Quotes about Church

Instead of seeing ourselves as people trying to connect with people, let's see the church as people trying to connect with God and help others do the same.

If spiritual formation is the purpose of the church, then personal transformation should intentionally be the purpose of the small group ministry. Bible study is great. Fellowship is wonderful. Evangelism is essential. But changing and growing to be more like Christ should be the purpose of the small group ministry.

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.

Vertical Church teaches its people to judge every circumstance and opportunity in terms of its potential to reveal "the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ."21 That is the goal for every person in our church

Prayer is the easiest thing to assume in church and the hardest thing to maintain.

We preach so that people will be better worshippers, so that the nature and story of God proclaimed will result in an amplification of what provokes glory to come down. A church's ministry extends, of course, beyond the weekend worship service, but if we fail there, nothing else can succeed. That single service in a Vertical Church is like the wood-burning furnace in a factory or warehouse.

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.

The number, the industry, and the morality of the priesthood, and the devotion of the people have been manifestly increased by the total separation of the church from the state.

is the world or the church is actually irrelevant. The point is simply that the devil is going to bring forward people (whether in the church or out of it) so much like true Christians, yet not Christians, that even the servants of God will not be able to tell them apart.

The secular church is one dominated by the world, as much of the contemporary church is. It is characterized by the world's wisdom, the world's theology, the world's agenda, and the world's methods. The evangelical church, when it is secular, is one that seeks to do God's work but in the world's way. It looks to the media and money rather than to God and His power, which is unleashed through prayer.

The departure of the church-going element had induced a more humanitarian atmosphere.

The whole question is extraordinarily complicated because of the gulf that has grown up between art on the one hand and on the other hand both the Church and secular society, so that the artists tend to be out of touch with the common man, while the latter, whether Christian or not, has only a very fumbling critical judgment to rely on.