Church Quotes

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 Küng

Unless a person can give reasons, there is, literally, no reason why anyone else should take that person seriously. But without reasons, all we are left with is emotional blackmail. We sometimes call it 'moral blackmail,' but it has nothing to do with morals, only with the implied juvenile threat of having a tantrum unless everyone else gives in.

~ N.t. Wright

I see no reason why church services have to be standard. I've discussed this with the man who used to be a pastor here at the Methodist Church in Sebastopol. I told him I saw no reason why, on a certain Sunday morning, if a minister has felt during the week the burden of a topic upon his heart and he knows that it is going to take more than the standard twenty minutes to discuss this thing, why he can't rise at the beginning of the service and say 'I have something of special importance this morning so let's sing just one song, and if you'll forgive me, I think I'm going to need about an hour to explain it to you.' I think the congregation would appreciate his candor and give him their attention. If, on the other hand, he does not feel that a definite message has been given him, why not admit it from the pulpit and say, 'This morning, I'm not going to try to make up something to fill the time. We'll sing a few extra hymns and go home!' Why do the services have to begin and end at the same time, and why does everything have to be so rigid?

~ Charles M. Schulz

Everyone agrees the celibacy rule is just a Church law dating from the 11th century, not a divine command.

~ Hans Küng

Yesterday is the last day of the past. Tomorrow is brimming with hope, so today is meant to lived large. Enjoy your moments!

~ David Grachek

Sećam se da sam jedno jutro video ispred samoposluge nekog popa kako ljušti kikiriki, odmah mi je bilo jasno da neće biti mira na Balkanu.

~ Slobodan Tišma

A person's faith goes at its own pace. The trouble with church is the service. A service is conducted for a mass audience. Just when I start to like the hymn, everyone plops down to pray. Just when I start to hear the prayer, everyone pops up to sing. And what does the stupid sermon have to do with God? Who knows what God thinks of current events? Who cares?

~ John Irving

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

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 Friedrich Richter

Without the persistent rising up of individuals that seek the Lord and place themselves under His direct leadership, churches will inevitably...slip into human hierarchy, institutionalizing a system of doctrines and practices.

~ Henry Hon

Wilhelm Dilthey puts it rather starkly, Jesus came announcing the Kingdom of God, but what appeared was the church.

~ Rachel Held Evans

People think we didn't have theatres in Scotland for centuries because the Church suppressed them. Well, perhaps. But you could also argue that we had theatres in every town and village in the land: they were called kirks, and every week folk packed in to see a one-man show about life, death and the universe.

~ James Robertson

I painlessly came to realize that the reverence I felt for the holiness of life is not ever likely to be entirely at home in organized religion. It was later, when I was able to travel farther , that the presence of holiness and mystery seemed, as far as my vision was able to see, to descend into the windows of Chartres, the stone peasant figures of Autun, the tall sheets of gold on the walls of Torcello that reflected the light of the sea; in the frescoes of Piero, of Giotto; in the shell of a church wall in Ireland still standing on a floor of sheep-cropped grass with no ceiling other than he changing sky.

~ Eudora Welty

God’s church need to declare war against ignorance.

~ Sunday Adelaja

The church needs to arise not just against total and absolute ignorance, the church also needs to arise against half-truth or falsehood, which is some of the things that are prevailing in our churches today.

~ Sunday Adelaja

Believers must step out of the four walls of the church and take the gospel of the kingdom into every sphere of life.

~ Sunday Adelaja

The reason there’s no oneness and no harmony in the church is because the believers don’t habitually walk in the light and they don’t constantly allow God’s light (knowledge) to shine in them.

~ Sunday Adelaja

Know the word of God not in order that by doing so you might be saved; know it rather so that unlike the many you are not easily deceived. You may find that, evidently, a great many of the so-called novel ideas of the present were made without a clue that 'God', if you will, already laid profound discourse on or against them ages ago: no man has gone against God in such a way that God, from the beginning, did not already expect him to. Then, insofar as this, you will remain clear in that it is not at all that the Christian should be against newness; quite the opposite really - for a major point of Christianity is about one constantly being made new in Christ - it is only that many people are not actually bringing true newness to the table, and this is precisely because they do not first apply (or let alone even know) the wisdom of old.

~ Criss Jami

When you are growing up there are two institutional places that affect you most powerfully: the church, which belongs to God, and the public library, which belongs to you. The public library is a great equaliser.

~ Keith Richards

The kingdom of God works in all spheres of culture, whether church, family, education, government, arts, business, or media. It is time to stop operating under the mindset that these spheres ought to be separated into secular and Christian, hoarding all the ‘sanctified spheres’ into the church, thereby leaving the world struggling in a vacuum of death. When we suck all the living water into the church, the world is left to die of thirst.

~ Karla Perry

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

You can lose your MONEY. You can lose your FRIENDS. You can lose your JOB and you can lose your MARRIAGE...and still recover...as long as there is HOPE. Never lose HOPE.

~ John Paul Warren

There has never been a meaningful life built on easy street.

~ John Paul Warren

I must admit, that I have learned more from my negative experiences than I have ever learned from my positive one.

~ John Paul Warren

Faith UP! Your purpose is GREATER than all your PROBLEMS.

~ John Paul Warren

I would rather live short and right then long and wrong.

~ John Paul Warren

A true dreamer is one who knows how to navigate in the dark”.

~ John Paul Warren

The world is my church. My actions are my prayer. My behavior is my creed.

~ Steve Maraboli

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

Leaders in OVER their heads is the mere result of getting ahead of their intended SEASON.

~ John Paul Warren

Life seems to be fashioned and formed best out of the obstacles that seem unbearable.

~ John Paul Warren

I have not learned a single lesson, been inspired or impacted by another person’s life void of negative experiences.

~ John Paul Warren

The real architect of a life is the hard and almost impossible circumstances one faces.

~ John Paul Warren

True leaders bring out your personal best. They ignite your human potential”.

~ John Paul Warren

Living life ONCE is enough...if you live life RIGHT.

~ John Paul Warren

Life of any real value or substance is not formed during good times merely enjoyed.

~ John Paul Warren

The Word that will change a man must first show the man who he really is.

~ Christian Michael

The end product of the successful preacher's input is transformation.

~ Christian Michael

Know God and let Him be known. You were saved by grace for greater works apportioned for you even before you were born. Share the good news.

~ Israelmore Ayivor

All of Christ’s philosophical ideas can be compressed into one simple phrase – Love thy neighbor.

~ Abhijit Naskar