If the church remains self-righteously aloof from failures, irreligious and immoral people, it cannot enter justified into God’s kingdom. But if it is constantly aware of its guilt and sin, it can live in joyous awareness of forgiveness. The promise has been given to it that anyone who humbles himself will be exalted.
Church
Ed Stetzer
We may go to church, pray some prayers, and read our Bibles, but in the end our actions and thoughts betray our belief that the solution to the problem of outrage in our world can be found in a worldly solution.
N.T. Wright
The early Church believed that God was energizing them by his own personal presence. The Spirit was given so that individual believers, and still more the believers when joined together for corporate worship, would take up their responsibilities as God’s eyes and ears, his hands and his feet, to do what needed to be done in the world. This is why, from the very start, the early Christians looked out at the world, as Jesus had looked out upon his beloved people Israel, and had seen what God was wanting to do and say, and had prayerfully got on and done and said that themselves. That is what ‘mission’ is all about.
Charles Haddon Spurgeon
“You must be born again.” If you have not come into living contact with a living Saviour by the work of the Holy Spirit you may be in the Church, but you are not in Christ.
Brennan Manning
I want neither a blood’n’guts religion that would make Clint Eastwood, not Jesus, our hero, nor a speculative religion that would imprison the Gospel in the halls of academia, nor a noisy, feel-good religion that is a naked appeal to emotion. I long for passion, intelligence, and compassion in a Church without ostentation, gently beckoning to the world to come and enjoy the peace and unity we possess because of the Spirit in our midst.
Pete Greig
Of course, God will still attend our meetings—Jesus has promised to come whenever we gather in his name. And he is, let’s remember, omnipresent! But perhaps there is a weariness, even a reluctance, in his heart as he gazes back over his shoulder, out of the church door and into the street: ‘When he saw the crowds, he had compassion on them, because they were harassed and helpless, like sheep without a shepherd’ (Matt. 9:36).
Greg Laurie
You show me a church that does not have a constant flow of new Christians coming in, and I will show you a church that is stagnating. We in the church have a choice: evangelize or fossilize!
Larry Richards
In church, we sit together and sing together and greet one another cheerily as we leave at the end of a service. We do all of these things, sometimes for years, without forming any real personal Christian relationships. Our words often seem superficial. The church, therefore, becomes a place where Christians live alone together.
Michael Curry
Being a Christian is not essentially about joining a church or being a nice person, but about following in the footsteps of Jesus, taking his teachings seriously, letting his Spirit take the lead in our lives, and in so doing helping to change the world from our nightmare into God’s dream.
Billy Graham
Ninety-five percent of today’s church activities would continue if the Holy Spirit were removed from us. In the early Church, ninety-five percent of all her activities would have stopped if the Holy Spirit were removed.