Quotes about Church

If the church remains self-righteously aloof from failures, irreligious and immoral people, it cannot enter justified into God's kingdom. But if it is constantly aware of its guilt and sin, it can live in joyous awareness of forgiveness. The promise has been given to it that anyone who humbles himself will be exalted.9

One of my realizations in such an earthy atmosphere was that many of the burning theological issues in the church were neither burning nor theological.

It deserves neither God's mercy nor men's trust. The church must constantly be aware that its faith is weak, its knowledge dim, its profession of faith halting, that there is not a single sin or failing which it has not in one way or another been guilty of.

The signature of Jesus, the Cross, is the ultimate expression of God's love for the world. The church is the church of the crucified, risen Christ only when it is stamped with his signature; only when it faces outward and moves with him along the way of the Cross. Turned inward upon itself in bickering and theological hairsplitting, the church loses its identity and its mission.

The number of people who have fled the church because it is too patient or compassionate is negligible; the number who have fled because they find it too unforgiving is tragic.

the institutional church, which exists to serve the people of God, is never to be confused with the church as mystery - the Christ-centered, biblically faithful, tender, and compassionate cloud of witnesses who walk the talk.

His consistent banging on the drums of God's unconditional love sounded at a time when many of us had about "had it up to here" with religion and church and, probably most importantly, ourselves. We were the tired, poor, self-hating huddled masses yearning to be free, and along came a patchwork preacher who grinned and said, "You already are. Abba loves you. Let's go get some chocolate ice cream.

The institutional church has become a wounder of the healers rather than a healer of the wounded.

The greatest need for our time is for the church to become what it has seldom been: the body of Christ with its face to the world, loving others regardless of religion or culture, pouring itself out in a life of service, offering hope to a frightened world, and presenting itself as a real alternative to the existing arrangement.

The question had become not "What does Jesus say?" but "What does the Church say?" This question is still being asked today. Sad but true: Some Christians want to be slaves. It is easier to let others make decisions or to rely upon the letter of the law.

Any church that will not accept that it consists of sinful men and women, and exists for them, implicitly rejects the gospel of grace.

The crucified Christ is not merely a heroic example to the church: He is the power and wisdom of God, a living force in His present risenness, transforming our lives and enabling us to extend the hand of reconciliation to our enemies.