Church Culture Quotes

#1. Here's the test - if you can't take your church culture and language and drop it in the middle of a bar or a bus, and have it make winsome sense to the people there, then it's not from Jesus. Because that is exactly what he could do. That's what made him the real deal.

John Eldredge

#2. The idea that the Lord wanted me to make prayer such a driving emphasis seemed counterintuitive to positioning the church for revival. How could it be that quite possibly the most unpopular activity in church culture could become a birthing center for a history-making move of the Holy Spirit?

Michael Brown

#3. Being around a church culture, even leading a gathering of believers, I've gotten pretty good at predicting what's going to happen in a church service.

Francis Chan

#4. If mainstream culture thinks gender roles are unimportant, church culture makes them too important.

Katelyn Beaty

#5. For democrats, it's as crucial to defend secular culture as to preserve secular law. And in fact the two projects are inseparable: When religion defines morality, the wall between church and state comes to be seen as immoral.

Ellen Willis

#6. There is no problem with the wider culture that you cannot see in the spades in the Christian Church. The rot is in us, and not simple out there. And Christians are making a great mistake by turning everything into culture wars. It's a much deeper crisis.

Os Guinness

#7. The Church should spend less time trying to be "relevant", which can come across as disingenuous, and more time trying to align their hearts to the authentic gospel message.

Matt Chandler

#8. If a church offers no truth that is not available in the general culture - in, for instance, the editorials of the New York Times or, for that matter, of National Review - there is not much reason to pay it attention.

Richard John Neuhaus

#9. What God says to His Church at any given period depends altogether upon her moral and spiritual condition and upon the spiritual need of the hour.

A.W. Tozer

#10. The culture around us knows what it means when they see a church in perpetual bluster and outrage. They know that we are scared.

Russell D. Moore

#11. Since much of American taxes prior to 1763 went to support the local clergy, one humorist suggested the opportunity to vote on that. If the minister was turned out, he could open a tavern and preach to his customers if he served them liquor.

Colin G. Calloway

#12. The Church cannot be content to live in its stained-glass house and throw stones through the picture window of modern culture.

Robert McAfee Brown

#13. The Church is not called to overthrow government but to influence culture.

John Paul Warren

#14. Abortion is without a doubt one of the greatest moral evils within modernity. As the "Advocate of Christian Memory," a pope must take up the mantle of defending the culture of life - a defense the Early Church held against the pagans of Rome.

Pope Francis

#15. Why create churches for 50-year-olds and let culture have the students?

Andy Stanley

#16. I love what the church offers to us as a culture - black people in particular. We would be nowhere without the black church.

Oprah Winfrey

#17. A church that loses its distinctiveness is a church that has nothing distinctive with which to engage the culture. A worldly church is of no good to the world.

Russell D. Moore

#18. Pastors are appointed by God to help their people see that the church walks in the light and all others in darkness. We, the "in Christ" people, are the true culture (John 14:6). We say this without arrogance, but with a sense of surprise.

Owen Strachan

#19. I grew up in a household that had its roots in church and community and culture and poetry and song and in the arts. Those aspects certainly shaped what I do.

Robert Battle

#20. Why does no one speak of the cultural advantages of the country? For example, is a well groomed, ecologically kept, sustainably fertile farm any less cultural, any less artful, than paintings of fat angels on church ceilings?

Gene Logsdon

#21. It is impossible for us to understand the Church if we regard her as subject to the limitations of human culture. For she is essentially a supernatural organism which transcends human cultures and transforms them to her own ends.

Christopher Dawson

#22. I long for a church that understands the dangers of entertainment and sees it for what is is: a lion crouching at the evangelical door, ready to devour us. We need a culture of evangelism that never sacrifices to the idolatry of entertainment, but serves up the rich fare found the gospel of Christ.

J. Mack Stiles

#23. When women are restricted from the service of God in any capacity, the Church is mistakenly allowing an imperfect male-dominated ancient culture to drive our understanding and practice of Christ's redeeming work, instead of Jesus Christ and the whole of the Scriptures.

Sarah Bessey

#24. The Christian church in the U.S. is still strong numerically, but it has lost its decisive influence both in American public life and in American culture as a whole, especially in the major elite institutions of society.

Os Guinness

#25. The Church, in her wisdom, maintains the distinction between engaged and married couples
they are not the same, today's culture and society have become rather indifferent to the delicate and serious nature of this passage.

Pope Francis

#26. We have created a culture of leadership "development" in the Church at the expense of ignore the ministry of the Church to making disciples.

John Paul Warren

#27. While the older generation is content to sit around and critique culture, that culture is moving beyond them. At some point the traditional church and all of the expressions of that church will become essentially irrelevant.

Ted Dekker

#28. I come from a culture that embodies the need to convert others to "the truth." The Mormon Church has one of the largest missionary programs in the world. That does not interest me.

Terry Tempest Williams

#29. I want people to help me reanchor the church to undeniable, mind-boggling, culture-shifting demonstration of compassion and generosity. Because, generosity was the hallmark of the early church.

Andy Stanley

#30. The Church counters the culture of death with the culture of love.

Pope John Paul II

#31. In the Church, when we talk about 'the world', we often create an us and them situation and end up planting the seeds of all that we feel wrong with the world in the soil of our own backyard.

Steve Scott

#32. I'm interested in the history of ideas and how these ideas take on flesh and influence culture, and the church.

Kevin Vanhoozer

#33. History shows that when the church accommodates culture, it weakens it.

Rick Warren

#34. Other men look to him as someone to emulate. His church calls on him for strength and leadership. He is a preserver of culture and a champion of society to keep out evil and usher in good.

Tony Evans

#35. The worlds of folklore and religion were so mingled in early twentieth venture German culture that even families who didn't go to church were often deeply Christian.

Eric Metaxas

#36. From the beginning of church history, music, writing, literature, and the greatest works of art all came from the church. To change the culture and make it a force for good, you have to be in it and be a part of it.

Patricia Heaton

#37. Culturally appropriate evangelism answers the actual questions being asked by a given culture rather than those questions the church believes the culture should ask.

Ed Stetzer

#38. Evangelicals are experts at adopting heroes, since their community produces so few with both moral standing and intellectual firepower.

Frank Schaeffer

#39. Jesus never asked me to give to an organization the kind of exclusive devotion he demands from his disciples. Over and over, Jesus calls people to himself - out of the church, the culture, the economy, and the family.

Michael Spencer

#40. We are far too good at analyzing what is wrong with the culture and far too myopic at analyzing what is wrong in the church.

Sinclair B. Ferguson

#41. This is not an issue of geography. He IS of two worlds wherever he goes.

Ron Suskind

#42. He saw the Constitution as the vehicle to keep ecumenical passions in check.

Jeffrey Toobin

#43. Our society is divided by the culture wars into the Left and Right, and the United Methodist Church has always stood historically in the center and has been willing to listen to and to bring together those things that often are found in opposite camps.

Adam Hamilton

#44. Redeeming culture is the never ending mission of the church.

Charles Colson

#45. From every point of view, therefore, the problem in question is the most serious concern of the Church. What is the relation between Christianity and modern culture; may Christianity be maintained in a scientific age?

J. Gresham Machen

#46. If we don't live in a way that is distinctive from our culture, then why not? If we are going to be satisfied with living our lives like the rest of the world and adding a weekly sermon and a small group Bible study on top, then what exactly are we up to in the church? Isn't there more? And

M. Scott Boren

#47. That is the job of the Catholic Church, to be a balance to the materialistic drives of our culture and of economy.

David Brooks

#48. It is not the spirit of wealth, of learning, or of culture that can make the church of value, or a power for good in the world, but the spirit of Christ only.

Harold Bell Wright

#49. The task is to become church for them, among them and with them, and under Spirit of God to lead them to become church in their own culture.

Tim Chester

#50. Arrogance is perhaps the most socially acceptable form of sin in the church today. In this culture of abundance, one of the only ways Satan can keep Christians neutralized is to wrap us up in pride. Conceit slips in like drafts of cold air in the winter. We don't see it, but outsiders can sense it.

David Kinnaman

#51. In this current generation, the church is not prospering in its mandate to extend kingdom principles throughout culture

Sunday Adelaja

#52. Americans tend to use "nation" as a synonym for "country." But political scientists and historians, as well as many Europeans, tend to use the term for a much more specific phenomenon: a group of people who feel they belong together, whether they have a country of their own or not.

Robert Lane Greene

#53. church-planting team is representative of the culture, not a group of paid professionals or full-time ministers.

Jen Hatmaker

#54. There's a lot of us who do not accept the culture of the bubbles.

Mike Huckabee

#55. There have to be men out there like us: committed to the Gospel, if not the culture of the church, she says. I nod in agreement. Mormon, but normal. Two Normons in a sea of Boremons and Whoremons.

Nicole Hardy

#56. The evangelical movement has become just a bit victimized by a success-oriented culture, wanting the church - like the corporation - to be successful.

Henri Nouwen

#57. If the doctrine of a church is that people outside of Christ will face an eternity in hell, yet the culture is one that does not celebrate conversions or evangelistic witness, the culture of the church will contradict its doctrinal stance by continually focusing inward instead of outward.

Matt Chandler

#58. With others, I feel betrayed that those who had the authority in the Church to stop Brendan Smyth failed to act on the evidence I gave them. However, I also accept that I was part of an unhelpful culture of deference and silence in society and the Church, which thankfully is now a thing of the past.

Sean Brady

#59. I sometimes wonder whether our churches
living as we do in American death-denying culture, relentlessly smiling through our praise choruses
are inadvertently helping people live not as much in hope as in denial.

Mark Galli

#60. Not every religion has to have St. Augustine's attitude to sex. Why even in our culture marriages are celebrated in a church, everyone present knows what is going to happen that night, but that doesn't prevent it being a religious ceremony.

Ludwig Wittgenstein

#61. But why is the Church so ready to embrace the culture of the unbelieving world?

Curtis A. Chamberlain

#62. An all-loving god would surely not damn his children to an eternity of torture simply for being born into a culture that believes in the wrong deity, follows the wrong holy book or attends the wrong type of church services.

Armin Navabi

#63. We live in a time of crisis in the secular culture and in the church with regard to the beautiful.

R.C. Sproul

#64. How can we pick and choose which parts of the Bible to follow? One thing is God's will and another is just cultural differences? What if it's all cultural? What if homosexuality or saving yourself for marriage is as outdated as women staying silent in church or Leviticus forbidding tattoos?

Trevor D. Richardson

#65. There is no separation between the gospel and culture, between how we live in society and how we live in our private lives, between the lordship of Jesus inside the four walls of a church building and outside that building.

Michael Brown

#66. The church should not reflect pop culture but portray godly attributes. The church should not seek pleasures but seek after God.

Billy Graham

#67. 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

#68. Probably the greatest tragedy of the church throughout its long and chequered history has been its constant tendency to conform to the prevailing culture instead of developing a Christian counter-culture.

John R.W. Stott

#69. Culture wants to sexualize us; church, it seems, wants to desexualize us. In the end, women are left staring in the mirror and wondering if our skirt is too short for Sunday service.

Pam Hogeweide

#70. The Southern Baptist Church is a specific culture in itself. So, I had to study, talk to people, watch tape and go to performances to see how Gospel artists move compared to secular artists.

Boris Kodjoe

#71. But the Church cannot be, in any political sense, either conservative or liberal, or revolutionary. Conservatism is too often conservation of the wrong things: liberalism a relaxation of discipline; revolution a denial of the permanent things.

T. S. Eliot

#72. Maybe that is why there are not a whole lot of problems between the church and worldly culture today, because we are not confronting the culture around us.

Paul David Washer

#73. Our culture doesn't like being told what to do; that's happening in the Church.

Mike Pilavachi

#74. 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

#75. 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.

Dallas Willard

#76. The loss of connection between churches and neighborhoods creates a corresponding loss of localized imagination and creates an addictive-like dependence on acontextual experts who scan the physical and spiritual horizon for 'success.

Tim Keel

#77. The illicit Irish homemade spirit, poitin was frowned upon by the Catholic Church, which made its manufacture grave enough of a sin to require a bishop's absolution rather than that of the regular parish priest. Ah, the lengths the Irish will go to for "the demon drink!

Rashers Tierney

#78. On the other hand, activist Christians who talk much about justice promote a notion of justice that envisions a society in which faith in God is rendered quite unnecessary, since everybody already believes in peace and justice even when everybody does not believe in God.

Stanley Hauerwas

#79. The Church is missionary by nature and her principal task is evangelization, which aims to proclaim and to witness to Christ and to promote his Gospel of peace and love in every environment and culture.

Pope Benedict XVI

#80. Lewis is like a gateway, making the riches of Deep Church more accessible.

Alister E. McGrath

#81. While I have no problem with the church adapting to the culture, we must ensure that we remain painstakingly true to the Gospel of Jesus Christ and that we remain obedient servants to His truths.

Jerry Falwell

#82. In Gladstone's mature years he lost faith not in God but in the ability of any government or state to act as the agent of God.

George F. Will

#83. God does not exercise an alien domination of the world but a liberating lordship that sets creation free; God's rule lets family, culture, government, and church fulfill their created purposes, both distinct from and related to one another, and without any usurped heteronomy of one over the other.

Dietrich Bonhoeffer

#84. When Germany defeated Napoleon it was a disastrous to culture as when Luther defeated the Church.

Will Durant

#85. We all need to kind of preach to ourselves. I grew up in church, and I don't think I necessarily understood what it meant to be called into the culture and the community in the city that you're in or the town that you're in and live effectively and be informed and be gracious with people.

Shane Harper

#86. 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

#87. The deepest reason why the Church is weak and the world is dying is that there are not enough saints. No, that's not quite honest. The reason is that WE are not saints.

Peter Kreeft

#88. Does it not seem strange that the generation with the most advanced technology and the easiest-to-read Bible translations is the weakest generation of Christians in the history of our country? Church attendance has never been lower, and the Christian influence in our culture never weaker.

A.W. Tozer

#89. In fact, even Tillich's socialism was accommodationist because it continued the Constantinian strategy: The way to make the church radical is by identifying the church with secular "radicals", that is, socialists.

Stanley Hauerwas

#90. There is a difference between a church that prays and a praying church. One has prayer programs. The other develops a prayer culture.

Daniel Henderson

#91. A church can ignore the culture only until, as the divorce culture did in the past, that culture reshapes the church in a way that obscures the gospel itself.

Russell D. Moore

#92. So pervasively has Enlightenment culture's anti-supernaturalism affected the Western church, especially educated European and North American Christians, that most of us are suspicious of anything supernatural.

Craig S. Keener

#93. The Church is our Mother, which means it is an internal voice. It is not a set of external rules. That's what isn't understood about Catholicism in this Protestant culture. It means that your conscience is formed by the Church, but in the end you're responsible for your own activities.

Francis George

#94. If all you are doing is spending time with the struggling members of your church and you are not building proactively into your church's culture, and you are being shortsighted and limiting the effectiveness of your ministry.

James MacDonald

#95. Growing up in the church in West Virginia, faith is always there. It's part of the fabric of the culture.

DeVon Franklin

#96. We have taken the latter course as a culture. So there is mass confusion today
even in the evangelical church
over whether the Bible is true and over how far we should go in obeying it.

Alistair Begg

#97. 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

#98. 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

#99. When the doctrine is clear and the culture is beautiful, that church will be powerful. But there are no shortcuts to getting there. Without the doctrine, the culture will be weak. Without the culture, the doctrine will seem pointless.

Raymond C. Ortlund Jr.

#100. You know, who tells the stories of a culture really governs human behavior. It used to be the parent, the school, the church, the community. Now it's a handful of global conglomerates that have nothing to tell, but a great deal to sell.

George Gerbner