Attending Church Quotes

The fact that you are attending church does not mean you are already serving the Lord ~ Sunday Adelaja

American Christianity is a story of perpetual upheavals in churches and individual lives. Starting with the extraordinary conversion experience, our lives are motivated by a constant expectation for the Next Big Thing. We're growing bored with the ordinary means of God's grace, attending church week in and week out. Doctrines and disciplines that have shaped faithful Christian witness in the past are often marginalized or substituted with newer fashions or methods. The new and improved may dazzle us for a moment, but soon they have become "so last year". Michael Horton, Ordinary, 16 ~ Michael S. Horton

Christians struggle with hypocrisy because of our core confusion about what Christianity means. We tend to believe that Christianity is more about being good than about following Jesus.5 If we believe this, when we try to share our beliefs with others, we talk more about attending church, praying a sinner's prayer, and becoming a good person than about Jesus. The result is that we become known for morality, not for our love of Jesus. ~ Dale Fincher

Many people have grown up attending church and hearing about God all their lives, but they do not have a personal, dynamic, growing relationship with God. ~ Henry T. Blackaby

In marriage we have a duty to God, our spuses, the world, and future generations. But we are sinners. A husband and wife need to acknowledge that when the Bible speaks of fools, it is not just speaking about other people, but about them as well. Even the wisest among us has moments of folly. So God gives us spouses to serve as wise friends by praying with and for us, attending church with us, speaking truth, and providing Scripture along with good books and online classes, lectures, and sermons to nourish fruitfulness in our lives. ~ Mark Driscoll

The church was custom built by Jesus, and we are all works in progress. We do not expect people to get their sin in order before attending church any more than a hospital expects people to get healed before they show up. ~ Mark Driscoll

Attending church does not necessarily mean living the principles taught in those meeting. You can be active in a church but inactive in its gospel. ~ Stephen R. Covey

I wonder how many of us stretch our faces with smiles wide enough to mask the pain we hide. I wonder how many of us go through the motions - attending church, giving service, nurturing our families, learning and doing - while inside we feel empty, broken, doubtful, and even guilty for the way we feel! ~ Toni Sorenson

Being moral or attending church regularly is not the same thing as having a personal relationship with Christ. ~ Osar Adeyemi

Any of us can be happy and have a good attitude when everything is going our way. But I believe it's the real test of your character and of your faith to say, 'Things are not going our way, but I'm still being good to people; I'm still attending church; I still have a good attitude.' ~ Joel Osteen

For reasons I can't remember, my family eventually stopped attending church, and I started questioning the Catholic Church's beliefs. I dabbled a little, but nothing stuck. ~ Ann Hood

Millions of Christians can and do go through life attending church, listening to sermons, reciting the creeds and never confront the seeming contradictions, redaction and myths passed off as verifiable history. ~ A. N. Wilson

These figures emphasize how soft people's commitment to God is. Americans are willing to expend some energy in religious activities such as attending church and reading the Bible, and they are willing to throw some money in the offering basket, but when it comes time to truly establishing their priorities and making a tangible commitment to knowing and loving God, most people stop short. ~ George Barna

If the Holy Spirit was withdrawn from the church today, 95 percent of what we do would go on and no one would know the difference. If the Holy Spirit had been withdrawn from the New Testament church, 95 percent of what they did would stop, and everybody would know the difference. ~ A.W. Tozer

The church growth movement has made many lasting contributions to our practice of ministry. But its overemphasis on technique and results can put too much pressure on ministers because it underemphasizes the importance of godly character and the sovereignty of God. ~ Timothy Keller

The Philippines bear witness to the youthfulness and vitality of the Church. ~ Pope Francis

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. If ~ Dallas Willard

We attended stables, as we attended church, in our best clothes, thereby no doubt showing the degree of respect due to horses. ~ Osbert Sitwell

Jesus didn't shy away from sinners, so why should the church? And don't tell me the church welcomes sinners. I know better. It welcomes only sinners who repent and then never seriously need forgiveness again. ~ Robert Farrar Capon

Religion has never befriended the cause of humaneness. Its monstrous doctrine of eternal punishment and the torture of the damned underlies much of the barbarity with which man has treated man; and the deep division imagined by the Church between the human being, with his immortal soul, and the soulless "beasts", has been responsible for an incalculable sum of cruelty. ~ Henry Stephens Salt

A while back a young woman from another state came to live with some of her relatives in the Salt Lake City area for a few weeks. On her first Sunday she came to church dressed in a simple, nice blouse and knee-length skirt set off with a light, button-up sweater. She wore hose and dress shoes, and her hair was combed simply but with care. Her overall appearance created an impression of youthful grace.

Unfortunately, she immediately felt out of place. It seemed like all the other young women her age or near her age were dressed in casual skirts, some rather distant from the knee; tight T-shirt-like tops that barely met the top of their skirts at the waist (some bare instead of barely); no socks or stockings; and clunky sneakers or flip-flops.

One would have hoped that seeing the new girl, the other girls would have realized how inappropriate their manner of dress was for a chapel and for the Sabbath day and immediately changed for the better. Sad to say, however, they did not, and it was the visitor who, in order to fit in, adopted the fashion (if you can call it that) of her host ward.

It is troubling to see this growing trend that is not limited to young women but extends to older women, to men, and to young men as well. . . .

I was shocked to see what the people of this other congregation wore to church. There was not a suit or tie among the men. They appeared to have come from or to be on their way to the golf course. It was har ~ D. Todd Christofferson

I came out when I was 17. I was in the church; I was crying every Sunday for about a year. I came to terms with the fact with this is who I was - I wasn't going to be able to be a different person. At 17, you feel like a freak already, and so to have that fire and brimstone against your attraction is just screwed up! ~ Mary Lambert

Church begins with Jesus: who He is and what He has done. It is all about Jesus, and if it begins
to be about something else, then it stops being the church as Jesus meant it to be. ~ Neil Cole

In the war upon the powers of darkness, prayer is the primary and mightiest weapon, both in aggressive war upon them and their works; in the deliverance of men from their power; and against them as a hierarchy of powers opposed to Christ and His Church. ~ Jessie Penn-Lewis

The church-bells of innumerable sects are all chime-bells to-day, ringing in sweet accordance throughout many lands, and awaking a great joy in the heart of our common humanity. ~ Edwin Hubbel Chapin

It does not become America that within her borders, where every man is free to follow the dictates of his conscience, men should raise the cry of church against church. To do that is to strike at the very spirit and heart of America. ~ Woodrow Wilson

The scarily brilliant Romantic poet and visionary William Blake dared to say what many of us have perhaps thought but kept to ourselves: A good local pub has much in common with a church, except that a pub is warmer, and there's more conversation. ~ Brian D. McLaren

God is being taken out of schools; children are not being raised in church learning the word; many parents are living lives unto themselves, exalting substance rather than Jesus Christ, and those looking for answers are going to church and finding the word is not being preached. There are consequences to these decisions. ~ Monica Johnson

It may well be a sign of the decadence of the Church and the failure of Christianity that gifts have to be coaxed out of people, and that often they will not give at all unless they get something for their money in the way of entertainment or of goods. Giving which is real giving has a certain recklessness in it. ~ William Barclay

My church-inspired conclusion was that she was obviously a proud woman, so if she was anything like me, sympathy would not win her over. After my brother's dissapearance, there was nothing I detested more than people oozing with softly spoken words and hugs that went on way too long. ~ Jenny B. Jones

Poor children face staggering challenges: increased risk of low birth weight, negative impacts on early cognitive development, higher incidents of childhood illnesses such as asthma and obesity, and greatly reduced chances of attending college (only about nine out of every one hundred kids born in poverty will earn a college degree). On top of this, poor children deal with greater degrees of environmental hazards from pollution, noise, and traffic, as well as other stressors harmful to their well-being. In a competitive and global knowledge-based economy, a nation's most valuable resource is its children. And yet we are reckless with this treasure. ~ Cory Booker

The Church, during the apostolic age, did not consist of isolated, independent congregations, but was one body, of which the separate churches were constituent members, each subject to all the rest, or to an authority which extended over all. ~ Charles Hodge

But the people of the church in Jerusalem had been commanded by a revelation, vouchsafed to approved men there before the war, to leave the city and to dwell in a certain town of Perea called Pella. ~ Eusebius

Theological discourses function in various ways as sites of contestation and resistance, of forming new religious and personal identities, and of building solidarities. Theological discourses that theologians produce, disseminate, and teach in academia are not simply objective interpretations and neutral reflections on the world and the church in it. Instead theological discourses are productions of and for the world and the church that we live in ~ Namsoon Kang

For the machine meant the conquest of horizontal space. It also meant a sense of that space which few people had experienced before – the succession and superimposition of views, the unfolding of landscape in flickering surfaces as one was carried swiftly past it, and an exaggerated feeling of relative motion (the poplars nearby seeming to move faster than the church spire across the field) due to parallax. The view from the train was not the view from the horse. It compressed more motifs into the same time. Conversely, it left less time in which to dwell on any one thing. ~ Robert Hughes

Because the bill in reserving a certain parcel of land in the United States for the use of said Baptist Church comprises a principle and a precedent for the appropriation of funds of the United States for the use and support of religious societies, contrary to the article of the Constitution which declares that "Congress shall make no law respecting a religious establishment." ~ James Madison

But what we found in the study is that churches are ten times less diverse than the neighborhoods they sit in. So there's something more going on than just reflecting the neighborhood, yeah. ~ Michael Emerson

Whether or not we belong to a church or service organization or have a job that provides meaningful service opportunities, not a day goes by that we can't at least serve one other human being by making deposits of unconditional love. ~ Stephen Covey

Quite often you hear people say, 'What about separation of church and state?' There is no such thing. ~ Dan Severson

When you strip it of everything else, Pentecost stands for power and life. That's what came into the church when the Holy Spirit came down on the day of Pentecost. ~ David Wilkerson

Any church that is not seriously involved in helping fulfill the Great Commission has forfeited its biblical right to exist. ~ Oswald J. Smith

To question, to ponder, and to learn. Education was my drug of choice - classrooms, books, lectures, pushing myself to understand. ~ Elizabeth J. Church

To be a Christian is to be a theologian - a student of God and his will. The church is where believers should be nurtured in the practice of correct theology. The contemporary disdain for theological content and emphasis on self-image and emotions were not shared by the apostolic church. ~ R.C. Sproul

I was raised Catholic. Not just a little bit Catholic, like my wife, Catherine. When she was young, many Catholics in France already barely went to church, except for the big three: baptism, marriage, and funeral. And only the middle one was by choice. ~ Frans De Waal

Persecution is not an original feature in any religion; but it is always the strongly marked feature of all religions established by law. ~ Thomas Paine

In my family, we were on again off again Unitarians, partly because my father, raised Roman Catholic, had had enough of church. ~ Stacey D'Erasmo

It would be far better to be of no church than to be bitter of any. ~ William Penn

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. ~ James MacDonald

Reader! To whatever visible church, synagogue, or mosque you may belong! See if you do not find more true religion among the host of the excommunicated than among the far greater host who excommunicated them. ~ Moses Mendelssohn

I'm not only a Christian, but I'm a pastor of a church. ~ Richie Furay

As to Science, she has never sought to ally herself to civil power. She has never attempted to throw odium or inflict social ruin on any human being. She has never subjected anyone to mental torment, physical torture, least of all to death, for the purpose of upholding or promoting her ideas. She presents herself unstained by cruelties and crimes. But in the Vatican - we have only to recall the Inquisition - the hands that are now raised in appeals to the 'Most Merciful' are crimsoned. They have been steeped in blood! ~ John William Draper

Can the "word" be pinned down to either one period or one church? All churches are, of course, only more or less unsuccessful attempts to represent the unseen to the mind. ~ Florence Nightingale

I started singing in church and I was probably around seven and I started singing anywhere that I could. I used to sing at my school. I was in musicals and then it kind of got to a point where I started to - wanted to do my own songs. ~ Avril Lavigne

Peter, in showing that the Church is one and that only those who are in the Church can be saved, said: "In the Ark of Noah certain persons, numbering only eight, were saved by water, which Baptism effects in like manner for you" (1 Peter 3:20). He proves and demonstrates that the solitary Ark of Noah was the figure of the One Church. If, at the time of this Baptism of the world anyone could have been saved without having been in the Ark of Noah, then he who is outside the Church could now be brought to life by Baptism. ~ Cyprian

For most of us church folks, the norm has been defined by what we have or haven't experienced up to this point. Another way of saying this is we've allowed our experience to define normal. What we experience determines what is normal; what we consider to be normal is authoritative, and thus our experience becomes our authority. What we have or haven't experienced sets the bar for what we do and don't expect from God. ~ Alan Smith

Misner walked away from the pulpit, to the rear wall of the church. There he stretched, reaching up until he was able to unhook the cross that hung there. He carried it then, past the empty choir stall, past the organ where Kate sat, the chair where Pulliam was, on to the podium and held it before him for all to see - if only they would ... Without this sign, the believer's life was confined to praising God and taking the hits. The praise was credit; the hits were interest due on a debt that could never be paid ... But with it, in the religion in which this sign was paramount and foundational, well, life was a whole other matter. ~ Toni Morrison

For Christians to influence the world with the truth of God's Word requires the recovery of the great Reformation doctrine of vocation. Christians are called to God's service not only in church professions but also in every secular calling. The task of restoring truth to the culture depends largely on our laypeople.

To bring back truth, on a practical level, the church must encourage Christians to be not merely consumers of culture but makers of culture. The church needs to cultivate Christian artists, musicians, novelists, filmmakers, journalists, attorneys, teachers, scientists, business executives, and the like, teaching its laypeople the sense in which every secular vocation-including, above all, the callings of husband, wife, and parent--is a sphere of Christian ministry, a way of serving God and neighbor that is grounded in God's truth. Christian laypeople must be encouraged to be leaders in their fields, rather than eager-to-please followers, working from the assumptions of their biblical worldview, not the vapid clichés of pop culture. ~ J. Gresham Machen

There's a special place in hell for what some people have done but there's also a special place in God's heart for their forgiveness. ~ Johnny Hunt

The church, although lapsing more and more into deflection from the truth and into a corrupting of apostolic practice, had not instrumental music for 1200 years (that is, it was not in general use before this time); The Calvinistic Reform Church ejected it from its service as an element of popery, even the church of England having come very nigh its extrusion from her worship. It is heresy in the sphere of worship. ~ John Lafayette Girardeau

I look at tens of thousands of church leaders who still do need a bit of an awakening. ~ Bill Hybels

It would be inaccurate, however, to say that my childhood was untroubled. The normal fears and worries of every child were in me developed to a high degree; every day was an awesome prospect. I was uneasy about practically everything: the uncertainty of the future, the dark of the attic, the panoply and discipline of school, the transitoriness of life, the mystery of the church and of God, the frailty of the body, the sadness of afternoon, the shadow of sex, the distant challenge of love and marriage, the far-off problem of a livelihood. ~ Bret Lott

Thank you from the heart to all those who in various ways are near me or follow me spiritually with affection and prayers from afar. To each one of you, I ask you to continue to support me by praying to God to let me be his gentle and firm pastor of his church. ~ Pope Benedict XVI