What if the church should be less concerned with creating saints than creating a world where we do not need saints? A world where people like Mother Teresa and MLK would have nothing to do.

Because sometimes the Church seems like those posed circus tableaus where the curtain lifts and men, white, zinc-oxide, talcum-powder statues, freeze to represent abstract Beauty. Very wonderful. But I hope there will always be room...

The people of God cannot be changed until the outcasts are restored to its body.

What did you say, Gram? About there being no church out here?” “I said that the sky was the roof of my cathedral and the desert was its floor and any time I paid attention,...

Mother Church.” She is, in many ways, an admirable and dedicated person, deeply concerned about her children, endlessly and tirelessly careful for every detail of their welfare. Her long experience has taught her to understand...

I thought that some of the hymns bespoke the true religion of the place. The people didn’t really want to be saints of self-deprivation and hatred of the world. They knew that the world would...

I therefore used the last ten minutes of our classes to recite with them words from the Bible and verses from hymns, so that they would know them and the words would stay with them...

The filling of the Holy Spirit brings a sharp separation between the believer and the world.Actually, after Pentecost, they were looking at another world. They really saw another world.Nowadays, we perceive that even a large...

Dear Church, everyone is broken, stop pretending like you’re not.

The basements of the churches I’ve loved reveal the foundation of the spiritual life to be not belief so much as engagement with the mystery lurking at the base of all things. We build a...

Dear God,” said Nudge under her breath, “I want real parents. But I want them to want me too. I wantthem to love me. I already love them. Please see what you can do. Thanks...

I’m such an alcoholic that I go to church just for communion.

The Pope would have an easier job than the President of the United States in adopting a change of course. He has no Congress alongside him as a legislative body nor a Supreme Court as...

The more we have of Jesus, the greater the love we have; the greater the love, the greater the sacrifice; the greater the sacrifice, the more we become like Jesus; the more we become like...

Again, as I had often met it in my own church, I was confronted with the Impurity of Women doctrine that seemed to preoccupy all clergymen.

No one can fail to see that the power of the Church among large numbers in many communities is today diminishing, or has already ceased.

Your outlook affects your outcome

Theology is not a private subject for theologians only. Nor is it a private subject for professors. Fortunately, there have always been pastors who have understood more about theology than most professors. Nor is theology...

Church leaders raised on rationalism lead ministries where the supernatural, the Vertical, is suppressed and where God Himself is at best an observer and certainly seldom, if ever, and obvious participant in church.

I’m a spiritual person, she said. “I believe in Allah, you know, though I don’t always call It ‘Allah’ and I pray the way I want to pray. Sometimes I just look out at the...

The authority of the Church was thrown over by the authority of the state. Twenty years only have passed, and the authority of the state is already thrown over by the authority of conscience. …...

Just as a father hates cancer, because of what it does to his child, so God hates divorce, because of what it does to His children.

When we struggle for human rights, for freedom, for dignity, when we feel that it is a ministry of the church to concern itself for those who are hungry, for those who have no schools,...

The Chinese state is constructed in an entirely different way from western states. Unlike European states, for over a millennium the Chinese state has not been obliged to compete for power with rivals such as...

The problem that we are facing in the church today is that we have so many Christians who have made a decision to believe in Jesus but not a commitment to follow Him. We have...

I am a Christian. My husband and I belong to the Episcopal Church.

There are congregations on nearly every corner. I’m not sure we need more churches. What we need is a church. I say one church is better than fifty. I have tried to remove the plural...

On a dangerous seacoast where shipwrecks often occur, there was once a crude little life-saving station. The building was just a hut, and there was only one boat. But the few devoted members kept a...

I want to remind pastors and leaders that we do not own the church—God does. We aren’t called to serve the church from a place of fear with our primary focus on protecting our boundaries....

Very occasionally, a simplified form of communion and of adult baptism for new members of the church would be enacted but no Separatist was ever married in church, because there is no hint of a...

Isn’t it funny how the memories you cherish before a breakup can become your worst enemies afterwards? The thoughts you loved to think about, the memories you wanted to hold up to the light and...

We do not need them. They would hinder rather than help our praise. Sing unto him. This is the sweetest and best music. No instrument like the human voice. What a degradation to supplant the...

I think that it [the Church] stands for everything most hostile to the mental emancipation and stimulation of mankind. It is the completest, most highly organized system of prejudices and antagonisms in existence. Everywhere in...

A materialistic world will not be won to Christ by a materialistic church.

During the ten years I lived in the U.K., I frequently attended an Anglican church just outside of London. I enjoyed the energetic singing and the thoughtful homilies. And yet, I found it easy to...

I can never endorse sin any more than when I tell people it’s their nature to do it.

Your church is a baby-house made of blocks.

There are people out there who are into traditional country music and for those people you have artists like Brad Paisley and Josh Turner and Alan Jackson. Then you have artists with a progressive style...

Faith UP! Your purpose is GREATER than all your PROBLEMS.

suppress sin”.

Spring came late. For the children, shut in the dark, cold parsonage, adjusting to Aunt and getting over the death that brought her, the winter had seemed endless. But now the rough moor was flecked...

The Church is going to have to recognise that secularisation is not the cause of their decline, it is the result of it.

It’s a wonder Hell don’t open up and swallow her as the highlight of the service.

Hit don’t make no difference what a man perfesses. I been in a heap o’ churches. There’s the Nazarene Church and the Pentecost and the Holy Rollers and the Baptists and I don’t know what-all....

I have no objection to instruments of music in our worship, provided they are neither seen nor heard.

Whatever America’s founders believed about Christianity – and they believed a wide range of things – they clearly rejected the idea of an established church.

I also never would have imagined I’d quote back a church lesson, but when the rest of the crowd stood up to take communion, I found myself saying to Dimitri: “Don’t you think that if...

Somewhere along the line, “Church” became a weekly event rather than a gathering of people who did life together.

In post-Christendom, the church is that community of people who look to discover what God is actively doing in the world around them and then join themselves to that work. The church is that community...

Don’t just bring people to church; bring them to Christ. Churches are filled with church goers but not Christ followers.