Churches On Quotes

#1. Francis walked in a solemn Ash Wednesday procession between churches on Rome's ancient Aventine Hill, calling on people to humbly remember their human limits.

Anonymous

#2. I don't go to church any more, but I think that Catholicism is rather like the brand they use on cattle: I feel so formed in that Catholic mould that I don't think I could adopt any other form of spirituality. I still get feelings of consolation about churches.

Rachel Cusk

#3. God builds his temple in the heart on the ruins of churches and religions.

Ralph Waldo Emerson

#4. One of the reasons churches in North America have trouble guiding people about money is that the church's economy is built on consumerism. If churches see themselves as suppliers of religious goods and services and their congregants as consumers, then offerings are 'payment.'

Doug Pagitt

#5. Churches are having a limited impact on society because they fail to understand that the goal of the church is not the church itself but the kingdom.

Tony Evans

#6. A man of good sense but of little faith, whose compassion seemed to lead him to church as often as he went there, said to me; 'that he liked to have concerts, and fairs, and churches, and other public amusements go on.

Ralph Waldo Emerson

#7. 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

#8. There are about 360,000 churches in America, so we could mentor a million kids within a short period of time if everyone signed on, which, of course, is a pipedream, but we're going to reach toward that.

Donald Miller

#9. The dismembering of a human being routinely in 30 minutes on an outpatient bases - or any other way - is barbaric. Four blocks from our church all year long - like churches within smelling distance of Auschwitz or Dachau or Buchenwald.

John Piper

#10. In Bolivia there are Catholic, Evangelical, Methodist, Baptist churches, and so on. In Bolivia there are indigenous religious beliefs like the rite of Pachamama Mother Earth, which shows us that Mother Earth is our life, we are born out of the Earth we live on the Earth and return to the Earth.

Evo Morales

#11. Great churches aren't built on the gifts or talents of a few, but on the sacrifice of many.

Brian Houston

#12. Some churches make intercessory prayer part of their weekly schedule. If that's not the case at your church, find another person in the faith to intercede with or go before God on your own.

Monica Johnson

#13. While the Nazi party never officially condemned the Christian churches of the country (Hitler didn't want that problem on top of all the others), they undermined the meaning of Christianity by slowly replacing people's allegiance to God with loyalty to the party.

Rudi Wobbe

#14. [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

#15. I don't think there is any religious revival. I think what we are hearing, the furor, is merely the hysterical response of the churches the handwriting on the wall that they are seeing.

Daniel Dennett

#16. Easter celebrations are evidence of the increased benign influence of the Russian Orthodox Church and other traditional churches in our country on society.

Vladimir Putin

#17. In some churches today and on some religious television programs, we see the attempt to make Christianity popular and pleasant. We have taken the cross away and substituted cushions.

Billy Graham

#18. We as preachers/teachers/pastors have to figure out things to do in order to garner the attention of individuals and also keep them at our churches by making sure that we reinvent ourselves on a consistent basis.

Marvin Sapp

#19. I don't believe God wants our church life to be centered on buildings and services. Instead, God wants our churches - whatever specific forms our gatherings take - to be focused on active discipleship, mission, and the pursuit of unity.

Francis Chan

#20. People who walk across dark bridges, past saints,
with dim, small lights.
Clouds which move across gray skies
past churches
with towers darkened in the dusk.
One who leans against granite railing
gazing into the evening waters,
His hands resting on old stones.

Franz Kafka

#21. The enemy is not individuals, churches, 'ex-gay' organisations or political parties; the enemy is ignorance. Change is created by focusing our energies on overcoming the latter instead of attacking the former.

Anthony Venn-Brown

#22. We don't have a lot of churches in America; we have a lot of really nice brick buildings on finely manicured lawns! Just because someone says they are of the Church or they are Christian, doesn't make it so.

Paul David Washer

#23. I plead guilty to that when I was young pastor. In one of my churches I changed so much, one old wag said I'd changed everything in the church except the signs on the bathroom doors! I could have used a little more wisdom. And common sense.

Jerry Vines

#24. For all the venom and fear spewed at members of the 'religious right,' most of today's churches are left alone ... the nonreligious tend to look at our churches as benign institutions that create a placid and docile citizenry, having little impact on our culture.

Kay Coles James

#25. Churches, depending on their policy, can do fantastic work with people in the community.

Annie Lennox

#26. Even most churches don't really know what to do with their singles. They teach classes on "preparing for marriage," "waiting for marriage," and "praying for marriage," but what about just honoring exactly who you are in this moment instead of always prepping for the next phase of life?

Mandy Hale

#27. We need to make a distinction between misled Iraqis, those who believe that they are carrying weapons to liberate Iraq from what they call occupation, and criminal gangs that came from outside and wants to wage a deadly war on the Iraqi people, killing women and children in mosques and churches.

Jalal Talabani

#28. They burn down Satanist churches, perform exorcisms on politicians, and they once crucified a street mime. Upside down. And then they set fire to him. A lot of people applauded.

Simon R. Green

#29. But what we found in the study is that churches are ten times less diverse than the neighborhoods they sit in. So there's something more going on than just reflecting the neighborhood, yeah.

Michael Emerson

#30. Our cause in the war on terror isn't helped when we have army officers like Lieutenant General William Boykin speaking in evangelical churches and claiming this as some sort of battle for the Christian religion. That's wrong. That's un-American.

John F. Kerry

#31. The gospel that has been preached in our churches has not been fair to the African continent. It has left us in a beggarly state, waiting on God for things we could produce by and for ourselves.

Sunday Adelaja

#32. When I board an airplane these days, all the middle-aged men are dressed like me - when I was an 8-year-old. They're in shorts and T-shirts. And it's not just on airplanes. It's in business offices, teachers' lounges, and churches.

P. J. O'Rourke

#33. Every European goes on the streets and sees medieval churches. Not if you live in Indianapolis. The most exciting letters I received were from people in places like that.

Umberto Eco

#34. I think that the churches do a better job in many respects than the government does in various kinds of things. Extending aid, the helpfulness, and so on, yes.

Gordon B. Hinckley

#35. In general, the churches, visited by me often on weekdays ... bore for me the same relation to God that billboards did to Coca-Cola; they promoted thirst without quenching it.

John Updike

#36. The church can proscribe anything and everything it wants to, but the church is still made up entirely of human beings. Heaping rule upon rule on our congregations isn't going to make anyone holier. It'll serve only to add to the guilt that is endemic in our churches.

Tiffany Reisz

#37. Our wives, our families, and our churches need godly men who have discernment
discernment to deal with life and life-issues on a spiritual level.

Jim George

#38. For here the religion that languishes in crowded cities or steals shame-faced to hide itself in dim churches, flourishes greatly, filling the soul with a solemn joy. Face to face with Nature on the vast hills at eventide, who does not feel himself near to the Unseen?

William Henry Hudson

#39. I believe that for lots of churches and religious institutions, their main focus on the development of faith among parishioners needs to spread to the community.

Geoffrey Canada

#40. Some of us worship in churches, some in synagogues, some on golf courses.

Adlai Stevenson I

#41. Some people ask nowadays what kind of a religion it is that chooses an instrument of torture for its symbol, as if the cross on churches must represent some kind of endorsement. The answer is: one that takes the existence of suffering seriously.

Francis Spufford

#42. Churches that make an impact are more focused on putting boots on the streets than butts in the seats

Miles McPherson

#43. I cannot think of a better way to spread the faith. No thundering from a pulpit, no condemnation from bad churches, no peer pressure, just a book of scripture quietly waiting to say hello, as gentle and powerful as a little girl's kiss on your cheek.

Yann Martel

#44. The life-and-death question for each of our churches and denominations may boil down to this: are we a club for the elite who pretend to have arrived or a school for disciples who are still on the way?

Brian D. McLaren

#45. Many churches have their eyes on the culture instead of on Christ. Many pastors preach on common unity instead of calling the community to repent.

Billy Graham

#46. Institutions - government, churches, industries, and the like - have properly no other function than to contribute to human freedom; and in so far as they fail, on the whole, to perform this function, they are wrong and need reconstruction.

Charles Horton Cooley

#47. ...people don't think in churches.

[Noyce on what bothers him most about organized religion.]

Robert Noyce

#48. When I listened to public prayers in evangelical churches, I heard people telling God what to do, combined with thinly veiled hints on how others should behave. When

Philip Yancey

#49. Why do we people in churches seem like cheerful, brainless tourists on a packaged tour of the Absolute?

Annie Dillard

#50. So it may be a language that separates you - again, social networks. But second-generation Asian and Hispanics, second, and third and fourth and so on, they are much more likely to be in integrated churches than are blacks or whites.

Michael Emerson

#51. Preaching styles and people being slain in the spirit and things like that. Now it doesn't happen in all black churches, and it happens sometimes in white churches, right? But on average they're quite a bit different.

Michael Emerson

#52. In the real world, I see conservatives volunteering at adoption agencies, at churches, at bake sales and the local American Legion Post while the only charity a progressive sends is a smug sermon on fair share and what fairness is.

Allen West

#53. There are certain times in a concert when I'll call an audible because I feel like God is calling me to play a different song. But truthfully, I feel called to play for the church whether it's song being played on Christian radio or it's concerts I'm doing primarily in churches.

Jonny Diaz

#54. I do not know how wicked American millionaires are, but as I travel about and see the results of their generosity in the form of hospitals, churches, public libraries, universities, parks, recreation grounds, art museums and theatres I wonder what on earth we should do without them.

William Lyon Phelps

#55. Even though he grew up in churches, raised by church people, Waterhouse (as must be obvious by this point) never really understood their attitudes about sex. Why did they get so hung up on that one issue, when there were others like murder, war, poverty, and pestilence?

Neal Stephenson

#56. You have to get past the idea that music has to be one thing. To be alive in America is to hear all kinds of music constantly: radio, records, churches, cats on the street, everywhere music. And with records, the whole history of music is open to everyone who wants to hear it.

Jerry Garcia

#57. We have only got as far as a Somebody or Something behind the Moral Law. We are not taking anything from the Bible or the Churches, we are trying to see what we can find out about this Somebody on our own steam.

C.S. Lewis

#58. It has always seemed unfair to me that many churches (and some individual Christians) keep careful records on how many converts they make to Christianity, but never keep any record of how many they drive away from Christ!

Ray Stedman

#59. In many cases students are never exposed to competing ideas within their families, churches, or Christian schools, and as a result they go out into the world unprepared for the intellectual battles they are about to encounter, especially on secular college campuses.

Nancy Pearcey

#60. research on churches shows that the greater the percentage of engaged members, the more likely the church is to be vital, thriving, and spiritually healthy. This

Scott Thumma

#61. Im known for snatchin' purses and bombin' churches I get more pussy on accident then most niggas get on purpose

Big L

#62. New York is full of abandoned churches. A Godless city, but full of superstitions on every subject
art, money, sex, food, health.

Mason Cooley

#63. I listened to a discussion of religious leaders on how to communicate the Gospel. Not once did I hear them mention prayer. And yet I know of scores of churches that win many converts each year by prayer alone.

Billy Graham

#64. We spend more time at cinemas, theaters, art galleries and theme parks than we do at churches, and they have become our new cathedrals. We can spend hours at any of these places of entertainment but if church service goes on too long we get impatient.

Michael Huffington

#65. In too many modern churches there is no emphasis on theology at all. There is a kind of justification by works or by keeping up with modern trends anything that will drag in a few more people.

Robertson Davies

#66. In too many churches today, people don't see manifestations of God's power in answer to fervent praying. Instead, they hear arguments about theological issues that few people care about. On Christian radio and television we are often merely talking to ourselves.

Jim Cymbala

#67. Sodomy is in the Bible, to be read in churches. I wouldn't rule it out of Mr. Bruce's act if he cares to comment on it.

Dorothy Kilgallen

#68. Sadly, when pastors choose to neglect controversial issues, they do great damage to the spiritual growth of their congregates. We have generations of young people in our churches who simply believe what the world believes on social and moral issues, and they don't think biblically on these matters.

Ken Ham

#69. We have to reach out to churches and schools and help people understand science, and we have to build rapport between scientists and people of faith. Then once we get that understanding and rapport built, then everyone will be on board with climate change.

Katharine Hayhoe

#70. Throughout the Middle Ages, art and architecture had a spiritual mission: to direct man's attention toward God. Churches soared in that direction, and sculpture and paintings pointed the way to paradise. They depicted the sufferings of Christ, the Apostles, martyrs, the Last Judgment, and so on.

Jesse Bryant Wilder

#71. I believe in an America ... where no public official either requests or accepts instructions on public policy from the Pope, the National Council of Churches, or any other ecclesiastical source.

John F. Kennedy

#72. Most churches don't have the resources for these tricks and inducements but are still bound to the imagination that church happens on a Sunday in a building.

Alan Hirsch

#73. Churches won't work with you, though, just out of the goodness of their hearts. They'll talk a good game-a sermon on Sunday, maybe, or a special offering for the homeless. But if push comes to show, they won't really move unless you can show them how it'll help them pay their heating bill.

Barack Obama

#74. Churches may decay and perish; riches may make themselves wings and fly away-but he who builds their happiness on Christ crucified and union with Him by faith, that person is standing on a foundation which shall never be moved, and will know something of true peace.

J.C. Ryle

#75. Besides, Prague is famous for its many churches with gold-leaf covered domes. In the sunshine, Prague is golden. I fell in love for ever. At the end of the five day stay, the entire group boarded a train for Paris. Although my parents knew the time of my arrival, they could not travel on the

Pearl Fichman

#76. The tropical night has the companionability of a Roman Catholic Cathedral compared to the Protestant Churches of the North, which let you in on business only. Here in the great room everybody comes and goes, this is the place where things are going on.

Isak Dinesen

#77. Asked. So far, in her brief time in Appalachia, she had become convinced that every five families had their own tiny church with a leaning white steeple. There were churches everywhere, all believing in the inerrancy of the Holy Scripture but evidently agreeing on little else.

Anonymous

#78. While the official church was moribund, the house churches kept alight the flame of Christian witness. The church survived as a lay movement, often led by poorly educated Bible women who memorized Scripture and passed on the faith to family members and (if they dared) to neighbors and friends.

Kim-Kwong Chan

#79. Early man recognised these lines of force and marked them out on the landscape with, well, any old thing, really standing stones, ditches, mounds, tumps, sacred wells, and that sort of thing. And, later on, with churches, market crosses, crossroads, and whatnot.

Stephen R. Lawhead

#80. The Press has no band of critics who go the round of the churches and chapels, and are on the watch for a slip or defect in the preacher, to make a 'feature' in their article: the clergy are, practically, the most irresponsible of all talkers.

George Eliot

#81. As we watched, the regulations imposed by our government, churches, and press; combined to establish our country's new internal warfare. Fought on the podiums, pulpits, and pages by each in turn to empower themselves, again, while in the corner those that should not have stayed silent, did.

James W. Scott

#82. If real churches exist, such persons are not called on to make them.

John Nelson Darby

#83. Doubts about the fundamentals of the gospel exist in certain churches, I am told, to a large extent. My dear friends, where there is a warm-hearted church, you do not hear of them. I never
saw a fly light on a red-hot plate.

Charles Spurgeon

#84. Churches thrive on martyrdom and persecution.

Robert A. Heinlein

#85. Jesus planted the first church on earth with a group of hoodlums who wouldn't be let inside the doors of most churches today.

Preston Sprinkle

#86. Old churches must not simply stand as monuments to the past but as spiritual grandparents that have invested in the future by passing on their life to others and releasing their offspring to form new congregations. Church planting needs to be given priority by old-line denominations.

Eddie Gibbs

#87. We must grow out of religion. It is either bugaboo, formalism, or hysteria. Besides, what proof is there that "the churches" know more about "God" than the Cockney sentry on duty outside the camp? We have only their say-so.

Richard Aldington

#88. If we desire the "hand of God" (i.e., his power) to return to our churches, we should focus less on the personalities and abilities of people, and more on Jesus and the power of the Holy Spirit.

Jim Cymbala

#89. Churches should teach people on our to value eternal virtues.

Sunday Adelaja

#90. I attend the greatest of all Churches. I put a capital N on Nature, and call it my Church.

Frank Lloyd Wright

#91. You can count on one hand the number of Novus Ordo churches in this country that feature a fully Catholic music program of any quality, consistent with the Roman rite tradition.

Richard Morris

#92. Why is it that the choice among churches always seems to be the choice between intelligence on ice and ignorance on fire?

Diana Butler Bass

#93. False self is an identity based on what you have, what you do, and what others think about you. In stark contrast to this is the true self in Christ, which is who we are before God and in God - Christ living in us, as Paul put it to the churches in Galatia

Basil Pennington

#94. I think poetry has started to take on a supplementary role of prayer for some people. The churches, I think, including my own, are terrible at teaching people how to pray. It may be that we need to learn from the ground up as religious people, whether Christian or not, how to pray.

Kevin Hart

#95. Churches were never meant to be mental hospitals. They were supposed to be military outposts under orders to storm the gates of hell. Every believer is on active duty and called to serve a higher purpose with the rank of their blessings and talents.

Shannon L. Alder

#96. Brethren, you won't believe what I discovered. I found out that in every place, people listened to the message (the shift our churches need) with full attention and total bewilderment. The question that I kept on hearing was: "why are other Christian ministers not doing the same thing?

Sunday Adelaja

#97. God did not force Salvation on humanity; He made it a gift dependent on the free will of the recipient because He is not interested in numbers. Mega Churches are numbers. Matthew 7:13-14.

Felix Wantang

#98. Take a walk down the street and see where this is going. You no longer feel like you are living in your own country. There is a battle going on and we have to defend ourselves. Before you know it there will be more mosques than churches!

Geert Wilders

#99. We do not want churches because they will teach us to quarrel about God. We do not want to learn that. We may quarrel with men sometimes about things on this earth, but we never quarrel about the Great Spirit. We do not want to learn that.

Chief Joseph

#100. Rather than relying on my skills, the musical ability of my band or the technical expertise of our production team, I want to learn to rely on the leading of the Holy Spirit. Only then will our churches come alive in worship.

Tim Hughes