Top 100 We Are The Church Quotes
#1. 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
#2. We are not the Church in failure, running out the back door while the devil kicks in the front door. We are the Church of Luke 10:19 that has authority over all the power of the enemy.
Harold R. Eberle
#3. If Christ is the head of the church and we are the body, lets be disciples who master the noise.
Eric Samuel Timm
#4. 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
#5. Oh, William, what pitiable creatures we men are! When we go to church we make the devil angry, when we enjoy ourselves in the inns, we make God angry; we are the unlucky lot stuck between two fires!
Mehmet Murat Ildan
#6. When we speak of the Church as the Body of Christ we are saying that it is given such union with Christ that it becomes a communion filled and overflowing with the divine love.
T.F. Torrance
#7. The gospel of Jesus Christ is for everyone. We are all significant parts of the whole. I never think of myself as single; I think of myself as Sheri, a member of the Lord's Church.
Sheri L. Dew
#8. I have this certain reluctance when it comes to this idea that we are spiritual but not religious and we want Jesus but not the church. Why can't we have both?
Shane Claiborne
#9. Now, there are things I like just fine about church, and I don't just mean making money. The notion of getting together as a community to remind ourselves why we shouldn't behave like animals is a fucking great idea.
Nick Offerman
#10. The missional church will take context seriously, but will also work on recovering the biblical narrative with its richness and potency for today's world. When story and context are equally embraced, we are beginning to think and act missionally.
Michael Frost
#11. The church, the state, and the poor, are 3 daughters which we should maintain, but not portion off.
Benjamin Franklin
#12. It is not classified as a pagan religion. The so-called New Age activities and this are not called religions and therefore don't come under the prohibition of mingling church and state that we have in this country.
Dixie Lee Ray
#13. 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
#14. The Church is everywhere represented as one. It is one body, one family, one fold, one kingdom. It is one because pervaded by one Spirit. We are all baptized into one Spirit so as to become, says the apostle, on body.
Charles Hodge
#15. It's easy to assume that because what we are doing is familiar, we are the least valuable part of the church. But God doesn't see it that way. And we need to remember the sacredness of what we are doing as we mother.
Erin Davis
#16. 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
#17. 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
#18. 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
#19. When I look at the Church today, not just in Africa but worldwide, it seems to me that we have come to love darkness even if we are called Church or some other religious names.
Sunday Adelaja
#20. We are not even going to throw the challenge of changing a whole generation before the modern day church. This generation of believers don't even know what that means
Sunday Adelaja
#21. We are not called to love our church members only - we are called to love the whole world
Sunday Adelaja
#22. 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
#23. Worldly influences would hinder use of our agency afforded through the Atonement of Jesus Christ. But we are agents who can act, and that affects everything in terms of how we live the gospel in our daily lives. It affects how we pray, how we study the scriptures, how we worship at church.
David A. Bednar
#24. In all church discussions we are apt to forget the second Testament is avowedly only a supplement. Jesus came to complete the law and the prophets. Christianity is completed Judaism, or it is nothing. Christianity is incomprehensible without Judaism, as Judaism is incomplete without Christianity.
Benjamin Disraeli
#25. The church is not here to meet our needs. We are the church here to meet the needs of the world.
Erwin McManus
#26. We have heard that we are all missionaries. Every member ... is or ought to be a missionary; ... as members of the Church, having pledged ourselves to the advancement of the gospel of Jesus Christ we become missionaries. That is part of the responsibility of every member of the Church
Joseph Fielding Smith
#27. This is the mission of God: to restore the creation and the life of humanity from the ravages of sin.[45] The church's function in this story is to participate in God's mission; we are to be caught up in God's own work of restoration and healing. This defines the identity and role of the church.
Michael W. Goheen
#28. Christians often want to hide behind the walls of the church, where we are comfortable, but sometimes we have to come out of the box.
Cheryl James
#29. We cannot have communion with Christ till we are in union with Him; and we cannot have communion with the Church till we are in vital union with it.
Charles Spurgeon
#30. There are a still lot of people in today's church who can easily identify the idolatry outside the church and are pretty proud of the fact that they are not like them. And yet, we are far too slow to recognize the idolatry inside the church and more painfully, the idolatry inside our hearts.
Tullian Tchividjian
#31. We would like a church that again asserts that God, not nations, rules the world, that the boundaries of God's kingdom transcend those of Caesar, and that the main political task of the church is the formation of people who see clearly the cost of discipleship and are willing to pay the price.
Stanley Hauerwas
#32. Jesus came into our world as a man to embody grace. He left us, the church, to be the body of Christ, not a flock of parakeets that repeat Christian jargon but the ongoing in-the-flesh presence of His grace. We are the evidence that God's grace is more than just words.
Preston Sprinkle
#33. We are born with the need for a leader, someone to control the conflict between each individual's need. An alpha in the house, an alpha at work, an alpha in the church and in the White House.
Colin McAdam
#34. 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
#35. Is this really the church of Christ, or are we just calling it the church because of our traditions and history?
K.P. Yohannan
#36. We in Africa are always on the receiving end. We have had human slavery, political slavery, economic slavery and now religious slavery. We in the church are saying no. We are prepared to live by what God says, not what you say. Man shall not sleep with man, woman shall not sleep with woman.
Peter Akinola
#37. It could fairly be said that the U.S. is increasingly out of step with the rest of the world. As our neighbors to the south elect left-wing or even socialist governments, we are lurching further to the right. As Europe becomes less engaged to the Church, we are becoming more fundamentalist.
Graydon Carter
#38. It's a great responsibility before God, the judge who guides us, who draws us to truth and good, and in this sense the church must unmask evil, rendering present the goodness of God, rendering present his truth, the truly infinite for which we are thirsty.
Pope Benedict XVI
#39. All I can tell you is that we have to re-live the gospel every time we pray. We have to re-live it every time we go to church. We have to re-live the gospel on the spot and ask ourselves what we are doing in the courtroom. We should not be there. The court is adjourned.
Timothy Keller
#40. How grateful we are that the heavens are indeed open, that the gospel of Jesus Christ has been restored, and that the Church is founded on the rock of revelation. We are a blessed people, with apostles and prophets upon the earth today.
Thomas S. Monson
#41. We need religion as a guide. We need it because we are imperfect. Our government needs the church, because only those humble enough to admit they are sinners can bring to democracy the tolerance it requires in order to survive.
Jeff Miller
#42. Our Christian identity is belonging to a people: the Church. Without the Church we are not Christians.
Pope Francis
#43. Nine out of ten of what we call new ideas are simply old mistakes. The Catholic Church has for one of her chief duties that of preventing people from making those old mistakes; from making them over and over again forever, as people always do if they are left to themselves.
G.K. Chesterton
#44. We are not saved by sound church order and discipline but we are served by it.
Michael Horton
#45. When I look around, the biggest way in which we are failing to care for those in need is through ignoring climate change and acting like it doesn't exist. As a Christian, I believe that is something the church needs to know.
Katharine Hayhoe
#46. We live in an age in which only one prejudice is tolerated - anti-Christian bigotry ... Today, the only group you can hold up to public mockery is Christians. Attacks on the Church and Christianity are common.
D. James Kennedy
#47. I cannot think why we should be astonished at all the evils which exist in the Church, when those who ought to be models on which all may pattern their virtues are annulling the work wrought in the religious Orders by the spirit of the saints of old.
Teresa Of Avila
#48. 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
#49. Individuals and church bodies are often caught in the paralysis of analysis. We
Neil T. Anderson
#50. We are dealing in a day and time when the courts are defining sin different than the church.
Johnny Hunt
#51. Until you have entered the house of the Lord and have received all the blessings which await you there, you have not obtained everything the Church has to offer. The all-important and crowning blessings of membership in the Church are those blessings which we receive in the temples of God
Thomas S. Monson
#52. Preaching the Word is the primary task of the Church, the primary task of the leaders of the Church, the people who are set in this position of authority; and we must not allow anything to deflect us from this, however good the cause, however great the need.
David Lloyd-Jones
#53. If we are going to do away with polygamy, it would only be one feather in the bird, one ordinance in the Church and Kingdom. Do away with that, then we must do away with the prophets and apostles, with revelation and the gifts and graces of the Gospel, and finally give up our religion altogether.
Wilford Woodruff
#54. In our desire to make Christ known and to increase the influence of the church, we are many times prone to think that Christians and the church can be made popular with the unbelieving world. This is a grave mistake on the part of the church.
Billy Graham
#55. If the church is to survive as a place where head and heart are equal partners in faith, then we will need to commit ourselves once again not to the worship of Christ, but to the imitation of Jesus. His invitation was not to believe, but to follow. (p. 145)
Robin R. Meyers
#56. I do feel that federation, loose parallel processes, are less than we've got, less than we could have and, in the very long run, less than what God wants in the Church.
Rowan Williams
#57. We who were formerly no people at all, and who knew of no peace, are now called to be ... a church ... of peace. True Christians do not know vengeance. They are the children of peace. Their hearts overflow with peace. Their mouths speak peace, and they walk in the way of peace.
Menno Simons
#58. I just find the evangelical church too, well, restrictive. But the School of Practical Philosophy is nonconfrontational. We believe there are many forms of Scripture. What is true is true and will never change, whether it's in the Bible or in Shakespeare. It's about oneness.
Hugh Jackman
#59. People in the United States, including me, are naturally inclined to support Israel. I'm an evangelical Christian who teaches the Bible every Sunday at my church. I teach half the Old Testament and half the New Testament. We Americans identify the Hebrews, the Israelites, with ourselves.
Jimmy Carter
#60. 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
#61. Most of us like thinking we are God's only children ... At least one of the purposes of church is to remind us that God has other children, easily as precious as we. Baptism and narcissism cancel each other out.
Barbara Brown Taylor
#62. Brothers and sisters, if only we had more compassion for those who are different from us, it would lighten many of the problems and sorrows in the world today. It would certainly make our families and the Church a more hallowed and heavenly place.
Joseph B. Wirthlin
#63. We are forbidden to neglect the assembling of ourselves together. Christianity is already institutional in the earliest of its documents. The Church is the Bride of Christ. We are members of one another.
C.S. Lewis
#64. We must cease to think of the church as a gathering of institutions and organizations, and we must get back to the notion that we are the people of God.
David Lloyd-Jones
#65. Proclaiming the gospel to a lost world cannot be just another activity to add to the church's crowded agenda. It must be central to who we are. It forms our identity.
Francis Chan
#66. It is important to note that when Mary Magdalene and other women were chosen by Jesus to bring the important news to the men, the men did not believe the women. Today 2,000 years later men still don't believe women when they say "We are also chosen by Jesus to be leaders in the church.
Roy Bourgeois
#67. We ourselves are behaving in the Church as if we are afraid of the light, it should not be so.
Sunday Adelaja
#68. There is nothing the Church of today needs so much as Spiritual Power; and there is nothing which we can have so easily, if only we are prepared to pay the price.
F.B. Meyer
#69. We need to stop giving people excuses not to believe in God. You've probably heard the expression 'I believe in God, just not organized religion'. I don't think people would say that if the church truly lived like we are called to live.
Francis Chan
#70. How seldom we notice rooftops; how easily our eyes are drawn to the more flamboyant attractions of a Roman temple or Renaissance church.
Alain De Botton
#71. The first amendment makes it clear that we are free to practice religion without government interference. The Constitution also establishes the separation of church and state so that the laws we live by our never guided by religious zeal.
Roxane Gay
#72. There are many gods ... gods of beauty and magic, gods of the garden, gods in our own backyards, but we go off to foreign countries to find new ones, we reach to the stars to find new ones
... The god of the church is a jealous god; he cannot live in peace with other gods.
Rudolfo Anaya
#73. We also try to reach out to people who are far away, via digital means, the web and brief messaging.
Pope Francis
#75. There are financial bankruptcies in many parts of the church. No question about that. But we see the possibility of reimagining and revitalizing the church.
Shane Claiborne
#76. The church was custom built by Jesus, and we are all works in progress. We do not expect people to get their sin in order before attending church any more than a hospital expects people to get healed before they show up.
Mark Driscoll
#77. We are here to unlearn the teachings of the church, state, and our education system.
Charles Bukowski
#78. We have lived for too long in a world, and tragically in a Church, where the wills and affections of human beings are regarded as sacrosanct as they stand, where God is required to command what we already love, and to promise what we already desire.
N. T. Wright
#79. Ultimately, if the Lord doesn't build the house (or the Sunday school class, or the church, or the family, or the business, or the relationship, or ), we are laboring in vain anyway (Psalm 127:1). We release the burden of stress when we release the responsibilities for the outcome to the Lord.
Paul Chappell
#80. The church is not to be judged by how useful we are as a "supportive institution" and our clergy as members of a "helping profession". The church has its own reason for being, hid within its own mandate and not found in the world. We are not chartered by the Emperor.
Stanley Hauerwas
#81. 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
#82. This is the church's job. This is who we are as the body of Christ to reach out to people who are in need, who are struggling, who need to be discipled and to pursue Christ in their life. That's good news and the church should offer it wholeheartedly to anyone.
Alan Chambers
#83. Please stop using the word "Negro." ... We are the only human beings in the world with fifty-seven variety of complexions who are classed together as a single racial unit. Therefore, we are really truly colored people, and that is the only name in the English language which accurately describes us.
Mary Church Terrell
#84. Suffering is seldom an item on our list of requests to the Lord. But when it crosses our path and we are able by his grace to keep on walking, our lives become messages of hope to the world and to the church.
Sheila Walsh
#85. We are not some casual and meaningless product of evolution. Each of us is the result of a thought of God.
Pope Benedict XVI
#86. Church is the textured context in which we grow up in Christ to maturity. But church is difficult. Sooner or later, though, if we are serious about growing up in Christ, we have to deal with church. I say sooner.
Eugene H. Peterson
#87. As Christians we are called to make disciples of all the nations, meeting them where they are and serving them in ways that are relevant and meaningful. That is the challenge: as the church, to remain relevant and meaningful, in efforts to reach all people where they are in a way they need.
Kellen Roggenbuck
#88. First we are to seek peace in our local fellowship, to end strife and to seek reconciliation with God and with one another, and out of this peace-shaped, kingdom-shaped church we spill over peace into the world.
Scot McKnight
#89. When the Christian or the church becomes popular with the unbelieving world, something is seriously wrong. Because Christ runs counter to evil and because we are Christ-owned, we must also stand against evil.
Billy Graham
#90. What is to be gained if we are so intent in reaching out to the unchurched that we then unchurch the reached?
David F. Wells
#91. To think there are men who dare so defile a church, a sacred sanctuary dedicated to God. We have to hold up our skirts and walk tiptoe, so covered is the floor, the aisle and pews, with the dark shower of tobacco juice.
Mary Boykin Chesnut
#92. The Lord made it very clear at the start of this last dispensation that we were to take the gospel to all the world ... Whatever our age, capacity, Church calling, or location, we are as one called to the work to help Him in His harvest of souls.
Henry B. Eyring
#93. The United States must not adopt the tactics of the enemy. Means are important, as ends. Crisis makes it tempting to ignore the wise restraints that make men free. But each time we do so, each time the means we use are wrong, our inner strength, the strength which makes us free, is lessened.
Frank Church
#94. The Angels shows are really intense. We play for a couple hours at a time. They're very theatrical and full of audience interaction and emotion. I've seen a lot of people crying and stuff. It's a little bit like church, but it's very secular.
Tom DeLonge
#95. We must learn to measure ourselves, not by our knowledge about God, not by our gifts and responsibilities in the church, but by how we pray and what goes on in our hearts. Many of us, I suspect, have no idea how impoverished we are at this level. Let us ask the Lord to show us.
J.I. Packer
#96. The main reason, Your Holiness, of why we are here today, is it is not the business of the church to stray from the field of faith and morals and wonder into the playground that is science ... it is not the business of the church to pronounce on science.
Christopher Monckton, 3rd Viscount Monckton Of Brenchley
#97. But there is a difference between curing and healing, and I believe the church is called to the slow and difficult work of healing. We are called to enter into one another's pain, anoint it as holy, and stick around no matter the outcome. In her
Rachel Held Evans
#98. I think here is the irony of American history. We don't have an established church. When you have an established church nobody takes religion as seriously as we do here. We have a free market in religion. The religious groups are competing with each other.
Eric Foner
#99. Church, in the New Testament sense of the word, is not a meeting we attend, but a group of which we are a part, and a group we serve within.
Keri Wyatt Kent
#100. We spend an inordinate amount of time indoors, and the physical confinement limits the metaphorical bubble of our aspirations. Large rooms, like the vaulted interior of a church, are uplifting. Outdoors, we are free to reach for the sky.
David Miller
