Church Unity Quotes

1. "It is impossible, Bible in hand, to limit Christ's Church to one's own little community. It is everywhere, in all parts of the world; and whatever its external form, frequently changing, often impure, yet the gifts wherever received increase our riches."
Author: Abraham Kuyper

2. "The North American Church is at a critical juncture. The gospel of grace is being confused and compromised by silence, seduction, and outright subversion. The vitality of the faith is being jeopardized. The lying slogans of the fixers who carry religion like a sword of judgment pile up with impunity. Let ragamuffins everywhere gather as a confessing Church to cry out in protest. Revoke the licenses of religious leaders who falsify the idea of God. Sentence them to three years in solitude with the Bible as their only companion."
Author: Brennan Manning

3. "Election has nothing to do with the eternal salvation of individuals but refers instead to God's way of saving nations. It was a major mistake of the Reformation to have decided to follow Augustine in this matter, taking election to refer to grace and salvation. It manages to make bad news out of good news. It casts a deep shadow over the character of God. At it worst, it can lead to awful consequences in terms of pride, arrogance, superiority, and intolerance as the ideology of election takes hold. It causes the church to become, not a sign of the unity of humanity in the love of God, but the sign of favorites in the midst of the enemies of God."
Author: Clark H. Pinnock

4. "That churchgoers do the lion's share of the charitable work in our communities is simply untrue. They get credit for it because they do a better job of tying the good works they do to their creed. But according to a 1998 study, 82% of volunteerism by churchgoers falls under the rubric of "church maintenance" activities -- volunteerism entirely within, and for the benefit of, the church building and immediate church community. As a result of this siphoning of volunteer energy into the care and feeding of churches themselves, most of the volunteering that happens out in the larger community -- from AIDS hospices to food shelves to international aid workers to those feeding the hungry and housing the homeless and caring for the elderly -- comes from the category of "unchurched" volunteers."
Author: Dale McGowan

5. "She turned down her street once more, glaring at the garish lights someone had put up along their house. Might as well light the roof with "Santa Park Here". Sheesh. The closer she got to home, though, the lower her heart sank. The overly bright house looked suspiciously like... No. Oh, no. He wouldn't. He had. Light up animated animals were dotted all over her lawn. The circle of life has apparently found our power outlet. And why the fuck is there a Star of David on my roof? She wasn't exactly the most church-going member of the community, but you'd think Simon would know what religion she was. After all, she knew exactly who was going to officiate at his funeral. She picked up her cell phone and called Emma. "I'm going to kill him."
Author: Dana Marie Bell

6. "Our lack of community is intensely painful. A TV talk show is not community. A couple of hours in a church pew each Sabbath is not community. A multinational corporation is neither a human nor a community, and in the sweatshops, defiled agribusiness fields, genetic mutation labs, ecological dead zones, the inhumanity is showing. Without genuine spiritual community, life becomes a struggle so lonely and grim that even Hillary Clinton has admitted "it takes a village"."
Author: David James Duncan

7. "The community of the saints is not an "ideal" community consisting of perfect and sinless men and women, where there is no need of further repentance. No, it is a community which proves that it is worthy of the gospel of forgiveness by constantly and sincerely proclaiming God's forgiveness...Sanctification means driving out the world from the Church as well as separating the Church from the world. But the purpose of such discipline is not to establish a community of the perfect, but a community consisting of men who really live under the forgiving mercy of God."
Author: Dietrich Bonhoeffer

8. "Barna is correct when he writes, "After fifteen years of diligent digging into the world around me, I have reached several conclusions about the future of the Christian church in America. The central conclusion is that the American church is dying due to lack of strong spiritual leadership. In this time of unprecedented opportunity and plentiful resources, the church is actually losing influence. The primary reason is the lack of leadership. Nothing is more important than leadership."7"
Author: Ed Stetzer

9. "Only three routes of upward mobility were available to socially ambitious upstarts such as Columbus: war, the Church, and the sea. Columbus probably contemplated all three: he wanted a clerical career for one of his brothers, and fancied himself as "a captain of cavaliers and conquests." But seafaring was a natural choice, especially for a boy from a maritime community as single-minded as that of Genoa. Opportunities for employment and profit abounded."
Author: Felipe Fernández Armesto

10. "We must acknowledge that all we have are, at times very differing, interpretations of what Jesus was all about-and these interpretations, as they are collected in the New Testament, have been written in particular situations by men, none of whom questioned the existing patriarchal structure of their societies or of their communities. While some Christ-believing women did challenge certain male-dominated aspects of their church gatherings (see 1 Cor 14:33b-36) it is quite unlikely that they questioned the patriarchal structure of their society, community, and church on a fundamental level. ~ Werner Kahl in Reading Other-Wise, p. 151"
Author: Gerald O. West

11. "And a third thing is the understanding of the Church as a community, a communion which is just a hierarchy but the people of God, whose servants are the priests and bishops."
Author: Hans Kung

12. "First, if Francis were around today, he'd say our church community relies too much on words to tell others about our faith. For Francis, the gathered community was as potent a form of witness as words. He was convinced that how we live together is what attracts people to faith."
Author: Ian Morgan Cron

13. "I suppose there may be a branch president or a high councilor or an elders quorum president or a visiting teacher in the room who wants to know what it is we are to accomplish as Church members when we get together, even if it's only in a home evening group or an opportunity to pray together. Well, this passage indicates that it may have something to do with remembering each other. We all count. Everyone matters. We have a name and it's recorded and we need to remember that here. No one must get lost. "And their names were taken, that they might be remembered and nourished by the good word of God. . . to keep them continually watchful unto prayer, relying alone upon the merits of Christ . . . to fast and to speak with one another concerning the welfare of their souls . . . to observe that there should be no iniquity among them"--what a great thought about meetings and what they are supposed to do, what a Sunday School class can be, what a scriptural discussion in an apartment can be."
Author: Jeffrey R. Holland

14. "No, we are not the master of the state, said King. We are not the servant of the state. We are the conscience of the state. The churches or the religious community should be, I think, the conscience of the state. We're not just service providers."
Author: Jim Wallis

15. "If ever there were a true "just as I am" church, if ever there were a community where everybody could bring all their baggage and brokenness with them without neat and tidy happy endings quite yet, if ever there was a group where everyone was loved and no one pretended — we could not make enough room inside the building."
Author: John Ortberg

16. "I was irresistibly drawn to write about Latter-Day Saints not only because I already knew something about their theology, and admired much about their culture, but also because of the utterly unique circumstances in which their religion was born: the Mormon Church was founded a mere 173 years ago, in a literate society, in the age of the printing press. As a consequence, the creation of what became a worldwide faith was abundantly documented in firsthand accounts. Thanks to the Mormons, we have been given an unprecedented opportunity to appreciate--in astonishingly detail--how an important religion came to be."
Author: Jon Krakauer

17. "I've always had God, but now I want to go back to church for the sense of community and that feeling of positive thinking, a place where I can think about being a better person."
Author: Julianne Hough

18. "Because of Christ's prevenient and unconditional invitation, the fellowship of the table cannot be restricted to people who are 'faithful to the church', or to the 'inner circle' of the community. For it is not the feast of the particularly righteous, of the people who think that they are particularly devout; it is the feast of the weary and heavy-laden, who have heard the call to refreshment."
Author: Jürgen Moltmann

19. "Each of us ought to be so happy that Jesus found us and saved us, that we are running to find the next person who needs to be introduced to Him. That's what church is, a community of rescued people celebrating grace, eager to spread the good news of grace and bring other people to the party."
Author: Justin Buzzard

20. "In a number of workshops, I have asked people whether they have had one or more experiences that they would identify as an experience of God and, if so, to share them in small groups. On average, 80 percent of the participants identify one or more and are eager to talk about them. They also frequently report that they had never before been asked that question in a church setting or given an opportunity to talk about it."
Author: Marcus J. Borg

21. "Not all parachurch ministries are bad; in fact, the best ones foster collaboration across churches for important ministry and unity."
Author: Mark Driscoll

22. "We often spend so much time reacting to religious traditions or a religious culture that we have little energy left to cultivate a proactive spiritual path. Even among "believing" people there is often more critique and conversation about "the church" or parochial issues than honest engagement with the ways of the master- how Jesus lived and what he taught. Perhaps we have been too easily pleased by our over educated ability to analyze and deconstruct. Rather than being skeptical why couldn't our collective sense of unrest about religion and spiritual community motivate us to be more curious and engaged"
Author: Mark Scandrette

23. "All of our faith and practice arise out of the drama of Scripture, the "big story" that traces the plot of history from creation to consummation, with Christ as its Alpha and Omega, beginning and end. And out of the throbbing verbs of this unfolding drama God reveals stable nouns — doctrines. From what God does in history we are taught certain things about who he is and what it means to be created in his image, fallen, and redeemed, renewed, and glorified in union with Christ. As the Father creates his church, in his Son and by his Spirit, we come to realize what this covenant community is and what it means to belong to it; what kind of future is promised to us in Christ, and how we are to live here and now in the light of it all. The drama and the doctrine provoke us to praise and worship — doxology — and together these three coordinates give us a new way of living in the world as disciples."
Author: Michael S. Horton

24. "Now, there are things I like just fine about church, and I don't just mean making money. The notion of getting together as a community to remind ourselves why we shouldn't behave like animals is a fucking great idea."
Author: Nick Offerman

25. "Finding a new ethics or esthetics, as Dr. Douglass asks, will not put us in a state of grace. Existence is not given meaning by importing it into a revelation from the outside. The meaning is —there, in more closely contacting the actual situation, the only situation that there is, whatever it is. As our situation is, closely contacting it would surely result in plenty of trouble and perhaps in terrible social conflicts, terrible opportunities and duties, during which we might learn something and at the end of which we might know something, even a new ethics; for it is in such conflicts that new ethics are discovered. But it is just these conflicts that we do not observe happening. Everybody talks nice. At most there is some unruliness and dumb protest, and some withdrawal.So urging the juveniles to go to church is not serious, for how will the church give them faith? What opportunity will it open?"
Author: Paul Goodman

26. "There is a continuum of values between the churches and the general community. What distinguishes the handling of these values in the churches is mainly the heavier dosage of religious vocabulary involved."
Author: Peter L. Berger

27. "One [project of Teddy Cruz's] is titled Living Rooms at the Border. it takes a piece of land with an unused church zoned for three units and carefully arrays on it twelve affordable housing units, a community center (the converted church), offices for Casa in the church's attic, and a garden that can accommodate street markets and kiosks. 'In a place where current regulation allows only one use,' [Cruz} crows, ' we propose five different uses that support each other. This suggests a model of social sustainability for San Diego, one that conveys density not as bulk but as social choreography.' For both architect and patron, it's an exciting opportunity to prove that breaking the zoning codes can be for the best. Another one of Cruz's core beliefs is that if architects are going to achieve anything of social distinction, they will have to become developers' collaborators or developers themselves, rather than hirelings brought in after a project's parameters are laid out."
Author: Rebecca Solnit

28. "We will see more and more people, in the church and out, who have the call, the ability, and the finances to resource their own ministry passions in the community. They will not wait for the church to catch up. One clear generational distinction of the millennials (born 1983-2000) is a renewed civic consciousness. As this generational cohort matures, the Christians in it will be much more likely to volunteer and write checks for ministries' and missions' actions that make a difference in people's lives where they live."
Author: Reggie McNeal

29. "Defend the church. Defend the family. Defend the non-profit community. Defend them against a government that wants to weaken them."
Author: Rick Santorum

30. "In the Episcopal Church I find a healthy sense of unity and diversity. In this tradition we recognize that that which holds the church together is more important than that which divides the church."
Author: Robert Webber

31. "Surely we can only come to understand each other's beliefs by means of direct encounter and open, honest discussion. In the meantime, many free churches invite all believers in Jesus Christ to the Table for the sake of true spiritual unity that transcends intellectual differences of interpretation. Withholding sacramental sharing on the basis of disagreement about the nature of the Lord's Supper seems odd to us. What two people think exactly alike about the act? We are not offended by Catholics' closed Communion, but we find it odd and exclusive. It places intellectual understanding above fellowship among disciples of Jesus Christ."
Author: Roger E. Olson

32. "After my father died when I was seven and my mother entered into an abusive relationship, I shuffled between houses - staying with friends, families from church, and relying on the kindness of teachers and people throughout my community to help me grow up essentially without parents."
Author: Ronnie Musgrove

33. "I am also actively involved in my church and its community activities. We have programs to improve the lives of our congregation and programs of outreach in the community."
Author: Samuel Wilson

34. "There's no stronger bulwark of sound conservatism than the evangelical church, and no better place to make friends who'll help you to gain your rightful place in the community than in your own church-home!"
Author: Sinclair Lewis

35. "In the Church, we can give expression to every ability, every righteous desire, every thoughtful impulse. Whether a volunteer, father, home teacher, bishop, or neighbor, whether a visiting teacher, mother, homemaker, or friend—there is ample opportunity to give our all. And as we give, we find that ‘sacrifice brings forth the blessings of heaven!' (Hymns, no. 147) And in the end, we learn it was no sacrifice at all."
Author: Spencer W. Kimball

36. "The church is constituted as a new people who have been gathered from the nations to remind the world that we are in fact one people. Gathering, therefore, is an eschatological act as it is the foretaste of the unity of the communion of the saints."
Author: Stanley Hauerwas

37. ". . . the idea of existing beyond the patriarchal institution of faith, of withdrawing our external projection of God onto the church is almost unfathomable. . . . We think there's nothing beyond the edge. No real spirituality, no salvation, no community, no divine substance. We cannot see that the voyage will lead us to whole new continents of depth and meaning. That if we keep going, we might even come full circle, but with a a whole new consciousness."
Author: Sue Monk Kidd

38. "That there must be heresies is true, not onely in our Church, but also in any other; even in Doctrines hereticall there will be super-heresies, and Arians not onely divided from their Church, but also among themselves: for heads that are disposed unto Schisme...are naturally indisposed for a community, nor will ever be confined unto the order or oeconomy of one body; and therefore when they separate from others they knit but loosely among themselves; nor contented with a general breach or dichotomie with their Church, do subdivide and mince themselves almost into Atomes."
Author: Thomas Browne

39. "By giving us control, our new technologies tend to enhance existing idols in our lives. Instead of becoming more like Christ through the forming and shaping influence of the church community, we form, and shape, and personalize our community to make it more like us. We take control of things that are not ours to control. Could it be that our desire for control is short-circuiting the process of change and transformation God wants us to experience through the mess of real world, flesh and blood, face-to-face relationships?"
Author: Tim Challies

40. "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 of people gathered around Jesus Christ in order to participate in his life and incarnate it into the context where he has placed them."
Author: Tim Keel

41. "What is the gospel, and how do we bring it to bear on the hearts of people today? What is this culture like, and how can we both connect to it and challenge it in our communication? Where are we located — city, suburb, town, rural area — and how does this affect our ministry? To what degree and how should Christians be involved in civic life and cultural production? How do the various ministries in a church — word and deed, community and instruction — relate to one another? How innovative will our church be and how traditional? How will our church relate to other churches in our city and region? How will we make our case to the culture about the truth of Christianity?"
Author: Timothy Keller

42. "John Frame's ‘tri-perspectivalism' helps me understand Willow. The Willow Creek style churches have a ‘kingly' emphasis on leadership, strategic thinking, and wise administration. The danger there is that the mechanical obscures how organic and spontaneous church life can be. The Reformed churches have a ‘prophetic' emphasis on preaching, teaching, and doctrine. The danger there is that we can have a naïve and unBiblical view that, if we just expound the Word faithfully, everything else in the church — leader development, community building, stewardship of resources, unified vision — will just happen by themselves. The emerging churches have a ‘priestly' emphasis on community, liturgy and sacraments, service and justice. The danger there is to view ‘community' as the magic bullet in the same way Reformed people view preaching."
Author: Timothy Keller

43. "Churches must extend their influence beyond the lives of church members to impact the broader community that they serve."
Author: Tony Evans

44. "One of our group said that a lot of people in church spend a lot of time correcting each other these days, but in order to correct another person in love, you really have to know that person. Only then, she told us, can you practice the kind of community that the Didache teaches."
Author: Tony Jones

45. "Those who embrace belief in Christ Jesus are bound together in Him, in a real yet incomplete way, in his Body, the Church. Faith is never a solitary activity, nor can it be simply private. Faith in Christ always draws us into a community and has a public dimension."
Author: Vincent Nichols

46. "Strictly enforce the scale of "fixed responsibility." The first and foremost level of responsibility is with the individual himself; the second level is the family; then the church; next the community, finally the county, and, in a disaster or emergency, the state. Under no circumstances is the federal government to become involved in public welfare. The Founders felt it would corrupt the government and also the poor. No Constitutional authority exists for the federal government to participate in charity or welfare."
Author: W. Cleon Skousen

47. "There was one sure way to avoid being assigned an impromptu chore in our house - be it taking out the trash or cleaning your room - and that was to have your face buried in a book. Like churches during the Middle Ages, books conferred instant sanctuary. Once you entered one, you couldn't be disturbed. They didn't give you immunity from prosecution if you'd done something wrong - just a temporary reprieve. But we quickly learned you had to both look and be completely engrossed - just flipping pages didn't count."
Author: Will Schwalbe

48. "Biographer diagnoses reaction to restriction as a tell of true character. Some use even prison as a time of reflection and planning. Others, like Churchill, quickly chafe at missing interaction and opportunity."
Author: William R. Manchester

49. "Socialism is the philosophy of failure, the creed of ignorance, and thegospel of envy."—Winston Churchill, PERTH, 28 MAY 1948"The choice is between two ways of life: between individual liberty andState domination; between concentration of ownership in the hands of theState and the extension of ownership over the widest number of individuals;between the dead hand of monopoly and the stimulus of competition;between a policy of increasing restraint and a policy of liberating energyand ingenuity; between a policy of levelling down and a policy of opportunityfor all to rise upwards from a basic standard.—Winston Churchill, WOLVERHAMPTON, 23 JULY 1949"
Author: Winston Churchill

Church Unity Quotes Pictures