Quotes About What Church Is

#1. People have really strong images of what church is, and it's almost certainly not the same as mine.

Sally Phillips

#2. Transcendence is a healthy dose of insignificance to a race whose root sin is pride. Transcendence cuts us all down to our proper proportion before an awesome God. That you and I are not significant is a wonderful, freeing discovery, and that's what church is for.

James MacDonald

#3. Each of us ought to be so happy that Jesus found us and saved us, that we are running to find the next person who needs to be introduced to Him. That's what church is, a community of rescued people celebrating grace, eager to spread the good news of grace and bring other people to the party.

Justin Buzzard

#4. Could we not argue that America is about freedom, whether we live it out or not, but it really is about freedom, equality and the pursuit of happiness. And that's what church is all about.

Clementa C. Pinckney

#5. 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

#6. Tell me what the world is saying today, and I'll tell you what the church will be saying in seven years.

Francis Schaeffer

#7. I'm all for Spencer. He's sincere, idealistic, and a good preacher. I just don't believe that social action is the main business of the Church."
"Then what is?"
"Salvation.

Catherine Marshall

#8. 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

#9. What we preach in church. We believe in the resurrection on the Day of Judgement and in eternal life. The reunion of loved ones is the essence of the Easter message.

Arnaldur Indridason

#10. We can't really explain what the goal of mentoring is, until we understand what the church is for.

Rhys Bezzant

#11. The man who lives in contact with what he believes to be a living Church is a man always expecting to meet Plato and Shakespeare to-morrow at breakfast. He is always expecting to see some truth that he has never seen before.

G.K. Chesterton

#12. What we need now is the greatest generation of young adults in the history of the Church. We need your whole heart and soul. In other words, it's time to raise the bar not only for missionaries but also for returned missionaries and for your entire generation.

M. Russell Ballard

#13. Don't try so hard to be hip. When the Church finds out what is cool, it is not cool anymore.

Kevin DeYoung

#14. Your calling is not an afterthought. God does not save you and then say, "Now what am I going to get him to do? What job can I give her in the church?" God saves you because He has a purpose for you.

Derek Prince

#15. Well, we have nothing to hide. Our history is an open book. They may find what they are looking for, but the fact is the history of the church is clear and open and leads to faith and strength and virtues.

Gordon B. Hinckley

#16. What practically defines the evangelical church today is an emphasis on two issues that Jesus did not even mention.

Philip Yancey

#17. To be in the mainline is to have a history and not simply to be an amalgam, a community church of who knows what that came from who knows where.

Barbara Brown Taylor

#18. The Church of Christ is an anvil which has worn out many hammers. Our opponents may boast of their strength, but they do not realize what they have challenged.

John Buchan

#19. It's not like we grew up hanging around in church every day. We'll always stick to what we feel is right for us to do, and I don't think either of us have had a hard time saying, 'This is who I am, and I'm fine with it.'

Josh Dun

#20. This is what the Church is all about. It is a redemptive fellowship of forgiven sinners who are in the slow, difficult process of being transformed into saints by the grace of God.

Stanley S. Harakas

#21. The Christians were the first to make the existence of Satan a dogma of the church. What is the use in a Pope if there is no Devil ?

H. P. Blavatsky

#22. Your religion is not what you do on Sunday. It is how you live Monday through Saturday.

Shannon L. Alder

#23. What kind of a hick town is this, anyway?" she murmured. "A bank is held up and the sheriff is in church. What's he doing, praying that somebody will catch the robbers for him?

Robert Bloch

#24. If you can explain what is happening in a church, apart from the sovereign act of God, it is not revival.

David Lloyd-Jones

#25. What Paul is saying is that when we "do church," we are to do it in a proper and fitting manner. There should be order, not chaos. There should be sensibility, not insensitivity. There should be consistency, not discord. There should be guidance, not irresponsibility.

Robert H. Welch

#26. If I should say anything that is not in conformity with what is held by the Holy Roman Catholic Church, it will be through ignorance and not through malice. This may be taken as certain, and also that, through God's goodness, I am, and shall always be, as I always have been, subject to her.

Saint Teresa Of Avila

#27. Sometimes I think what the church needs most is to recover some of its weird. There's no sense in sending her through the makeover montage of the chick flick when she'll always be the strange, awkward girl who only gets invited to prom on a dare.

Rachel Held Evans

#28. To give the whole store away to match what this year's market says the unchurched want is to have the people who know least about the faith determine most about its expression.

Martin E. Marty

#29. Much of what we accomplish in the church is due to the selfless service of women.

Quentin L. Cook

#30. Once Christianity is no longer seen as part and parcel of patriotism, the church must offer more than "What would Jesus do?" moralism and the "I vote values" populism to which we've grown accustomed.

Russell D. Moore

#31. This is what heaven's gonna be like. Not just a white church or a black church, but people.

Mr. Wrestling

#32. It seems likely that the Internet will do for the corporation what the Guttenberg press did for the church. That is, it will break up structures we had always assumed were permanent: it will render temporal what we assumed was timeless.

Ron Davison

#33. What is there to be said about a Church which certainly promises its believers eternal salvation, but at the same time condemns the non-believers, all those who think differently, to an eternal torment in hell? - If that Church absolutely must talk about love, then it should do so very quietly.

Arnulf Overland

#34. The Church of Reason, like all institutions of the System, is based not on individual strength but upon individual weakness. What's really demanded in the Church of Reason is not ability, but inability. Then you are considered teachable. A truly able person is always a threat.

Robert M. Pirsig

#35. I grew up Baptist and still go to church. I myself have explored other religions, because I want to know what it is that makes other people tick. I find we're all talking about the same thing, really - it's all God.

Dennis Quaid

#36. I would like to suggest that what my accusers have been pleased to call the peace of the Church is more properly called the sleepiness of the Church and we should be thankful to God that it has been disturbed.

Lloyd Geering

#37. We use a lot of creativity and new technology, cutting edge things to use in our church, but really what it comes down to is God changing a life.

Kerry Shook

#38. 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

#39. Many of the girls wear simple dresses to church. We do not make a point of 'dressing up,' nor do we study one another to see what is being worn. Nor does God. It's our hearts He views as we enter the doors to His church. Not our clothing.

Janette Oke

#40. If the church is what it should be, young people will be there. But they will not just 'be there' - they will be there with the blowing of horns and the clashing of high-sounding cymbals, and they will come dancing with flowers in their hair.

Francis Schaeffer

#41. The church is called to be now what the world is called to be ultimately

John Howard Yoder

#42. What is a literary festival? Imagine a sort of cross between school and church. There are no actual festivities; what there are is a lot of public readings.

Russell Smith

#43. What rights are there for homosexuals? The only right is to be led to repentance. To live in such defilement of the body, in such dishonour, in such abomination, while all the time asking for liberties the church cannot grant, is unbelievable.

Pope Shenouda III

#44. What breaks my heart is in the United States hundreds of thousands wake up on a Sunday and church never crosses their mind.

Andy Stanley

#45. Christianity is being concerned about [others], not building a million-dollar church while people are starving right around the corner. Christ was a revolutionary person, out there where it was happening. That's what God is all about, and that's where I get my strength.

Fannie Lou Hamer

#46. The Church is composed of people, and people do terrible things and commit sin - it's what the Church has been telling us for two thousand years and continues to tell us, which is why the Church is here and essentially one of the major reasons why people hate it so much.

Michael Coren

#47. Those on the verge of leaving the church do not want to be told the answers. They want to be invited into the conversation of seeking what is life-giving, truthful, and consistent with the person and ministry of Jesus.

Wendy Vanderwal-Gritter

#48. And after hearing what our Church can say, If still our reason runs another way, That private reason 'tis more just to curb, Than by disputes the public peace disturb; For points obscure are of small use to learn, But common quiet is mankind's concern.

John Dryden

#49. When I am asked what my vision for the Brooklyn Tabernacle is, I always respond, "I don't have one. Last time I read my Bible, it said it was Christ's church, not mine.

Jim Cymbala

#50. The sex abuse crisis in the Catholic Church is the result of what police call "noble cause corruption," the belief that because you are dedicated to doing good, you can do no wrong.

Alex Gibney

#51. I think what the Church should ideally do, and does appear to do in the context of straight relationships, is to support people in crossing from the easier pleasure of momentary carnal satisfaction, into the more difficult pleasure of love and family and relationship.

Andrew Solomon

#52. There are some who invoke separation of church and state - to try to get the government out of the business of morality - but this is antithetical to what the founders wanted. The founders wanted to keep theology out of government so that government could focus on the proper business of morality.

Dinesh D'Souza

#53. We, the women and men of the Church, we are in the middle of a love story: each of us is a link in this chain of love. And if we do not understand this, we have understood nothing of what the Church is ...

Pope Francis

#54. Sometimes I cannot say much about why I go to church other than what people who go to the gym say: I always feel better once I'm there; I feel better after; it is always good for me, not good in a take-your-vitamins way, in a chidingly moralistic way, but in a palpable way.

Lauren F. Winner

#55. mission is what "God is doing in the world through the church, and even without the church, to bring his creation to its consummation: unity and fullness in Jesus Christ.

Sarah Bessey

#56. Do what you do because Jesus is watching, not so you'll end up on some top 100 church list or be the envy of the next pastors gathering. That stuff doesn't matter. Be innovative because you believe people matter and you want to please Jesus.

Tim Stevens

#57. A church should be a camp of soldiers, not an hospital of invalids. But there is exceedingly much difference between what ought be and what is, and consequently many of God's people are in so sad a state that the very fittest prayer for them is for revival.

Charles Spurgeon

#58. The church has gotten it wrong a few times on science, and I think that we probably are better off leaving science to the scientists and focusing on what we do - what we're really good at, which is - which is theology and morality.

Rick Santorum

#59. Church isn't some community you join or some place you arrive. Church is what happens when someone taps you on the shoulder and whispers in your ear, Pay attention, this is holy ground; God is here.

Rachel Held Evans

#60. First, if Francis were around today, he'd say our church community relies too much on words to tell others about our faith. For Francis, the gathered community was as potent a form of witness as words. He was convinced that how we live together is what attracts people to faith.

Ian Morgan Cron

#61. Tell me, why do you think I do this?" The king sounds curious. "Out of lust? Is that what you think?"
Kill a cardinal? Divide your country? Split the church? 'Seems extravagant,' Chapuys murmurs.

Hilary Mantel

#62. The first priority of the family should be to establish a quality of relationship with each other that is a reflection of an authentic relationship with God. That may have been what Paul was aiming at when he wrote to the church in Ephesians 5 and 6 about the family.

Reggie Joiner

#63. It is my province to teach to the church what the doctrine is. It is your province to echo what I say or to remain silent.

Bruce R. McConkie

#64. What we have seen in recent years in the United States is the church's rights to express itself, and to conduct its own affairs, being insidiously eroded.

Bruce L. Shelley

#65. What God has planned for the Church in this hour is greater than our ability to imagine and pray.

Bill Johnson

#66. I do think that the legacy of the Norman conquest is still strong in Britain. Our hereditary monarchy, our established church, our ancient county structures, though hollowed out in many ways, are a direct result of what happened in 1066.

Paul Kingsnorth

#67. I believe that God knows what each of us wants and needs. It's not necessary for us to make it to church on Sunday to reach Him. You can find Him anyplace. And if that sounds heretical, my source is pretty good: Matthew, Five to Seven, The Sermon on the Mount.

Frank Sinatra

#68. All church activities that dilute, diminish, or detract from worship destroy Verticality, deny the priority of doxology, and forfeit what Vertical Church is all about - glory.

James MacDonald

#69. I think the main fight is to dissuade Americans from what the secularists are trying to persuade them to be true: that the separation of church and state means that the government cannot favor religion over nonreligion.

Antonin Scalia

#70. I actually think one of most profoundly and deep pastoral moments between a pastor and his church is what happens between them before God in the context of preaching.

Tullian Tchividjian

#71. It is not the legitimate province of the Legislature to determine which religion is true, or what false. Our government is a civil, and not a religious institution.

Richard Mentor Johnson

#72. One of the characteristics of sects is that they judge all other believers to be lost. What they claim, in effect is, "Unless you agree with me on all issues that I define as essential, you cannot be saved.

Flavil R. Yeakley Jr.

#73. For what need would I have to say, 'I believe,' if I already knew?

(from The Church is One)

Aleksey Khomiakov

#74. What is a wife and what is a harlot? What is a church and what is a theatre? are they two and not one? Can they exist separate? Are not religion and politics the same thing? Brotherhood is religion. O demonstrations of reason dividing families in cruelty and pride!

William Blake

#75. What seems to tend to the church's ruin is often overruled to the ruin of the church's enemies, whose pride and malice are fed by Providence, that they may be ripened for destruction.

Matthew Henry

#76. Pope Benedict is an amazingly visionary person. What he has done is establish an evolutionary process that will help undo the Reformation. The Anglican Church has been hijacked by modernism, with synods trying to amend the faith and this process will allow traditional Anglicans to be themselves.

Peter Slipper

#77. The cross has two sides to it. One side is what Jesus did for us. He forgave us our sins. The other is the God side. God now lives in man!

John Paul Warren

#78. 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

#79. we loved reenacting what we saw. The Church Lady's catchphrases were our catchphrases, and we repeated them until my mother said, exasperated: "Please stop saying 'Isn't that special?' in that strange voice. It is annoying to me and to others." At

Mindy Kaling

#80. I would love to see churches start using their Web sites to present video profiles of people within their congregations so that the average person could get a sense of what the life of the church (not the organization, but the people - the true church) is really like.

Frank Minis Johnson

#81. I'm not starting my own religion, I'm not preaching, and I'm not starting a church of any kind, but I love being able to accumulate so many experiences over the years and use that as ammunition for what I truly believe in.

Brendon Urie

#82. But don't let them talk you into anything you don't feel comfortable with."
"They're my friends."
"So what?" He shrugged. "If your friends walked off a cliff, would you do it too?"
"Why would they walk off a cliff?" I asked in alarm. "Is someone having problems at home?

Alexandra Adornetto

#83. It is the peculiar privilege of the Church, to know what the Divine judgments mean, and what is their tendency.

John Calvin

#84. He who tears down the cross, what is there left to lift him to heaven? The church claiming to be a Christian church is false to the title, if she make the cross of Christ of none effect.

Herrick Johnson

#85. Who's to say what's evil? A man's beliefs are his own business. Neither the Church nor anybody else has the right to tell you how to act; that's what real freedom is about: to be able to be who you really are, not what you are expected or supposed to be.

Richard Ramirez

#86. A sign in the yard of a church next door said CHRIST IS THE ANSWER. (The question, of course, is: What do you say when you strike your thumb with a hammer?)

Bill Bryson

#87. There is no separation of church and state. Modern US Supreme Courts have raped the Constitution and raped the Christian faith and raped the churches by misinterpreting what the Founders had in mind in the First Amendment to the Constitution.

Jerry Falwell

#88. Church is a place where you get to practice what it means to be human.

James Luther Adams

#89. What would it take for church to become known as a place where grace is "on tap"?

Philip Yancey

#90. I still follow the lifestyle of the Mormon church. I try to go to church every Sunday even when I'm on tour. It's not only my upbringing, but it helps me stay sane. It helps me remember my purpose and the overall picture of what is important to me and what makes me happy.

Lindsey Stirling

#91. What I miss today more than anything else - I don't go to church as much anymore - but that old-time religion, that old singing, that old praying which I love so much. That is the great strength of my being, of my writing.

Ernest Gaines

#92. God's word is unpredictable in its power ... The Church has to accept this unruly freedom of the word, which accomplishes what it wills in ways that surpass our calculations and ways of thinking.

Pope Francis

#93. 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

#94. It is sufficient to say, what everybody knows to be true, that the Irish population is Catholic, and that the Protestants, whether of the Episcopalian or Presbyterian Church, or of both united, are a small minority of the Irish people.

John Bright

#95. At the risk of sounding too cliche, I found a really fantastic church. That is what keeps me grounded.

Chyler Leigh

#96. What, then, shall a Catholic Christian do ... if some novel contagion attempt to infect no longer a small part of the Church alone but the whole Church alike? He shall then see to it that he cleave unto antiquity, which is now utterly incapable of being seduced by any craft or novelty.

Vincent Of Lerins

#97. Acting is broad enough a church that you can pick your races, decide which way you want to go at different times.I think that the story and circumstance tends to dictate the most and then what you do with your own approach after that.

Ben Mendelsohn

#98. When I walk into an Orthodox Church ... one is immediately aware that one has stepped into the presence of what St. Paul would call the whole family in heaven and earth. You have stepped into the precincts of heaven!

Thomas Howard

#99. If you go to Atlanta, the first question people ask you is, "What's your business?" In Macon they ask, "Where do you go to church?" In Augusta they ask your grandmother's maiden name. But in Savannah the first question people ask you is "What would you like to drink?

John Berendt

#100. God is preparing His Church to become an invincible, unstoppable, unconquerable, overcoming Army of the Lord that subdues everything under Christ's feet. There will be a sovereign restorational move of God to activate all that is needed for His army to be and do what He had eternally purposed.

Bill Hamon