Church Leaderships Quotes

Missional leaders know that their church will only grow as large as its capacity to provide ongoing care through a network of small groups and ministry teams. ~ Gary Rohrmayer

When introverts go to church, we crave sanctuary in every sense of the word, as we flee from the disorienting distractions of twenty-first-century life. We desire to escape from superficial relationships, trivial communications and the constant noise that pervade our world, and find rest in the probing depths of God's love. ~ Adam S. McHugh

[ ... ] while I felt that the Marxist attitude towards their theory was not at all admirable but was typically dogmatic and had all these properties which the Marxists usually said were characteristic of the churches. So I realized fairly early that Marxism was more of a church than of a science. ~ Karl Popper

The civil involvement of the church is a spiritual tactic aim at defeating the forces of darkness. ~ Sunday Adelaja

Sunday - the doctor's paradise! Doctors at country clubs, doctors at the seaside, doctors with mistresses, doctors with wives, doctors in church, doctors in yachts, doctors everywhere resolutely being people, not doctors. ~ Sylvia Plath

It wasn't that he expected to see the dead. All of the sources said that church watchers had to possess the second sight, and Gansey barely possessed first sight before he put his contacts in. He just hope for something. ~ Maggie Stiefvater

Don't ever marry a person you don't truly love. Don't believe what people often say, that the love will develop in future.
Those whose love develop in future are very few. If after a period of time you've been dating and the love doesn't seem to grow, I strongly advise you have to re-think. ~ Prince Akwarandu

We need to pledge ourselves anew to the cause of Christ. We must capture the spirit of the early church. Wherever the early Christians went, they made a triumphant witness for Christ. Whether on the village streets or in the city jails, they daringly proclaimed the good news of the gospel. ~ Martin Luther

Corporations create wealth and define how it is shared. They define working conditions, salary, wages, and benefits. Holy days used to be defined by the church, but now it is the corporation that defines for the workforce which days are holidays. Politicians have to win the approval of corporations in the same way that kings, centuries earlier, had to win the blessing of the church. ~ Ron Davison

As in the natural life a child must have a father and a mother, so in the supernatural life of grace a true child of the Church must have God for his Father and Mary for his mother. If he prides himself on having God for his Father but does not give to Mary the tender affection of a true child, he is an impostor and his father is the devil. ~ Louis De Montfort

At a time when most of my peers were struggling to find an identity, I knew exactly who I was: the church girl, the girl who always had a place in her youth group family, the girl on fire for God. I'm not sure I can ever calculate the value of that community, that sense of belonging and of being loved. It never even occurred to me that such a fire could be washed out. ~ Rachel Held Evans

Sin does not always drive us to drink; more often it drives us to exhaustion. Tiredness is equally as debilitating as drunkenness. Burnout is slang for an inner tiredness, a fatigue of our souls. Jesus came to forgive us all of our sins, including the sin of busyness. The problem with growth in the modern church is not the slowness of growth but the rushing of growth. ~ Mike Yaconelli

We are not called to love our church members only - we are called to love the whole world ~ Sunday Adelaja

Although there is validity, I believe, in leaving a church where the leadership consistently presents false doctrine, I also see people who are offended by one remark from the pulpit or one perceived hurt flit to the next church to look for fault there. It's like the cartoon I saw of a skeleton dressed in women's clothes and sitting on a park bench; the caption read, 'Waiting for the perfect man.' There is no perfect church either. ~ David Jeremiah

Even when the local church has become less than it should be, the biblical vision is to reform the church, not to abandon it. ~ Scott Sauls

How solemn and beautiful is the thought, that the earliest pioneer of civilization, the van-leader of civilization, is never the steamboat, never the railroad, never the newspaper, never the Sabbath-school, never the missionary - but always whiskey! Such is the case. Look history over; you will see. The missionary comes after the whiskey - I mean he arrives after the whiskey has arrived; next comes the poor immigrant, with ax and hoe and rifle; next, the trader; next, the miscellaneous rush; next, the gambler, the desperado, the highwayman, and all their kindred in sin of both sexes; and next, the smart chap who has bought up an old grant that covers all the land; this brings the lawyer tribe; the vigilance committee brings the undertaker. All these interests bring the newspaper; the newspaper starts up politics and a railroad; all hands turn to and build a church and a jail - and ~ Mark Twain

The Church is larger than any one nation or any one political scene. ~ Brother Andrew

In the Catholic Church, there are many other things which most justly keep me in her bosom. The consent of peoples and nations keeps me in the Church; so does her authority, inaugurated by miracles, nourished by hope, enlarged by love, established by age. The succession of priests keeps me, beginning from the very seat of the Apostle Peter, to whom the Lord, after His resurrection, gave it in charge to feed His sheep (Jn 21:15-19), down to the present episcopate. ~ Saint Augustine

The business of church is ultimately people. You're trying to heal people, grow people, teach people, and mend people. And when leaders spend all of their time helping and growing other people, they ignore their own growth. ~ Henry Cloud

The great ideas of the West - rationalism, self-criticism, the disinterested search for truth, the separation of church and state, the rule of law, equality before the law, freedom of conscience, thought, and expression, human rights, and liberal democracy- quite an achievement, surely, for any civilization- - remain the best, and perhaps the only, means for all people, no matter of what race or creed, to reach their full potential and live in freedom. ~ Ibn Warraq

I'm going to do everything I can to keep from being mainstream. ~ Eric Church

Bad theology dishonors God and hurts people. Churches that sever the root of truth may flourish for a season, but they will wither eventually or turn into something besides a Christian church. ~ John Piper

Jesus is like us in every respect.
Don't brush this sentence off casually. Let it sink in, deep to the core of who you are. God is like us in every respect. He is like the transgender woman who is worried she'll be murdered while walking to her car after work. He is like the broken-hearted gay man who can't attend the church of his childhood. He is like the bisexual intersex person who doesn't conform to gender norms and endures the snide looks and sniggers of strangers. He is like these people just as much as the heterosexual man who is comfortable performing his gender in a way this society finds acceptable. ~ Suzanne DeWitt Hall

Every believer is called to teach and each needs to exercise toward this function. Otherwise, they will remain a babe and never mature. Sharing what the believer has learned should begin as soon as a person comes to know the Lord. ~ Henry Hon

A serious, reputable church reduced to absurdity. ~ Gillian Dance

Celebrating Mass facing east, by breaking up the face-to-face, private get-together, helps to prevent turning the liturgy into the community's celebration of itself. ~ Robert Sarah

Some of the speakers we bring on campus may not reflect official church teaching, but that's how it is. ~ William P. Leahy

There are times we need a hug. A prayer. A listening ear. The tricky part is that it's not always easy to know when those times will come along. So God made a plan for us to gather, to not neglect meeting together.9 That happens in church, at Sunday school, and in Bible studies, and it happens in our homes - those times when we regularly gather to strengthen the spiritual safety net we all need. ~ Susie Davis

Leadership calls for both wisdom and courage; the wisdom to know what to do is only half the battle. We must be courageous enough to actually do it. ~ Kellen Roggenbuck

Once an old woman at my church said the secret is that God loves us exactly the way we are and that he loves us too much to let us stay like this, and I'm just trying to trust that. ~ Anne Lamott

First, in keeping with Joseph Ratzinger's vision of a "church for the little people" (and in the interests of helping pay off the sex abuse lawsuits), all Apostolic Nunciatures would be closed, their properties sold and their papal nuncios recalled to Rome, where they would be asked to seek alternative employment. All foreign ambassadors would be sent home. Finally, the Holy See would submit two resolutions to the UN General Assembly: the first seeking to dissolve its status as a non-member state permanent observer, the second requesting status as a non-governmental organization. ~ Daniel Gawthrop

I'm not really into alternative country - I'm into Patsy Cline, who lived down the street from where I lived, and old Dolly Parton records, Kitty Wells and that old stuff. I like country music. I also like Eric Church, who has a great new sound but also holds onto that old sound. ~ Valerie June

It's been said that men think only about sex and food. And some men, like my uncle Lester, think about sex with food. Needless to say the church has ordered him to cease bringing his own food to the potlucks. ~ Jarod Kintz

I certainly respect other people's opinions, but I would not vote for a woman to be the pastor of a church. ~ Charles Stanley

[The Devil] My dream is to become incarnate, but so that it's final, irrevocable, in some fat, two-hundred-and-fifty-pound merchant's wife, and to believe everything she believes. My ideal is to go into a church and light a candle with a pure heart
by God, it's true. That would put and end to my sufferings. ~ Fyodor Dostoyevsky

In our manner of speech, our plans of living, our dealings with others, our conduct and walk in the church and out of it-all should be done as becomes the gospel (Phil. 1:27). ~ Albert C. Barnes

While he was in Utah, Obama discussed immigration reform with leaders of the Mormon Church. Obama introduced the first lady. Then the church's president introduced HIS first lady. And his second lady. And his third, fourth, and fifth ladies. ~ Jimmy Fallon

It's common knowledge that the "church" is nothing more than an invention of the priesthood designed to swindle the ordinary people of the empire out of just about everything they own. ~ David Eddings

What church I go to on Sunday, what dogma of the Catholic Church I believe in, is my business; and whatever faith any other American has is his business. ~ John F. Kennedy

Liturgy puts us to work along with all the others who have been and are being put to work in the world by and with Jesus following our spiritually-forming text. Liturgy keeps us in touch with all the action that has been and is being generated by the Spirit as given witness in the biblical text. Liturgy prevents the narrative form of Scripture from being reduced to private individualized consumption.

Understood this way, 'liturgical' has little to do with choreography in the chancel or an aesthetics of the sublime. It is obedient, participatory, listening to Holy Scripture in the company of the holy community through time (our two-thousand years of responding to this text) and in space (our friends in christ all over the world). High-church Anglicans, revivalistic Baptists, hands-in-the-air praising charismatics, and Quakers sitting in a bare room in silence are all required to read and live this text liturgically, participating in the holy community's reading of Holy Scripture. there is nothing 'churchy' or elitist about it; it is a vast and dramatic 'story-ing,' making sure that we are taking our place in the story and letting everyone else have their parts in the story also, making sure that we don't leave anything or anyone out of the story. Without sufficient liturgical support and structure we are very apt to edit the story down to fit our individual tastes and predispositions. ~ Eugene H. Peterson

A church that likes power likes prayer. ~ Jacob Peterson

Genesis supplements "created in God's image" with the affirmation that God thus made humanity "male and female." Women and men together comprise this image. The statement is an extraordinary one in this opening chapter of Genesis, written in a patriarchal culture. One might wonder whether the author of Genesis saw the implications of this declaration. Certainly generation after generation of Christians have not seen it. We have often talked and behaved as if the male was the normal and full form of a human being, with the female a deviant and slightly inferior form. But both male and female belong to the image. You have the image of God represented in humanity only when you have both men and women there. When women are not present and involved in God's work in the world (and in the church), the image of God is not present. ~ John E. Goldingay

What is true in the position of the social activists is that a Church which exists only for itself and its own enlargement is a witness against the gospel, that the Church exists not for itself and not for its members but as a sign and agent and foretaste of the kingdom of God, and that it is impossible to give faithful witness to the gospel while being indifferent to the situation of the hungry, the sick, the victims of human inhumanity. I ~ Lesslie Newbigin

Historically speaking, institutions are slow to change and usually resistant to any sudden moves - churches especially so. ~ Gene Robinson