate God. -From the diary of Diet Eman

Diet Eman

#78. Even if we've never been inside a synagogue or a mosque or a church - even if we have, and vowed never to go back - deep down in our striving hearts, beneath all the ambition and the fear, we suspect that we were made for a different sort of life.

Heather Choate Davis

#79. My grandmother made sure that I went to church every Sunday. And she'd come over and pick us boys up, and we would go to the Nazarene church. And back then, that was about as close to heaven as I ever got, because just the time to be able to spend with her, and she was very, very religious.

John Mellencamp

#80. Seven minutes is all you get to make a positive first impression. In the first seven minutes of contact with your church, your first-time guests will know whether or not they are coming back. That's before a single worship song is sung and before a single word of the message is uttered.

Nelson Searcy

#81. The Bible, undoubtedly, is a mixed bag. I don't see myself coming back to the Church. I do like the tradition. If you come from a strong culture, you can decide what you agree with and what you don't agree with. If you're given a blank canvas, it's almost harder in life.

Steve Coogan

#82. Mr. Frimpong is the oldest person from church. That's when I knew why he sings louder than anybody else: it's because he's been waiting the longest for God to answer. He thinks God has forgotten him. I only knew it then. Then I loved him but it was too late to go back.

Stephen Kelman

#83. America has begun a spiritual reawakening. Faith and hope are being restored. Americans are turning back to God. Church attendance is up. Audiences for religious books and broadcasts are growing. And I do believe that he has begun to heal our blessed land.

Ronald Reagan

#84. Back when I was 8 or 9 and wanted to be a nun, I would often stop at church on my way home from school.

Ann Hood

#85. We must cease to think of the church as a gathering of institutions and organizations, and we must get back to the notion that we are the people of God.

David Lloyd-Jones

#86. They weren't people that liked change. They were the kind of people that would have tied change to a chair with dental floss if they could in order to avoid it. They were the type of people who desired to live in their virtual bubbles and grew to resent anyone that challenged that world.

Anna M. Aquino

#87. The church is not meant to call men and women out of the world into a safe religious enclave but to call them out in order to send them back as agents of God's kingship.

Lesslie Newbigin

#88. The city's contradictions and frailties drive me to the church. The church, in turn, binds my wounds and soothes my troubled heart, and sends me right back out into the city again.

Steve Ross

#89. Every time the Catholic Church takes one step forward, it seems to take one giant step back.

Janine Di Giovanni