#church

With so much effort being poured into church growth, so much press being given to the benefits of faith, and so much flexing of religious muscle in the public square, the poor in spirit have no one but Jesus to call them blessed anymore. ↗

— Barbara Brown Taylor

#humility #inspirational #faith

The Church is everywhere represented as one. It is one body, one family, one fold, one kingdom. It is one because pervaded by one Spirit. We are all baptized into one Spirit so as to become, says the apostle, on body. ↗

— Charles Hodge

#baptized #because #become #body #church

If the Church is a living body united to the same head, governed by the same laws, and pervaded by the same Spirit, it is impossible that one part should be independent of all the rest. ↗

— Charles Hodge

#church #governed #head #impossible #independent

It is a thoroughly anti-christian doctrine that the Spirit of God, and therefore the life and governing power of the Church, resides in the ministry, to the exclusion of the people. ↗

— Charles Hodge

#doctrine #exclusion #god #governing #life

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

#apostolic #authority #body #church #churches

When he gets to his pew and looks round him he sees just that selection of his neighbors whom he has hitherto avoided. You want to lean pretty heavily on those neighbors. Make his mind flit to and fro between an expression like 'the body of Christ' and the actual faces in the next pew. It matters very little, of course, what kind of people that next pew really contains. You may know one of them to be a great warrior on the Enemy's side. No matter. Your patient, thanks to Our Father Below, is a fool. Provided that any of those neighbors sing out of tune, or have boots that squeak, or double chins, or odd clothes, the patient will quite easily believe that their religion must therefore be somehow ridiculous." ... "Work hard, then, on the disappointment or anticlimax which is certainly coming to the patient during his first few weeks as a churchman." ... "I have been hitherto writing on the assumption that the people in the next pew afford no rational ground for disappointment. Of course if they do-- if the patient knows that the woman with the absurd hat is a fanatical bridgeplayer or the man with the squeaky boots a miser and an extortioner-- then your task is so much the easier. All you then have to do is to keep out of his mind the question 'If I, being what I am, can consider that I am in some sense a Christian, why should the different vices of those people in the next pew prove that their religion is mere hypocrisy and convention?' You may ask whether it is possible to keep such an obvious thought from occurring even to a human mind. It is Wormwood, it is! ↗

— C.S. Lewis

#church #faith #pride #faith

I get asked a lot why Apple's customers are so loyal. It's not because they belong to the Church of Mac! That's ridiculous. ↗

— Steve Jobs

#asked #because #belong #church #customers

I went to Catholic school in and out. I'm what you call a recovering Catholic. I have many major issues with the church. ↗

— Jon Bon Jovi

#catholic #catholic school #church #i #issues

I teethed on books of heroes such as Winston Churchill, Abraham Lincoln and King David. ↗

— Luke Ford

#abraham lincoln #books #churchill #david #heroes

And they turned around and leased it to The Assembly Of God Churches - their headquarters are in Springfield, Missouri. They leased it to them for the first year. Then, after the first year, they will donate it to the church. ↗

— Mel Tillis

#around #assembly #church #churches #donate