Quotes about Church

In the Church of Jesus Christ there can and should be no non-theologians.

Winston Churchill wisely said, "First we shape our buildings. Thereafter, they shape us." Exegete the architecture of a typical church building and you'll quickly discover that it effectively teaches the church to be passive.

To put a finer point on it, the church building is based on the benighted idea that worship is removed from everyday life.

From the human perspective, the purpose of the church meeting is mutual edification. But from God's perspective, the purpose of the gathering is to express His glorious Son and make Him visible. (The church is the body, and Christ is the Head. The purpose of one's body is to express the life that's within it.)

The social location of the church meeting expresses and influences the character of the church.

Are we living in a culture that is so infatuated with change that we have forgotten that the church is about transformation, not mere change?

This does not mean that the knowledge of the world, church history, theology, philosophy, and the Scriptures is without value. Such knowledge can be very useful.[105] But it is not central. Theological competence and a high-voltage intellect alone do not qualify a person to serve in God's house.

All the traditional reasons put forth for "needing" a church building collapse under careful scrutiny. We so easily forget that the early Christians turned the world upside down without them (see Acts 17:6). They grew rapidly for three hundred years without the help (or hindrance) of church buildings.

It is not uncommon in the church for us to urge each other to witness to our faith and sometimes we do so as though it were easy to do. It is not. Our faith is so profoundly intimate and important that we draw our breath in pain to tell the story of our faith in God. And to find the appropriate word to speak even to a receptive mind is difficult. Especially if the opportunity that presents itself comes as a total surprise.

If we look into the matter of how Christian theology rose in the beginning, the Christian Church was always already earlier, and thus even now for each individual the Christian Church is earlier than theology.

The gospel of grace nullifies our adulation of televangelists, charismatic superstars, and local church heroes. It obliterates the two-class citizenship theory operative in many American churches. For grace proclaims the awesome truth that all is gift. All that is good is ours, not by right, but by the sheer bounty of a gracious God.

And though it is true that the church must always dissociate itself from sin, it can never have any excuse for keeping any sinner at a distance