Quotes about Church

I would not be a pastor of a church that did not have a program of Bible memorization in it, because Bible memorization is a fundamental way of filling our minds with what they need. "This book of the law shall not depart out of your mouth" (Joshua 1:8). That's where we need it! In our mouth.

Beyond my immediate context of relationships, the central question my friends and I began asking was quite simple: How could the soul health and transformation available to us become normative in our experience as a church community? While such experience of soul transformation has certainly been normative in seasons throughout history and even today, it is largely absent, or at least rare and idiosyncratic, in many environments where I have served.

The Bible is, after all, God's gift to the world through his Church, not to the scholars. It comes through the life of his people and nourishes that life. Its purpose is practical, not academic. An intelligent, careful, intensive but straightforward reading—that is, one not governed by obscure and faddish theories or by a mindless orthodoxy—is what it requires to direct us into life in God's kingdom.

I routinely watched Dallas, like no one I had encountered before or since, wipe clean people's vision of who God was, what his Son did and why, and what the Holy Spirit wishes to do in and through his church and then replace it with an all-consuming, hope-filled, grace-empowered, joy-seeking, love-giving gospel of God's boundless goodness and power. All the while he never manipulated emotions, overcame people's will, or used fear as a motivator.

That is one reason it is hard to get people to pray at church and why prayer meetings are often dead. People don't see that prayer—real, two-way conversation with God—makes any difference.

The church of Jesus Christ is not necessarily present when there is a correct administration of the sacrament and faithful preaching of the Word of God. The church of God is present where people gather together in the power of the resurrected life of Jesus Christ.

Discipleship is for the sake of the world, not for the sake of the church. It is carried out in those situations where people spend their life.

The world can no longer be left to mere diplomats, politicians, and business leaders. They have done the best they could, no doubt. But this is an age for spiritual heroes—a time for men and women to be heroic in faith and in spiritual character and power. The greatest danger to the Christian church today is that of pitching its message too low.

But there is nothing in Scripture to indicate that the biblical modes of God's communication with humans have been superseded or abolished by either the presence of the church or the close of the scriptural canon. This

"On the first day of every week, each one of you is to put aside a sum of money in keeping with his income, saving it up, so that when I come, no collections will have to be made."

The church may go through her dark ages, but Christ is with her in the midnight; she may pass through her fiery furnace, but Christ is in the midst of the flame with her.

I understood at a very early age that in nature, I felt everything I should feel in church but never did. Walking in the woods, I felt in touch with the universe and with the spirit of the universe.