135 Inspiring Church Quotes

Inspiration can often be found in the most unexpected places, yet few sources resonate as deeply as the timeless wisdom found within the church. Whether you're seeking words to uplift your spirit, quotes to share with your congregation, or insights to strengthen your faith, church quotes can provide a beacon of light. In this post, we've curated a collection of the top 135 inspiring church quotes to help guide you on your spiritual journey. These powerful words are drawn from the sermons, writings, and reflections of esteemed religious figures, offering a source of comfort, motivation, and profound insight. Let these quotes serve as a reminder of the enduring power of faith and the strength it can bring to our lives.

1. “The preachers and lecturers deal with men of straw, as they are men of straw themselves. Why, a free-spoken man, of sound lungs, cannot draw a long breath without causing your rotten institutions to come toppling down by the vacuum he makes. Your church is a baby-house made of blocks, and so of the state....The church, the state, the school, the magazine, think they are liberal and free! It is the freedom of a prison-yard.” - Henry David Thoreau

2. “Those who would renegotiate the boundaries between church and state must therefore answer a difficult question: why would we trade a system that has served us so well for one that has served others so poorly?” - Sandra Day O'Connor

3. “We admit that we will never reach our ideal in this life, a distinctive the church claims that most other human institutions try to deny.” - Philip Yancey

4. “Then the singing enveloped me. It was furry and resonant, coming from everyone's very heart. There was no sense of performance or judgment, only that the music was breath and food.” - Anne Lamott

5. “Far from seeking to justify, as does the Church, the necessity of torments and afflictions, he cried, in his outraged pity: 'If a God has made this world, I should not wish to be that God. The world's wretchedness would rend my heart.” - Joris-Karl Huysmans

6. “Saints cannot exist without a community, as they require, like all of us, nurturance by a people who, while often unfaithful, preserve the habits necessary to learn the story of God.” - Stanley Hauerwas

7. “People are not being reached in the context of the body of Christ--they're like newborn babies being left on a doorstep somewhere to feed and care for themselves.” - Peter E. Gillquist

8. “It's time we capture our imaginations for Christ” - Peter E. Gillquist

9. “God doesn't act like the Church. No, instead, the Church must act like God.” - Kim Clement

10. “The story goes that a public sinner was excommunicated and forbidden entry to the church. He took his woes to God. 'They won't let me in, Lord, because I am a sinner.''What are you complaining about?' said God. 'They won't let Me in either.” - Brennan Manning

11. “There is no one true church, no one chosen people.” - Terry Tempest Williams

12. “Consistently, [Yves] Congar emphasized the distinction between Tradition and traditionalism. The latter was an unyielding commitment to the past. The former was a living principle of commitment to the Beginning, a process that required creativity, inspiration, and a spirit of openness to the present as well as respect for the past. Two of Congar's works, on reform in the church and on the theology of the laity, proved especially controversial...Congar believed that reform was a vital and necessary dimension of the church. This was rooted in the distinction between the church and the kingdom of God and in the intermingling in the church of both divine and human elements. In light of the church's constant temptation to revert to institutionalism, it was always necessary to allow room for the prophetic voice, issuing from the margins, even though this might mean attending to uncomfortable truths. ” - Robert Ellsberg

13. “The church is not a theological classroom. It is a conversion, confession, repentance, reconciliation, forgiveness and sanctification center, where flawed people place their faith in Christ, gather to know and love him better, and learn to love others as he designed.” - Paul David Tripp

14. “God has always been about the business of shattering expectations, and in our culture, the standards of leadership are extroverted. It perfectly follows the biblical trend that God would choose the unexpected and the culturally "unfit" - like introverts - to lead his church for the sake of greater glory.” - Adam S. McHugh

15. “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

16. “On the church vaulting above was the clock-face of eternity, void of number and serving as its own hand, only one black finger was pointing and the dead wanted to tell the time by it.” - Jean Paul

17. “It was a strange feeling going into a church I did not know for a service that I did not really believe in, but once inside I couldn't help a feeling of warmth and security. Outside there were wars and road accidents and murders, striptease clubs and battered babies and frayed tempers and unhappy marriages and people contemplating suicide and bad jokes, but once in St. Martin's there was peace. Surely people go to church not to involve themselves in the world's problems but to escape from them.” - Michael Palin

18. “I also never would have imagined I'd quote back a church lesson, but when the rest of the crowd stood up to take communion, I found myself saying to Dimitri: "Don't you think that if God can supposedly forgive you, it's kind of egotistical for you not to forgive yourself?""How long have you been waiting to use that line on me?" he asked."Actually, it just came to me. Pretty good, huh? I bet you thought I wasn't paying attention.""You weren't. You never do. You were watching me.” - Richelle Mead

19. “The day we find the perfect church, it becomes imperfect the moment we join it.” - Charles H. Spurgeon

20. “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

21. “Life seems to be fashioned and formed best out of the obstacles that seem unbearable.” - John Paul warren

22. “I have not learned a single lesson, been inspired or impacted by another person’s life void of negative experiences.” - John Paul warren

23. “Living life ONCE is enough...if you live life RIGHT.” - John Paul warren

24. “Coming to the END of MYSELF and all SELF effort...seems to be the very point that God steps in and shows HIMSELF to be more than ENOUGH.” - John Paul warren

25. “Faith UP! Your purpose is GREATER than all your PROBLEMS.” - John Paul warren

26. “Your circumstances do NOT define you. Expect a GRAND finale.” - John Paul warren

27. “The IMPOSSIBLE is ONLY relevant to those who NEVER attempt it…otherwise it is ABSTACT and MEANINGLESS” - John Paul warren

28. “The church and the whorehouse arrived in the Far West simultaneously. And each would have been horrified to think it was a different facet of the same thing. But surely they were both intended to accomplish the same thing: the singing, the devotion, the poetry of the churches took a man out of his bleakness for a time, and so did the brothels.” - John Steinbeck

29. “Impossible situations TEST you and PROVE Him” - John Paul warren

30. “Be a FRIEND and stop worrying about having any” - John Paul warren

31. “For centuries after Christ, the church and other religions that use cruciform symbols have misrepresented the physical nature of Christ's death with a satanic symbol (cross), and a pagan idol (corpus). This secret has been concealed by the church for centuries after Christ.” - Nwaocha Ogechukwu

32. “I am accountable.I am correctable.I am transformable.Presenting myself a living sacrifice to God. By the love of God.By the word of God.Completely supplied in Christ Jesus.Unto all good works.” - Carlton T. Brown

33. “When introverts go to church, we crave sanctuary in every sense of the word, as we flee from the disorienting distractions of twenty-first-century life. We desire to escape from superficial relationships, trivial communications and the constant noise that pervade our world, and find rest in the probing depths of God's love.” - Adam S. McHugh

34. “Time and again I hear how important the darker environment is to those at our vintage-faith worship gathering. Attenders feel they can freely pray in a corner by themselves without feeling that everyone is staring at them.” - Dan Kimball

35. “They always loved my sense of humor. There used to be a light switch inside one of the nurseries that was a cutout of Jesus putting his arm around two children on each side of him as he towered above them. The switch was ironically located in the spot of where his penis would have been and I was the first to point this out. Everyone thought it was funny until I started singing the childhood church song “Jesus Loves the Little Children.” In fear of being struck by lightning or being involved in a massive pile-up car accident after leaving, their laughing ceased. I still thought it was funny.” - Chase Brooks

36. “If you cannot see that divinity includes male and female characteristics and at the same time transcends them, you have bad consequences. Rome and Cardinal O'Connor base the exclusion of women priests on the idea that God is the Father and Jesus is His Son, there were only male disciples, etc. They are defending a patriarchal Church with a patriarchal God. We must fight the patriarchal misunderstanding of God.” - Hans Kung

37. “Everyone agrees the celibacy rule is just a Church law dating from the 11th century, not a divine command.” - Hans Kung

38. “The Pope would have an easier job than the President of the United States in adopting a change of course. He has no Congress alongside him as a legislative body nor a Supreme Court as a judiciary. He is absolute head of government, legislator and supreme judge in the church. If he wanted to, he could authorize contraception over night, permit the marriage of priests, make possible the ordination of women and allow eucharistic fellowship with this Protestant churches. What would a Pope do who acted in the spirit of Obama?” - Hans Kung

39. “Since Jimmy Carter, religious fundamentalists play a major role in elections. He was the first president who made a point of exhibiting himself as a born again Christian. That sparked a little light in the minds of political campaign managers: Pretend to be a religious fanatic and you can pick up a third of the vote right away. Nobody asked whether Lyndon Johnson went to church every day. Bill Clinton is probably about as religious as I am, meaning zero, but his managers made a point of making sure that every Sunday morning he was in the Baptist church singing hymns.” - Noam Chomsky

40. “There are wolves within, and there are sheep without.” - St. Augustine of Hippo

41. “He cannot have God for his Father who will not have the Church for his mother.” - St. Augustine of Hippo

42. “Don't give your money to the church. They should be giving their money to you.” - George Carlin

43. “A true dreamer is one who knows how to navigate in the dark”.” - John Paul warren

44. “The top 10% of the people who are most creative, constructive and thoughtful, do not have much to do with churches. To them the canons of reason come first, making faith secondary and questionable.” - Joseph Fletcher

45. “The institutions of Churchianity are not Christianity. An institution is a good thing if it is second; immediately an institution recognizes itself it becomes the dominating factor.” - Oswald Chambers

46. “Isn't it funny how the memories you cherish before a breakup can become your worst enemies afterwards? The thoughts you loved to think about, the memories you wanted to hold up to the light and view from every angle--it suddenly seems a lot safer to lock them in a box, far from the light of day and throw away the key. It's not an act of bitterness. It's an act if self-preservation. It's not always a bad idea to stay behind the window and look out at life instead, is it?” - Allyson Braithwaite Condie

47. “Mr. Brown had thought of nothing but numbers. He should have known that the kingdom of God did not depend on large crowds. Our Lord Himself stressed the importance of fewness. Narrow is the way and few the number. To fill the Lord's holy temple with an idolatrous crowd clamoring for signs was a folly of everlasting consequence. Our Lord used the whip only once in His life - to drive the crowd away from His church.” - Chinua Achebe

48. “The church is missionary by nature because God through the Spirit calls, creates, and commissions the church to communicate to the world that the redemptive reign of God has broken into human history.” - Craig Van Gelder

49. “The lampstand was position strategically to do one things: cast its light on the table and on the bread that represented God's provision and presence. For generations the lampstand of the tabernacle stood to highlight the object that best represented God's goodness and provision, the same object that Jesus would one day use to symbolize His own body. (Jesus compares church to a lampstand in Revelation- a strong reminder of the church's responsibility). Everything about these churches 0 their teaching, practices, and work-- was challenged for one reason in Revelation: They were losing their effectiveness as God's light to their communities.” - Reggie Joiner

50. “Church and family are both primary influences designed by God for a purpose and when they work together, they are orange. Both are systems comprised of imperfect people—that’s why God desires to use them as a platform to tell his story of restoration and redemption to the world.” - Reggie Joiner

51. “Our fights should really be for the mission of the church and the mission of the family instead of trying to have bigger churches or better families. When it comes to entities that god has created specifically to make disciples and accomplish His mission (of influencing a generation to have a stronger, deeper, and more authentic relationship with God), there is the church...the family...and nothing else.” - Reggie Joiner

52. “Bombs have kill-radiuses; churches should have love-radiuses--anyone within twenty miles of a church should know it.” - Tyler Edwards

53. “There’s no stronger bulwark of sound conservatism than the evangelical church, and no better place to make friends who’ll help you to gain your rightful place in the community than in your own church-home!” - Sinclair Lewis

54. “No Temple made by mortal human hands can ever compare to the Temple made by the gods themselves. That building of wood and stone that houses us and that many believe conceals the great Secret Temple from prying eyes, somewhere in its heart of hearts, is but a decoy for the masses who need this simple concrete limited thing in their lives. The real Temple is the whole world, and there is nothing as divinely blessed as a blooming growing garden.” - Vera Nazarian

55. “An entire nation shook under the power of one man’s [MLK’s] dream! Now if one dream can do that for our nation, imagine what a dream can do for the Church.” - Wayne Cordeiro

56. “Royce Westmoreland stared at him with biting scorn. "I despise hypocrisy, particularly when it is coated with holiness.""May I ask for a specific example?""Fat priests," Royce replied, "with fat purses, who lecture staving peasants on the dangers of gluttony and the merits of poverty.” - Judith McNaught

57. “True leaders bring out your personal best. They ignite your human potential”.” - John Paul warren

58. “The world is full of men who want to be right, when actually the secret of a man's strength and his pathway to true honor is his ability to admit fault when he has failed. God wants to fill the church with men who can say they are wrong when THEY ARE WRONG. A man who is willing to humble himself before God and his family and say:"I was wrong." will find that his family has all the confidence in the world in him and will much more readily follow him. If he stubbornly refuses to repent or admit he was wrong, their confidence in him and in his leadership erodes.” - Jim Anderson

59. “Fewer than half of churchgoers, including born-again Christians, felt strongly that their church demonstrates unconditional love.” - David Kinnaman

60. “The only group large enough to handle," the world's biggest, "problems is the network of millions of local churches around the world. We have the widest distribution, largest group of volunteers, local credibility, the promises of God, the power of the Holy Spirit, and the inevitability of history.” - Rick Warren

61. “It is often said, inside the Church and out of it, that there is something grotesque about lectures on the sexual life when delivered by those who have shunned it. Given the way that the Church forbids women to preach, this point is usually made about men. But given how much this Church allows the fanatical Mother Teresa to preach, it might be added that the call to go forth and multiply, and to take no thought for the morrow, sounds grotesque when uttered by an elderly virgin whose chief claim to reverence is that she ministers to the inevitable losers in this very lottery.” - Christopher Hitchens

62. “A good church is a Bible-centered church. Nothing is as important as this--not a large congregation, a witty pastor, or tangible experiences of the Holy Spirit.” - Alistair Begg

63. “The basements of the churches I've loved reveal the foundation of the spiritual life to be not belief so much as engagement with the mystery lurking at the base of all things. We build a framework on top of mystery because we need someplace to live, some manner of surviving nature's fury and our mundane daily needs.” - Elizabeth J. Andrew

64. “My sister having so much to do, was going to church vicariously, that is to say, Joe and I were going.” - Charles Dickens

65. “An historic institution, which never went right, is really quite much of a miracle as an institution that cannot go wrong.” - G.K. Chesterton

66. “Those who find no humor in faith are probably those who find the church a refuge for their own black way of looking at life, although I think many of us find the church a refuge for a lot of our personality faults. Those of us, for example, who never learned to dance feel that the church is an ideal place for us if we can find a church that doesn't believe in dancing. Then we can get away with never having learned how to dance. You can carry this in all sorts of directions and see that the church is a refuge for what is really a 'flaw' in your own makeup.” - Charles M. Schulz

67. “When we struggle for human rights, for freedom, for dignity, when we feel that it is a ministry of the church to concern itself for those who are hungry, for those who have no schools, for those who are deprived, we are not departing from God’s promise. He comes to free us from sin, and the church knows that sin’s consequences are all such injustices and abuses. The church knows it is saving the world when it undertakes to speak also of such things.” - Oscar A. Romero

68. “The church must suffer for speaking the truth, for pointing out sin, for uprooting sin. No one wants to have a sore spot touched, and therefore a society with so many sores twitches when someone has the courage to touch it and say: “You have to treat that. You have to get rid of that. Believe in Christ. Be converted.” - Oscar A. Romero

69. “The city takes a breath on Sunday. Of all that’s lost with the pursuit of what’s next, I hope we don’t lose that…” - Hawksley Workman

70. “Too many in the Church today are likes babies in the nursery,they put everything in their mouth.” - John Paul warren

71. “Your outlook affects your outcome” - John Paul warren

72. “The organist was almost at the end of the anthem’s long introduction, and as the crescendo increases the cathedral began to glitter before my eyes until I felt as if every stone in the building was vibrating in anticipation of the sweeping sword of sound from the Choir.The note exploded in our midst, and at that moment I knew our creator had touched not only me but all of us, just as Harriet had touched that sculpture with a loving hand long ago, and in that touch I sensed the indestructible fidelity, the indescribable devotion and the inexhaustible energy of the creator as he shaped his creation, bringing life out of dead matter, wresting form continually from chaos. Nothing was ever lost, Harriet had said, and nothing was ever wasted because always, when the work was finally completed, every article of the created process, seen or unseen, kept or discarded, broken or mended – EVERYTHING was justified, glorified and redeemed.” - Susan Howatch

73. “If Christianity was only about finding a group of people to live life with who shared openly their search for God and allowed anyone regardless of behavior to seek too and who collectively lived by faith to make the world a little more like Heaven would you be interested ’ ‘Hell yes ’ was his reply. He continued ‘Are there churches like that” - Hugh Halter & Matt Smay

74. “The world is my church. My actions are my prayer. My behavior is my creed.” - Steve Maraboli

75. “It is a promise which eminently deserves our observation that all who are united to Christ and acknowledge Him to be Christ and Mediator will remain to the end safe from all danger, for what is said of the body of the Church belongs to each of its members since they are one in Christ.” - John Calvin

76. “My vision of the gathered church that had come to me... had been replaced by a vision of the gathered community. What I saw now was the community imperfect and irresolute but held together by the frayed and always fraying, incomplete and yet ever-holding bonds of the various sorts of affection. There had maybe never been anybody who had not been loved by somebody, who had been loved by somebody else, and so on and on... It was a community always disappointed in itself, disappointing its members, always trying to contain its divisions and gentle its meanness, always failing and yet always preserving a sort of will toward goodwill. I knew that, in the midst of all the ignorance and error, this was a membership; it was the membership of Port William and of no other place on earth. My vision gathered the community as it never has been and never will be gathered in this world of time, for the community must always be marred by members who are indifferent to it or against it, who are nonetheless its members and maybe nonetheless essential to it. And yet I saw them all as somehow perfected, beyond time, by one another's love, compassion, and forgiveness, as it is said we may be perfected by grace.” - Wendell Berry

77. “On the subject of who is to blame for our disunity - “The easy conclusion- thatthe devil is at work trying to destroy the church- is true, but itʼs not the whole story. Ofcourse the enemy is at work doing that. But closer examination shows that much ofthe blame falls squarely on the shoulders of the church itself-on believers in god-andhow our own devilish deeds have alienated other followers of God. Sadly, weʼve donethe devilʼs work for him.” - Ed Galisewski

78. “The Church is Christ’s witness to the world of a loving savior and His redemptive plan for man.” - John Paul warren

79. “No churchmen, I notice. Of course not. What use have they for a world without irrational fear?” - Jonathan L. Howard

80. “Odakle dolazi dojam da je Crkva lakše izlazila na kraj s krivcima-počiniteljima negoli s nedužnim žrtvama? Nije li naša kristologija toliko pretjerano determinirana soteriološki da više niti ne dopušta teodicejsko pitanje (na koje se niti može dati odgovor niti ga se može zaboraviti)?” - Johann Baptist Metz

81. “Sve Crkve stoje danas u našem postmodernom krajoliku poput stabala bez lišća.” - Johann Baptist Metz

82. “The church exists primarily for two closely correlated purposes: to worship God and to work for his kingdom in the world ... The church also exists for a third purpose, which serves the other two: to encourage one another, to build one another up in faith, to pray with and for one another, to learn from one another and teach one another, and to set one another examples to follow, challenges to take up, and urgent tasks to perform. This is all part of what is known loosely as fellowship.” - N.T. Wright

83. “As a newborn baby breathes and cries, so the signs of life in a newborn Christian are faith and repentance, inhaling the love of God and exhaling an initial cry of distress. And at that point what God provides, exactly as for a newborn infant, is the comfort, protection, and nurturing promise of a mother."If God is our father, the church is our mother." The words are those of the Swiss Reformer John Calvin ... it is as impossible, unnecessary, and undesirable to be a Christian all by yourself as it is to be a newborn baby all by yourself.” - N.T. Wright

84. “It is not possible to understand the NT concept of the church if we overlook the numerous metaphors used to portray it. The church is Christ's body, a temple, a family, a royal priesthood, twelve tribes, the chosen race, Abraham's children, the new creation, the bride of Christ, and so on. Bible readers should be careful not to construct their theology of the church on a single metaphor.” - David Ewert

85. “I don't like bullshit and pretense.I can't enjoy the joy at church...without some cash in my wallet.” - Toba Beta

86. “Our government needs the church, because only those humble enough to admit they're sinners can bring democracy the tolerance it requires to survive” - Ronald Reagan

87. “I find that I keep offering God my service when what He wants is my fellowship” - John Paul warren

88. “Where did you meet?” he pressed on.I shrugged and considered a little rephrasing. “I was out for a run.”“From who?”I leaned back to take a long, very long, slow sip of that beer.Knox leaned forward. “I think we’re both bullsh*tting here, you ever play that card game?”“With my grandma, every Sunday after church.” - Dannika Dark

89. “Stop counting your "years" and start enjoying your "seasons".” - John Paul warren

90. “I'm not particularly in favor of doctrine or creed, ordination, the elevation of holy texts, the institution of church, or, for that matter, Christianity. Like most religions, it has irreconcilable shortcomings and an unforgivable history. What I do favor is the attempt to make sense of things by living within a story. The Christian story, for good or ill, is my inheritance.” - Elizabeth J. Andrew

91. “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.” - Santa Teresa de Jesús

92. “Jesus did not command us to "develop" leaders. He commanded us to make "disciples". The world "develops" leaders, the Church "disciples" them. The two are not the same.” - John Paul warren

93. “The world and it's people are my church".~R. Alan Woods [1996]” - R. Alan Woods

94. “My point is, however, that churches do promote beliefs that would more appropriately find a place in a context of intellectual debate. They wind up cheerleading for highly dubious opinions on historical, scientific, and metaphysical matters, simply on the bases of emotional preference and the inertia of tradition. They demand conformity to these beliefs, and if you cannot swim with the current, then, well partner, maybe you'd be happier in another pool, another lake in fact, the one ablaze with burning sulfur.” - Robert M. Price

95. “What if the church should be less concerned with creating saints than creating a world where we do not need saints? A world where people like Mother Teresa and MLK would have nothing to do.” - Peter Rollins

96. “Die Kirche muss erkennen, dass sich die Erde weiter dreht. Nachdem wir es immerhin geschafft haben, zu akzeptieren, dass sie sich überhaupt dreht” - Helmut Schüller

97. “He was in awe of the thirst that people had for someone to tell them that everything was going to be all right. He marveled at the gullibility and vulnerability of his fellow humans. No wonder the churches called them sheep. They were woolly-headed pack animals being herded around for the benefit of whoever knew how to control the dogs.” - Craig Ferguson

98. “[As a young man ] I came to the conclusion that the church was just a bunch of fascists that supported Franco. I stopped going on Sunday mornings and watched the birds with my father instead.” - James D. Watson

99. “The filling of the Holy Spirit brings a sharp separation between the believer and the world.Actually, after Pentecost, they were looking at another world. They really saw another world.Nowadays, we perceive that even a large part of evangelical Christianity is trying to convert this world to the church. We are bringing the world in head over heels--unregenerated, uncleansed, unshriven, unbaptized, unsanctified. we are bringing the world right into the church. If we can get some big shot to say something nice about the church, we rush into print and tell about this fellow and what nice things he said. I don't care at all about big shots because I serve a living Saviour, and Jesus Christ is Lord of lords and King of kings. I believe every man ought to know this ability to see another world.” - A.W. Tozer

100. “Christians don't tell lies they just go to church and sing them.” - A.W. Tozer

101. “Your right of religious freedom ends where my right of religious abstinence begins...” - T. Rafael Cimino

102. “All agree that, the first responsibility for the alleviation of poverty and distress and for the care of the victims of the depression rests upon the locality — its individuals, organizations and Government. It rests, first of all, perhaps, upon the private agencies of philanthropy, secondly, other social organizations, and last, but not least, the Church. Yet all agree that to leave to the locality the entire responsibility would result in placing the heaviest burden in most cases upon those who are the least able to bear it. In other words, the communities that have the most difficult problem, like Detroit, would be the communities that would have to bear the heaviest of the burdens. And so the State should step in to equalize the burden by providing for a large portion of the care of the victims of poverty and by providing assistance and guidance for local communities. Above and beyond that duty of the States the national Government has a responsibility.” - Franklin D. Roosevelt

103. “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

104. “... challenge the church to do better, be more of who Christ wants us to be ...” - Justin Lee

105. “It is very difficult sometimes to keep awake, especially at church, but there is no difficulty at all about sleeping.” - Oscar Wilde

106. “[I]t seemed to me now that a Catholic church was the right companion for all these horrors. Didn't Catholicism deal with blood and resurrected flesh on a daily basis? Wasn't it expert in superstition? I somehow doubted that the hospitable plain Protestant chapels that dotted the university could be much help; they didn't look qualified to wrestle with the undead. I felt sure those big square Puritan churches on the town green would be helpless in the face of a European vampire. A little witch burning was more in their line--something limited to the neighbors.” - Elizabeth Kostova

107. “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

108. “If God be near a church, it must pray. And if he be not there, one of the first tokens of his absence will be a slothfulness in prayer.” - Charles H. Spurgeon

109. “The Church is the Church only when it exists for others...not dominating, but helping and serving. It must tell men of every calling what it means to live for Christ, to exist for others.” - Dietrich Bonhoeffer

110. “Did those nice church ladies come by again?" He nodded. "I asked them if a man died and then the woman remarried, and then the three of them met in heaven, would it be a sin for them to have a threesome, since they were all married in God's eye. And they decided they were late to be somewhere else.” - Ilona Andrews

111. “The church is a hospital for sinners, not a museum for saints.” - Abigail Van Buren

112. “A church begins to die when it says, ‘They were just children.” - Wess Stafford

113. “The Church acts as a sort of embassy for the government of the King. It is an outpost of the Kingdom of God surrounded by the kingdom of darkness. Just as an embassy is meant to showcase the life of a nation to the surrounding people, so the Church is meant to manifest the life of the Kingdom of God to the people around it.” - Kevin DeYoung

114. “But in every church there are people who, for reasons which seem sufficient to them, do not approve of their pastor and seek to harry him and bully him into some condition pleasing to themselves. The democracy which the Reformation brought into the Christian Church rages in their bosoms like a fire; they would deny that they regard their clergyman as their spiritual hired hand, whom they boss and oversee for his own good, but that is certainly the impression they give to observers.” - Robertson Davies

115. “The perfect church service would be one we were almost unaware of. Our attention would have been on God.” - C.S. Lewis

116. “Deb and I were married on a snowy night - wind cross-wove a veil of snow for her then threw confetti at us as we left the lighted church...” - John Geddes

117. “The problem with the church is the church” - R. Alan Woods

118. “A friend of mine commented yesterday that she has experienced similar insights that I talked about that all enlightened Masters and founders of religion are actually talking about the same ocean, the same invisible life source, the same God. She also said that she worked in a Christan environment at the time that she received these insights, and when she tried to share these insights with the Christians she was accused of being "impure" and of being associated with the "Devil". Christians hold on to the idea that Jesus was the only son of God, without realizing that we are all son's and daughter's of God. By holding on to the idea that Jesus is the only son of God, they do not either to realize that all enlightened Masters are talking about the same God. Jesus did not talk about faith, he talked about trust. He talked about discovering a trust in yourself and in relationship to God. Jesus said that the kingdom of God is within you. In Christianity, the church has become the intermediate between man and God, and people who claim that they have found a direct relationship to God are accused of blasphemy. The Christan church has become a barrier between man and God, and anyone who has declared that he has found a direct relationship to God are immediately banned by the church, for example Master Eckhart and Franciskus of Assisi. I have always had a deep love for Jesus, but it is not the picture of Jesus that the Christian church presents. I was a disciple of Jesus in a former life, and was thrown to the lions in Colosseum in Rome as one of the early Christians. Jesus had many more disciples than the twelve disciples mentioned in The Bible. In this life, I resigned my automatic membership in the church as soon as I could think for myself when I was 15 years old. I was also disgusted with an organization that said that they preached love and which has murdered more people than Hitler. My experience with these rare and precious insights are that they expand our consciousness of reality. They are gradual initiations into reality. They may fade away, but we will never be the same again after receiving them. They will also come more and more, the more committment we have to our spiritual growth.” - Swami Dhyan Giten

119. “The people who had turned their heads turned them again as the service proceeded; and at last observing her they whispered to each other. She knew what their whispers were about, grew sick at heart, and felt that she could come to church no more.” - Thomas Hardy

120. “True worship leaders worship the Lord at all times and use songs only when necessary.” - Gangai Victor

121. “I don't like to hear cut and dried sermons. No—when I hear a man preach, I like to see him act as if he were fighting bees.” - Abraham Lincoln

122. “The Church is larger than any one nation or any one political scene.” - Brother Andrew

123. “I experienced one of the common miracles of the Christian life. Our spirits recognized each other.” - Brother Andrew

124. “You're better off believing in God they'd warn you, just in case. Because you'd hate to arrive at the gates of heaven a nonbeliever and find out the Christians had been right all along. It was a pretty ingenious line of thinking. It almost made me want to go to church. Not enough to actually go, but still.” - Drew Magary

125. “The author urges taking the pulse of the church outside our own neighborhood. More church attending Presbyterians in Ghana than Scotland, and while Western pastors beg to fill seats, some African pastors are asking people only to attend every second or third week to give room for others in packed churches.” - Dinesh D'Souza

126. “Religion and spirituality can easily be intertwined; however, there is a very distinct separation between the two.” - Ricky Maye

127. “It is my trade," he said. "I work for the bean family, and every day there are deaths among the beans, mostly from thirst. They shrivel and die, they go blind in their one black eye, and I put them in one of these tiny coffins. Beans, you know, are beautifully shaped, like a new church, like modern architecture, like a planned city” - Janet Frame

128. “But should we accept this negative view of power? Is power all bad? Specifically, can Christians share in this devaluation of power and discipline as inherently evil? Can we who claim to be disciples - who are called and predestined to be conformed to the likeness of the Son (Rom. 8:29) - be opposed to discipline and formation as such? Can we who are called to be subject to the Lord of life really agree with the liberal Enlightenment notion of the autonomous self? Are we not above all called to subject ourselves to our Domine and conform to his image? Of course, we are called not to conform to the patterns of 'this world' (Rom. 12:2) or to our previous evil desires (1 Peter 1:14), but that is a call not to nonconformity as such but rather to an alternative conformity through a counterformation in Christ, a transformation and renewal directed toward conformity to his image. By appropriating the liberal Enlightenment notion of negative freedom and participating in its nonconformist resistance to discipline (and hence a resistance to the classical spiritual disciplines), Christians are in fact being conformed to the patterns of this world (contra Rom. 12:2).” - James K.A. Smith

129. “Beyond the family or particular Christian tradition, how much effort do we make to consider what the Mennonites or the Episcopalians, the Baptists or the Pentecostals, the Methodists or the Presbyterians have to say to the rest of us out of their DIFFERENCES, as well as out of the affirmation in common with other Christians? As I suggested earlier, our patterns of ecumenicity tend to bracket out our differences rather than to celebrate and capitalize upon them. Finding common ground has been the necessary first step in ecumenical relations and activity. But the next step is to acknowledge and enjoy what God has done elsewhere in the Body of Christ. And if at the congregational level we are willing to say, 'I can't do everything myself, for I am an ear: I must consult with a hand or an eye on this matter,' I suggest that we do the same among whole traditions. If we do not regularly and programmatically consult with each other, we are tacitly claiming that we have no need of each other, and that all the truth, beauty, and goodness we need has been vouchsafed to us by God already. Not only is such an attitude problematic in terms of our flourishing, as I have asserted, but in this context now we must recognize how useless a picture this presents to the rest of society. Baptists, Presbyterians, and Roman Catholics failing to celebrate diversity provide no positive examples to societies trying to understand how to celebrate diversity on larger scales.” - John G. Stackhouse Jr.

130. “Many today view love and doctrine as enemies, or at best as rivals.” - Bobby Jamieson

131. “Look at yourself! You're a priest. You know damn well that if I were setting out to make a girl at this moment instead of young Paolo, you'd take an entirely different view. You'd disapprove, sure! You'd read me a lecture on fornication and all the rest. But you wouldn't be too unhappy. I'd be normal... according to nature! But I am not made like that. God didn't make me like that. But do I need love the less? Do I need satisfaction less? Have I less right to live in contentment because somewhere along the line the Almighty slipped a cog in creation?... What's your answer to that Meredith? What's your answer for me? Tie a knot in myself and take up badminton and wait till they make me an angel in heaven, where they don't need this sort of thing any more? I'm lonely! I need love like the next man! My sort of love!” - Morris L. West

132. “Immorality is the word we use to describe people that are not sinning the same way we are.” - Shannon L. Alder

133. “On a dangerous seacoast where shipwrecks often occur, there was once a crude little life-saving station. The building was just a hut, and there was only one boat. But the few devoted members kept a constant watch over the sea, and with no thought for themselves went out day and night tirelessly searching for the lost. Some of those who were saved, and various others in the surrounding area, wanted to become associated with the station and give their time and money and effort for the support of its work. New boats were bought and new crews trained. The little life-saving station grew. Some of the members of the life-saving were unhappy that the building was so crude and poorly equipped. They felt that a more comfortable place should be provided as the first refuge of those saved from the sea. They replaced the emergency cots with beds and put better furniture in the enlarged building. Now the life-saving station became a popular gathering place for its members, and they decorated it as sort of a club. Fewer members were now interested in going to sea on life-saving missions, so they hired lifeboat crews to do this work. The life-saving motif still prevailed in this club`s decoration, and there was a liturgical lifeboat in the room where the club initiations were held.About this time a large ship was wrecked off the coast, and the hired crews brought in boatloads of cold, wet and half-drowned people. They were dirty and sick and some had black skin and some had yellow skin. The beautiful new club was in chaos. So the property committee immediately had a shower house built outside the club where victims of shipwrecks could be cleaned up before coming inside. At the next meeting, there was a split in the club membership. Most of the members wanted to stop the club`s life-saving activities as being unpleasant and a hindrance to the normal social life of the club. Some members insisted upon life-saving as their primary purpose and pointed out that they were still called a life-saving station. But they were finally voted down and told that if they wanted to save lives of all the various kinds of people who were shipwrecked in those waters, they could begin their own life-saving station down the coast. So they did just that. As the years went by, the new station experienced the same changes that had occurred in the old. It evolved into a club, and yet another `spin-off` life saving station was founded. History continued to repeat itself, and if you visit the sea coast today, you will find a number of exclusive clubs along the shore. Shipwrecks are frequent in those waters, but most of the people drown.” - Ross Paterson

134. “For now, it is enough to face the reality that it is possible, as individual Christians and also in our churches, to be doing well in many areas, and yet still miss what is perhaps the most urgent matter on the agenda of God in our generation, the task of reaching men and women everywhere with the knowledge of salvation in Jesus Christ.” - Ross Paterson

135. “Often the truth is in front of your face, but your eyes and heart are so full of lies that you can't see it.” - Shannon L. Alder