#church

If we are not being maligned, scandalizing those who still sleep in the church, then we are missing the incarnational call to love the world's most vulnerable, the world's exiled, the world's most wounded. Our concern should be what the poor and prostituted think of us, what the God of the universe thinks of us, not what those around us think of us. ↗

— Sarah Lance

#caring #church #compassion #excile #god

For Christians to influence the world with the truth of God's Word requires the recovery of the great Reformation doctrine of vocation. Christians are called to God's service not only in church professions but also in every secular calling. The task of restoring truth to the culture depends largely on our laypeople. To bring back truth, on a practical level, the church must encourage Christians to be not merely consumers of culture but makers of culture. The church needs to cultivate Christian artists, musicians, novelists, filmmakers, journalists, attorneys, teachers, scientists, business executives, and the like, teaching its laypeople the sense in which every secular vocation-including, above all, the callings of husband, wife, and parent--is a sphere of Christian ministry, a way of serving God and neighbor that is grounded in God's truth. Christian laypeople must be encouraged to be leaders in their fields, rather than eager-to-please followers, working from the assumptions of their biblical worldview, not the vapid clichés of pop culture. ↗

— J. Gresham Machen

#church #doctrine #machen #reformation #business

[I]t seemed to me now that a Catholic church was the right companion for all these horrors. Didn't Catholicism deal with blood and resurrected flesh on a daily basis? Wasn't it expert in superstition? I somehow doubted that the hospitable plain Protestant chapels that dotted the university could be much help; they didn't look qualified to wrestle with the undead. I felt sure those big square Puritan churches on the town green would be helpless in the face of a European vampire. A little witch burning was more in their line--something limited to the neighbors. ↗

— Elizabeth Kostova

#church #protestantism #vampires #catholicism

Unlike 'other' religious belief systems in competition with Christianity, we have not been called to become 'absorbed' into the deity but rather brought into communion with God through union with Christ thereby maintaining our unique individuality and personal identity ↗

— R. Alan Woods

#individuality #r-alan-woods #unity #unity-in-the-church #r-alan-woods

Unity despite diversity is exactly what defines Christianity as distinct from and antithetical to all other religious belief systems". ~R. Alan Woods [2006] ↗

— R. Alan Woods

#r-alan-woods #unity-in-the-church #r-alan-woods

The problem with the church is the church ↗

— R. Alan Woods

#r-alan-woods #r-alan-woods

I want to do it too!” said Gazzy, sitting very, very quietly, completely motionless. “Nope,” said Nudge, shaking her head. “You stand out like a fart in church. ↗

— James Patterson

#fart #funny #lol #powers #funny

Church was doing what he often did when dropped - lying on his back with all four legs in the air, pretending to be dead in order to induce guilt in his owners. ↗

— Cassandra Clare

#cat #church #city-of-lost-souls #humor #pretence

It is well to remember that the stomach governs the world," wrote Churchill when planning the feeding of his troops on the north-west Indian frontier at the tail-end of the nineteenth century. ↗

— Cita Stelzer

#food #world-war-ii #food

I sometimes wonder whether our churches--living as we do in American death-denying culture, relentlessly smiling through our praise choruses--are inadvertently helping people live not as much in hope as in denial. ↗

— Mark Galli

#church #denial #praise-and-worship #death