Top 100 Be The Church Quotes
#1. The church can only defend its own space by fighting, not for space, but for the salvation of the world. Otherwise the church becomes a "religious society" that fights in its own interest and thus has ceased to be the church of God in the world.
Dietrich Bonhoeffer
#2. Church is what you do. Church is who you are. Church is the human outworking of the person of Jesus Christ. Let's not go to Church, let's be the Church.
Bill Hybels
#3. The epicenter of creativity and imagination should be the Church, reflecting the character and glory of God.
Erwin McManus
#4. Without God's Spirit, there is nothing we can do that will count for God's kingdom. Without God's Spirit, the church simply can't be the church.
N. T. Wright
#5. We can walk when we want to, we can build many things, but if we do not witness to Jesus Christ then it doesn't matter. We might become a philanthropic NGO but we wouldn't be the Church, the Bride of the Lord.
Pope Francis
#6. For the church to be the church - not just a place where you can find ministry but where the people are a ministering community - every believer must accept his or her role in the life of every other believer.
Paul David Tripp
#7. The time is well past for the church, particularly the Western church, to rethink and reimagine what it means to be the church in the twenty-first century.
Richard R. Dunn
#8. If the church would only be the church- if Christians would only be Christians- nothing could halt our onward march.
Vance Havner
#9. I think we are all trying to figure out what it means to be the Church as opposed to just doing church.
Erwin McManus
#10. Be the Church - that is, be an evangelical movement that tells the world of God's passionate love for humanity. That, not institutional maintenance, is what the Church is for. When the Church is that, and does that, it flourishes ...
George Weigel
#11. The day the church can no longer say, "We must obey God rather than human beings" (Acts 5:29), it ceases to be the church.
N. T. Wright
#12. The Church may have a building, but that is not its place. The building may be the church's location, but its space is in the shared humanity of its persons.
Andrew Root
#13. I would not be standing here today if my skin were white or my religion were Presbyterian. I am here today only because my skin is yellow and my religion is Unification Church. The ugliest things in this beautiful country of America are religious bigotry and racism.
Sun Myung Moon
#14. It is not enough to celebrate Christmas. We need to be changed and shaped by what we are celebrating. If our spiritual life is no better in spite of all our praying, fasting, and church services, then we have not yet begun to fully respond to the significance of Advent and of the Nativity.
Vassilios Papavassiliou
#15. I grew up in the church and had religion in my life for a long time. I'm not really a church goer, but I definitely have a hunger for a spiritual connection to the world and for my soul to be healed.
Wes Bentley
#16. The Church's role should be separated from the state's role.
Roy Moore
#17. It is my belief that everything you need to know about the world can be learned in a church choir.
Connie Willis
#18. I thought this would be the end of your antics. There are three hundred guests sitting in the church and suddenly you believe you can fly?
Yvonne Harriott
#19. I spent twenty years of my life trying to recruit people out of local churches and into missions structures so that they could be involved in fulfilling God's global mission. Now I have another idea. Let's take God's global mission and put it right in the middle of the local church!
George H. Miley
#20. One should not seek among others the truth that can be easily gotten from the Church. For in her, as in a rich treasury, the apostles have placed all that pertains to truth, so that everyone can drink this beverage of life. She is the door of life.
Irenaeus Of Lyons
#21. If Christ is the head of the church and we are the body, lets be disciples who master the noise.
Eric Samuel Timm
#22. I don't pray. When I was young, I vowed I never would be caught begging God. If I want something I get it for myself. I go to church only to show the old hens they don't get me down.
Louise Erdrich
#23. We have need to be as sturdy pioneers still as Miles Standish, or Church, or Lovewell. We are to follow on another trail, it is true, but one as convenient for ambushes. What if the Indians are exterminated, are not savages as grim prowling about the clearings today?
Henry David Thoreau
#24. But a short time elapsed after the death of the great reformer of the Jewish religion, before his principles were departed from by those who professed to be his special servants, and perverted into an engine for enslaving mankind, and aggrandizing their oppressors in Church and State.
Thomas Jefferson
#25. Atheism has become a major threat to the church. New Atheists tend to be articulate and belligerent. They are aggressively engaging in "atheist evangelism," determined to stamp out every vestige of belief in God, which they insist is not only "stupid" but "wicked."
Dave Hunt
#26. Let us set apart special seasons for extraordinary prayer. For if this fire should be smothered beneath the ashes of a worldly conformity, it will dim the fire on the family altar, and lessen our influence both in the Church and in the world.
Charles Haddon Spurgeon
#27. Tell me what the world is saying today, and I'll tell you what the church will be saying in seven years.
Francis Schaeffer
#28. Be she alewife,
fishmonger, washerwoman, or whore; the woman who fucks my whole cock shall I take to church's
door.
Lisa Valdez
#29. Calvi was sobbing. This couldn't be! A moment ago the Pope was healthy, smiling. How could His Holiness be no longer? Only a month into his papacy!
Peter J. Tanous
#30. Well, whatever one thinks of the Roman Church, it is a worthy and powerful foe. I could accept that sort of conversion with grace. But I shall be very disappointed indeed if we lose him to the Presbyterians.
Donna Tartt
#31. The actions of the police division today will be to assist the church for the funeral. We anticipate that a fairly large crowd will be outside the church and the general area, ... We're trying to approach everything with common sense.
Thomas Streicher
#32. If the church were the goal, then sustaining that church would logically be the priority of the highest order. But if the Kingdom of God was the goal, then the Kingdom-building instrument would gladly self-sacrifice for the eternal prize.
Jeff Christopherson
#33. Obviously, a big part of the American Revolution was there would be no Church of England the way there was in England. There was a specific attempt not to have an established church.
Jeffrey Toobin
#34. Jesus Christ rose from the grave.' With this proclamation, the Christian church began. This may be the fundamental element of Christian faith; certainly it is the most radical.
Elaine Pagels
#35. As long as quick numerical growth remains the primary indicator of church health, the truth will be compromised. Instead, churches must once again begin measuring success not in terms of numbers but in terms of fidelity to the Scriptures.
Mark Dever
#36. Politics is noble; it is one of the highest forms of charity, as Paul VI used to say. We sully it when we mix it with business. The relationship between the Church and political power can also be corrupted if common good is not the only converging point.
Pope Francis
#37. No person, no idea, and no religion deserves to be illegal to insult, not even the Church of Emacs.
Richard Stallman
#38. Leaders in the realm of religious activity are to be judged by their praying habits and not by their money or social position. Those who must be placed in the forefront of the Church's business must be, first of all, men who know how to pray.
Edward McKendree Bounds
#39. The Church received from the apostles the tradition of giving baptism even to infants. The apostles, to whom were committed the secrets of the divine sacraments, knew there are in everyone innate strains of [original] sin, which must be washed away through water and the Spirit
Origen
#40. The audience that I try to reach are members of what I call the church alumni association. Now they are people who have not found in institutional religion a God big enough to be God for their world.
John Shelby Spong
#41. I went to church. It didn't help. In those days that was the best place to meet a girlfriend. In church! All of us praying to be different.
Jeffrey Eugenides
#42. The Church does not pretend to be scientists. It teaches based upon what science tells it.
Wellington Mara
#43. I experienced the Church to be this refuge within and beyond myself.
James Finley
#44. The Church must be a place of mercy freely given, where everyone can feel welcomed, loved, forgiven, and encouraged to live the good life of the Gospel.
Pope Francis
#45. Next to be in one with worshiping God, there is nothing in this world upon which this church should be more united than in upholding and defending the constitution of the United States.
David O. McKay
#46. Freedom as a possession is a doubtful thing for a church; freedom must be won under the compulsion of a necessity. Freedom for the church comes from the necessity of the Word of God. Otherwise it becomes arbitrariness and ends in a great many new ties. Whether
Eric Metaxas
#47. The essential thought must ever be that a man does not, except in his spiritual infancy, accept a statement merely because the Church or someone in authority declares it correct, but because, under mature examination, it is found to be true and right and worthwhile.
John Andreas Widtsoe
#48. One of the ways over the years that the church has severely weakened corporate prayer is that we let prayer be about the people there, rather than about God. We
Jonathan L Graf
#49. The Church always seems to be behind the times, when it is really beyond the times.
G.K. Chesterton
#50. What I believe to be one of the major tragedies in the Church today. Namely, that evangelicals are biblical, but not contemporary, while liberals are contemporary but not biblical, and almost nobody is building bridges and relating the biblical text to the modern context
John Stott
#51. You'll always be my girl. You were from the first moment I saw you. You were sitting in church with your brothers. You were eight years old, and I was twelve, and I thought, I hope she waits for me. Lucia, I'll wait forever if I have to.
Adriana Trigiani
#52. The holy universal Church teaches that it is not possible to worship God truly except in Her and asserts that all who are outside of Her will not be saved.
Pope Gregory I
#54. Clover City is the type of place you leave. It's love that either sucks you in or pushes you away. There are only a few who really make it out and stay out, while the rest of us drink, procreate, and go to church, and that seems to be enough to keep us afloat.
Julie Murphy
#55. In summary, Schmucker argued that theology was contextual in nature, and that theological systems and expressions - indeed the church itself - had to be changed to accommodate their cultural and philosophical setting.
Albert B. Collver
#56. Evil is a broad church. There are so many different ways to be evil. Sometimes it's fun to be the guy who doesn't know that he's bad, like the character I played in True Blood. He was pretty angsty about it, but he thought he was doing the right thing.
James Frain
#57. I must be mad, or very tired, When the curve of a blue bay beyond a railroad track Is shrill and sweet to me like the sudden springing of a tune, And the sight of a white church above thin trees in a city square Amazes my eyes as though it were the Parthenon.
Amy Lowell
#58. We do not want an official state church. If ninety-nine percent of the population were Catholics, I would still be opposed to it. I do not want civil power combined with religious power. I want to make it clear that I am committed as a matter of deep personal conviction to separation.
John F. Kennedy
#59. In size the electron bears the same relation to an atom that a baseball bears to the earth. Or, as Sir Oliver Lodge puts it, if a hydrogen atom were magnified to the size of a church, an electron would be a speck of dust in that church.
Waldemar Kaempffert
#60. The Bible nowhere teaches that the church will ultimately convert the whole world to Jesus Christ. There has never been a generation in history, nor will there ever be generation, in which the majority of the people will believe in Christ.
Billy Graham
#61. On the most elementary level, you do not have to go to church to be a Christian. You do not have to go home to be married either. But in both cases if you do not, you will have a very poor relationship.
R. Kent Hughes
#62. The beauty of the Catholic church is that it has a sacramental structure that can hold its own with the best out of any tradition. It has a mystical system and content that can hold its own with the best out of Tibet ... its an amazing tradition, but I think you need to be critical.
John O'Donohue
#63. Ask yourself, "Who's getting the glory in this ministry?" You see, if we do ministry OUR way, it won't be for His glory, because our ways are not His ways.
Charles R. Swindoll
#64. God is not attracted to mountaintops or church steeples. God is drawn to suffering, and the dark places it surfaces, which is why sharing pain freely feels very much like love, and may be the same thing. (207)
Keith Ablow
#65. I certainly respect other people's opinions, but I would not vote for a woman to be the pastor of a church.
Charles Stanley
#66. Serve the Lord and then your success will be with Joy
Sunday Adelaja
#67. 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
#68. The Gospel lives in conversation with culture, and if the Church holds back from the culture, the Gospel itself falls silent. Therefore, we must be fearless in crossing the threshold of the communication and information revolution now taking place.
Pope John Paul II
#69. Why go to a church to worship God? A church is man made. God never said, "And let there be aluminum siding." Climbing a tree to talk to God sounds like a better idea since only God can make a tree. And if that tree's on a golf course, all the better.
Tim Allen
#70. It would be as easy for the United States to build a tower to remove the sun, as to remove polygamy, or the Church and Kingdom of God.
Heber C. Kimball
#71. Better to be cast out of the Church than to deny Christ.
Anne Hutchinson
#72. Someone has said that the marks of a strong church are wet eyes, bent knees, and a broken heart. We'll never be powerful until we let God be God and jealously guard His honor.
Erwin W. Lutzer
#73. I think that a church should be setting the pace for social justice.
Max Lucado
#74. When I was growing up, I'd be in the choir. My mum was the organist in the church, so I'd sing in the church.
Enya
#75. We don't ask any people to throw away any good they have got; we only ask them to come and get more. What if all the world should embrace this Gospel? They would then see eye to eye, and the blessings of God would be poured out upon the people, which is the desire of my whole soul.
Joseph Smith Jr.
#76. The Devils also believe and know abundance: But in this is the Difference, their Faith works not by Love, nor their Knowledge by Obedience; and therefore they are never the better for them. And if ours be such, we shall be of their Church, not of Christ's: For as the Head is, so must the Body be.
Various
#77. I agree with the idea that there is a separation of church and state. That teachers should not be leading prayer - a particular kind of prayer in classrooms.
Ken Buck
#78. [Pope Francis] is a humble man. He lives the faith out in his own personal life ... He's here to be a shepherd; he isn't here to be a scold. I think that's a good thing for the church and for the world, frankly.
Rick Santorum
#79. also may be untrue. One of the gravestones in the cemetery near the earliest church has an anchor on it and an hourglass, and the words In Hope. In Hope. Why did they put that above a dead person? Was it the corpse hoping, or those still alive? Does Luke hope?
Margaret Atwood
#80. I visualize a day when tridents and pentagrams are thrust into the sky from church roofs instead of crosses. I have a legacy to fulfill, and it will be fulfilled.
Anton Szandor LaVey
#81. Since the baptismal rebirth takes place only with the one Bride of Christ, where could he be born who is not a son of the Church?
Cyprian
#82. Photography is, and has been since its conception, a fabulously broad church. Contemporary practice demonstrates that the medium can be a prompt, a process, a vehicle, a collective pursuit, and not just the physical end product of solitary artists' endeavors.
Charlotte Cotton
#83. One cannot accept Christ and still be part of the normative Jewish community; one cannot live by Torah and still be part of the Church.
David Novak
#84. Jesus did not come to strike a balance between grace and truth. He brought the full measure of both ... It's easy to create an all-truth church model. It may be even easier to create an all-grace model, but Jesus didn't leave either option on the table.
Andy Stanley
#85. Since the primary motive of the evil is disguise, one of the places evil people are most likely to be found is within the church. What better way to conceal one's evil from oneself as well as from others than to be a deacon or some other highly visible form of Christian within our culture
M. Scott Peck
#86. The Church, as Jesus seems to be defining it, is the gathering of accepted brokenness. It's not the gathering of the saved.
Richard Rohr
#87. It seemed to me that I, the spirit of so many worlds, the flower of so many ages, was the Church Cosmical, fit at last to be the bride of God. But instead I was blinded and seared and struck down by terrible light.
Olaf Stapledon
#88. Though the world may often appear to be more charitable than the church, it is crucial to remember that, for the church, the care of the poor cannot be separated from the worship of God.
Stanley Hauerwas
#89. I would like the church to be a place where the questions of people are honored rather than a place where we have all the answers. The church has to get out of propaganda. The future will involve us in more interfaith dialogue ... We cannot say we have the only truth.
John Shelby Spong
#90. Human beings may separate things into as many piles as we wish - separating spirit from flesh, sacred from secular, church from world. But we should not be surprised when God does not recognize the distinctions we make between the two.
Barbara Brown Taylor
#92. Did Gran go to a gynecologist? That is totally weird. I never thought about my grandmother's vagina before. I don't want to be thinking about my grandmother's vagina. Not here, at her funeral. In a church. While i'm doing a reading from the Bible.
Meg Cabot
#93. This concern for the poor is in the Gospel, it is within the tradition of the Church, it is not an invention of communism and it must not be turned into an ideology, as has sometimes happened before in the course of history.
Pope Francis
#94. The life and fellowship of the church is to be a foretaste of life in the Kingdom of God.
George Eldon Ladd
#95. I had always owned them to be the Word of God ... the careful reading of the Acts afforded me a practical picture of the early church; which made me feel deeply the contrast with its actual present state; though still, as ever beloved by God.
John Nelson Darby
#96. Wherever we find the Word of God surely preached and heard, and the sacraments administered according to the institution of Christ, there, it is not to be doubted, is a church of God.
John Calvin
#97. A war fitness conference some time ago declared that the highest form of recreation is to go to church. The word recreation should be written re-creation. More real rest can be gained from an hour and a quarter of worship under these circumstances than by eighteen holes of golf.
Norman Vincent Peale
#98. A lot of victims, for example, have become addicted to alcohol and drugs. It seems to me that the church's healing ministry is going to be enhanced through this in much broader strokes. That's good, it's all positive.
Roger Mahony
#99. The Catholic writer, in so far as he has the mind of the Church, will feel life from the standpoint of the central Christian mystery: that it has for all its horror, been found by God to be worth dying for.
Flannery O'Connor
#100. He told me, coming home, that he hoped the people saw him in the church, because he was a cripple, and it might be pleasant to them to remember upon Christmas Day, who made lame beggars walk, and blind men see." Bob
Charles Dickens
