Top 95 Best Church Quotes
#1. True leaders bring out your personal best. They ignite your human potential.
John Paul Warren
#2. Our Pastoral solicitude induces us to earnestly protect and preserve in everything and especially in the sacred rites of the Church the best and old norm.
Pope Clement VIII
#3. The ministry of mercy, then, is the best advertising a church can have. It convinces a community that this church provides people with actions for their problems, not only talk. It shows the community that this church is compassionate.
Timothy Keller
#4. The best advice that I can give you is this: Church-traditions- especially when they do not run counter to the faith- are to be observed in the form in which previous generations have handed them down ... The traditions which have been handed down should be regarded as apostolic laws.
St. Jerome
#5. These were wild aromas, far from the schoolroom, church building, or city. Like a secret handshake, these smells meant you were among a higher class. Men who were the best men Wilder knew. The kind of man he wanted, and intended, to be.
S.J. Dahlstrom
#6. Church and God ain't the same thing. From what I know, God's perfect. The Church makes mistakes ... God's about order, Church is about power, as best as I can figure, to be against one is not to be against the other.
Nathan Yocum
#7. The Church at its worst is still better than the world at its best!
Bill Gaither
#8. I love going to black churches, and I love some of these black preachers. The best preacher I ever saw in my life was a 93-year-old in a black church in Hamilton, Virginia. What a preacher!
Robert Duvall
#9. I don't think that we should waste our time criticizing other people. Self-criticism allows us to be the best version of ourselves.
Braden Pedersen
#10. One of the best ways to improve men's behaviour is to enlighten their minds: and today, against the strong opposition of the Church and the Establishment, Scientific Humanism is attempting to do just that.
Margaret E. Knight
#11. When I was a child, Mama had the best voice of all the members of the church. She had loved to sing. Her words had soared like an angel's over the swells of the organ. In fact, I now suspected, her entire theology had been taken from the hymnal.
Siri Mitchell
#12. Our best efforts at changing society will fall short unless the church can teach the world how to love.
Philip Yancey
#13. Many modern Christians will take the best programs from every church while committing to no church. They even have a name for it: church shopping.
Mark Driscoll
#14. Without a confession of faith the church's evaluation of its ministers is haphazard and shallow at best; and the church will be in great danger of laying hands on novices and heretics, all because it does not measure candidates for the ministry by a broad and deep standard.
Samuel E. Waldron
#15. Its best, the church administers the sacraments by feeding, healing, forgiving, comforting, and welcoming home the people God loves. At its worst, the church withholds the sacraments in an attempt to lock God in a theology, a list of rules, a doctrinal statement, a building. But our
Rachel Held Evans
#16. To appear at church every Sunday; to look down upon, and let himself be looked at for an hour by the congregation, is the best means of becoming popular which can be recommended to a young sovereign.
Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe
#17. Enforced religion breeds precisely what it most fears: rebellion against religion, cynicism about religion, skepticism about its claims, and, as a consequence, indifference at best or outright antipathy at worst.
Langdon Brown Gilkey
#18. In Rome, I loved seeing the Caravaggios. There are churches in Rome that have Caravaggios, and there's one, not far from Piazza Navona, that has the best, I think: St. Matthew with the money.
Owen Wilson
#19. The best remedy for a sick church is to put it on a missionary diet.
David Livingstone
#20. Don't ever come to church without coming as though it were the first time, as though it could be the best time, and as though it could be the last time.
Vance Havner
#21. I think that if you can't be loyal to the Church, it's best to get out.
A. N. Wilson
#22. Church leaders raised on rationalism lead ministries where the supernatural, the Vertical, is suppressed and where God Himself is at best an observer and certainly seldom, if ever, and obvious participant in church.
James MacDonald
#23. The church works best as a force of resistance, a conscience to society that keeps itself at arm's length from the state. The closer it gets, the less effectively it can challenge the surrounding culture and the more perilously it risks losing its central message.
Philip Yancey
#24. I'm really an honorary Jew, you know; all the best people are. I really do feel Jewish, even though I'm a Catholic. The way the Church has been behaving, I'm happy to be Jewish.
Nathan Lane
#25. Sunday is the best day of the week because we celebrate the risen Christ of the cross in the local church, the dearest place on earth.
C.J. Mahaney
#26. Let us put ourselves into His hands, and not be startled though He leads us by a strange way, a mirabilis via, as the Church speaks. Let us be sure He will lead us right, that He will bring us to that which is, not indeed what we think best, nor what is best for another, but what is best for us.
John Henry Newman
#27. He would like best of all to persecute us with fire and sword, but this method has availed him little because through the blood of martyrs the church has been watered.
Martin Luther
#28. We would be 1,500 years ahead if it hadn't been for the church dragging science back by its coattails and burning our best minds at the stake.
Catherine Fahringer
#29. It's a curious thing in American life that the most abject nonsense will be excused if the utterer can claim the sanction of religion. A country which forbids an established church by law is prey to any denomination. The best that can be said is that this is pluralism of a kind.
Christopher Hitchens
#30. Healing blessings come in many ways, each suited to our individual needs, as known to Him who loves us best. Sometimes a 'healing' cures our illness or lifts our burden. But sometimes we are 'healed' by being given strength or understanding or patience to bear the burdens placed upon us.
Dallin H. Oaks
#31. Living is giving. We live life best as we give our strengths, gifts, and competencies in the service of God's mission. We are called to serve, not survive. Our giving makes a difference in our families, our work, our community, our world, and our church.
Kennon Callahan
#32. Sheep do best when they have personal contact with their shepherd. It was intended that the Church would continue after his departure to heaven. There are many roles in a functioning, normal Church.
Word Alive Press
#33. Some of the craziest people I know, some of the coolest guys I know who party and go crazy and play rock shows and have tons of tattoos, they will still go to church on Sunday and do their best to live that kind of a life.
Samuel Larsen
#34. Try to be all you can be to be the best human being you can be. Try to be that in your church, in your temple. Try to be that in your classroom. Do it because it is right to do.
Maya Angelou
#35. The Agency was the one subject in his life that could never be exhausted. Central Intelligence. Beryl saw it as the best organized church in the Christian world, a mission to collect and store everything that everyone has ever said and then reduce it to a microdot and call it God.
Don DeLillo
#36. I'm from a family with five kids in it, and my father almost became a Catholic priest. And my mother never went to church, but she's the best Christian I know. My siblings have all chosen different paths to or away from their spirituality.
Carrie Coon
#37. I never saw any people who appeared to live so much without amusement as the Cincinnatians ... Were it not for the churches, ... Ithink there might be a general bonfire of best bonnets, for I never could discover any other use for them.
Frances Trollope
#38. 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
#39. He had learned how to assemble Jewish texts, Greek philosophy, and Middle-Western evangelistic anecdotes into a sermon. And he had learned that poverty was blessed, but that bankers make the best deacons.
Sinclair Lewis
#40. PRAYER IS THE serious business of the Church, the first and best business it renders for the world.
Richard J. Foster
#42. I think it is going to be very difficult for any church that still calls itself a church, never to try and convince someone that their religion is the best one.
Barry W. Lynn
#43. The upright, honest-hearted man Who strives to do the best he can, Need never fear the church's ban Or hell's damnation.
Robert Burns
#44. Only one party sticks out in my mind as a kid. It was the best party ever. I was 5 years old, and my mom dressed me up in a church dress and stockings to go to the party and park.
Rihanna
#45. The right to freedom is the gift of God Almighty ... The rights of the Colonists as Christians may be best understood by reading, and carefully studying the institutes of the great Lawgiver and head of the Christian Church: which are to be found clearly written and promuligated in the New Testament.
Samuel Adams
#46. The New Testament views the church
rather than marriage
as the primary place where human love is best expressed and experienced.
Wesley Hill
#47. I carry my own church about under my own hat," said I. "Bricks and mortar won't make a staircase to heaven. I believe with your Master that the human heart is the best temple.
Arthur Conan Doyle
#48. When we think "mission" we must think "church." And the best way to link church and mission is through church planting.
Tim Chester
#49. But now that was all gone by, and had left her neither happier nor wiser; and the best she could do with her mornings was to come up here into the cold church and juggle for a slice of heaven.
Robert Louis Stevenson
#50. The Church at its best is about empowering the disempowered and giving voice to the dispossessed and not putting a price on everything and not being about the bottom line and not worshipping the market or everything that is material.
Steve Coogan
#51. [We need reforms] to make the Negro church a place where colored men and women of education and energy can work for the best things regardless of their belief or disbelief in unimportant dogmas and ancient and outworn creeds.
W.E.B. Du Bois
#52. Life seems to be fashioned and formed best out of the obstacles that seem unbearable.
John Paul Warren
#53. I am an atheist (or at best a Unitarian who winds up in church quite a lot).
Kurt Vonnegut
#54. and was perhaps even more affecting when it appeared thus without the church. And, indeed, there are many others which look best when seen in this way,
Marcel Proust
#55. [Disestablishment was] the best thing that ever happened to the state of Connecticut. It cut the churches loose from dependence on state support. It threw them wholly on their own resources and on God.
Lyman Beecher
#56. If indeed this is the work of God ... then it's a crisis that calls for the church to be its very best self, and not worry about risking itself for the right thing.
Gene Robinson
#57. The best title of the [professing] church of God today, in my judgment, is 'Unbelieving Believers.'
Leonard Ravenhill
#58. I used to do bell ringing in Benenden church. It was really good fun, actually. My best friend's dad was the local vicar, and so it was expected as her best friend that I would go to church every Sunday with her.
Jo Brand
#59. Giving sacrificially also means giving the best. If we have two blankets and someone needs one of them, sacrificial giving hands over the better of the two. Sadly, much of our "giving" is merely discarding. Donating secondhand goods to church rummage sales
Randy Alcorn
#60. The best-run churches and organizations are masters of the midcourse correction. They plan in pencil.
Larry Osborne
#61. If Jesus is the heart of the church, people are the lifeblood. There is a reason He created community and told us to practice grace and love and camaraderie and presence. People soften the edges and fill in the gaps. Friends make up some of the best parts of the whole story.
Jen Hatmaker
#62. Please receive in the name of the Spanish government and the people of Spain our warmest congratulations for your election as Supreme Pontiff of the Catholic Church and my best wishes for the Papacy which you begin today. [to Pope Benedict XVI]
Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero
#63. it seems best to view deacons as servants who do whatever is necessary to allow the elders to accomplish their God-given calling of shepherding and teaching the church.
Matt Schmucker
#64. Communication has always been at the service of power. Michelangelo painted the Sistine Chapel for the Pope. Is it not an advertisement for the Church? I try to make the best pictures I can and sometimes they are used in advertising campaigns.
Oliviero Toscani
#65. It was in that bubble after Vatican II when it seemed like the best time ever to grow up Catholic. It was a time when the church was so connected to the world.
Rob Sheffield
#66. No local church can afford to go without the encouragement and nourishment that will come to it by sending away its best people.
David Penman
#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 best and the most talented in the pastoral ministry and in denominational hierarchies harm themselves and harm the church most through their unrestrained ego and unwillingness to step off the high places. Sexual sin gets the press, but ego sin kills the church.
David Hansen
#69. As expected, the church lady grumbled something incoherent and put Bridget's call on hold. A peppy rendition of "City of God" blared as hold music just long enough for Bridget to start to sing along with the chorus. Catholic brainwashing at its best.
Gretchen McNeil
#70. 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
#71. 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
#72. Small churches become more effective when they specialize in what they do best.
Rick Warren
#73. Satan has been the best friend the church has ever had, as he has kept it in business all these years!
Anton Szandor LaVey
#74. Surely you know that if a man can't be cured of churchgoing, the next best thing is to send him all over the neighbourhood looking for the church that "suits" him until he becomes a taster or connoisseur of churches.
C.S. Lewis
#75. We attended stables, as we attended church, in our best clothes, thereby no doubt showing the degree of respect due to horses.
Osbert Sitwell
#76. Pitchers don't need to hit well; they need to pitch well. Every step you create needs to do what it does best and nothing more. Focus allows you to pursue excellence, to zero in on the target. You can ruin a great pitcher by trying to make a hitter out of him, and you can ruin a great church ...
Andy Stanley
#77. I have never pretended to be the best Scientologist, but I openly and vigorously defended the church whenever it was criticized, as I railed against the kind of intolerance that I believed was directed against it. I had my disagreements, but I dealt with them internally.
Paul Haggis
#78. The best way to revive a church is to build a fire in the pulpit.
Dwight L. Moody
#79. The church belongs to its hierarchy, which is men in power. Those outside the hierarchy, and especially women, are at best only renters and at worst squatters in religious territory.
Sonia Johnson
#80. The phrase "after-life" was also vaguely confused with going to church and not wanting to be dead - a perplexity which can be omitted from a narrative in which I am doing my best to confine myself to actual happenings. At the age of twenty-two I believed myself to be unextinguishable.
Siegfried Sassoon
#81. Our ultimate aim in this welfare work is to help Church members to become self-supporting, and to obtain work they can do best. The Church, with its members independent and free from debt, with time to labor in the ministry, can then successfully carry on the work of the Lord here on earth.
Henry D. Moyle
#82. The church is at its best in two's or three's-not in two or three hundreds or two or three thousands. "Where two or three are gathered together, there am I in the midst of them.
Neil Cole
#83. Through my music teaching and my not absolutely irregular attendance at church, I became acquainted with the best class of colored people in Jacksonville.
James Weldon Johnson
#84. Science is neither a single tradition, nor the best tradition there is, except for people who have become accustomed to its presence, its benefits and its disadvantages. In a democracy it should be separated from the state just as churches are now separated from the state.
Paul Feyerabend
#85. Many today view love and doctrine as enemies, or at best as rivals.
Bobby Jamieson
#86. We fought for equality for all, for women too. For freethinking, fighting the lies of church and state, for what Nat called the Republic of Letters. That was what we believed in twenty years ago. But now, seems like all that has gone. It's church and Sunday best, and votes for men." "What
M.J. Carter
#87. I feel like the Church should have the most amazing entertainment and the best music, because we know the author and the source of music and entertainment, which is our Father.
Danny Gokey
#88. I was astonished to learn in one of these best-selling books (on church life) that the size of my church parking lot had far more to do with how things fared in my congregation than my choice of texts in preaching. I was being lied to and I knew it.
Eugene H. Peterson
#89. The best critique of what is wrong is the practice of something better. So let's stop complaining about the church we've experienced and work on becoming the church we dream of.
Shane Claiborne
#90. Christianity is facing something of an identity crisis. Who are we to be to the twenty-first-century world? How should the church position itself in the postmodern culture? Through what cultural languages will the gospel be best communicated in this turbulent time?
Brett McCracken
#91. I have a Bible study that my friends and I go to here in L.A. I go to church every Sunday. I've always been a believer. I love singing. I don't have the best voice - I just love getting my emotions out.
Kellan Lutz
#92. My best advice to anyone who wants to raise a happy, mentally healthy child is: Keep him or her as far away from a church as you can.
Frank Zappa
#93. Among the best traitors Ireland has ever had, Mother Church ranks at the very top, a massive obstacle in the path to equality and freedom. She has been a force for conservatism ... to ward off threats to her own security and influence.
Bernadette Devlin
#94. The best music of my life I heard at my grandmother's church, this little wooden church up on a hill.
Mavis Staples
#95. Dedicate yourself above all else to becoming the-best-version-of-yourself. It is the best thing you can do for your spouse, your children, your friends, your colleagues, your employees, your employer, your church, your nation, the human family, and yourself.
Matthew Kelly
