The local church is the hope of the world. — Bill Hybels
The local church is the hope of the world, and its future rests primarily in the hands of its leaders. — Bill Hybels
There is nothing like the local church when the local church is working right. — Bill Hybels
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. — Samuel Wilson
Jesus is the hope of the world and the local church is the vehicle of expressing that hope to the world. — Andy Stanley
Church is not an organization you join; it is a family where you belong, a home where you are loved and a hospital where you find healing. — Nicky Gumbel
Evangelism and the local church are inseparable. It's like the Good Samaritan seeking an inn for the one he rescued. — Reinhard Bonnke
Church is a place where you get to practice what it means to be human. — James Luther Adams
No local church can afford to go without the encouragement and nourishment that will come to it by sending away its best people. — David Penman
The Church must send or the church will end. — Mendell Taylor
Christian proclamation might make the gospel audible, but Christians living together in local congregations make the gospel visible (see John 13:34-35). The church is the gospel made visible. — Mark Dever
A church is a hospital for sinners, not a museum for saints. — Abigail Van Buren
A church is a hospital for sinners, not a museum for saints. — L. L. Nash
The church is not a dormitory for sleepers, it is an institution for workers; it is not a rest camp, it is a front line trench. — Billy Sunday
The Church is not a monastery for the isolation of perfect people. It is more like a hospital provided for those who wish to get well. — Jeffrey R. Holland
Short Local Church Quotes
The minute you walk outside of your church on Sunday you're in mission territory. — Robert Barron
Prayer meetings are the throbbing machinery of the church. — Charles Spurgeon
The thermometer of a church is its prayer meeting. — Vance Havner
The church doesn’t have a social strategy, the church is a social strategy. — Stanley Hauerwas
The only church that illuminates is a burning church. — Buenaventura Durruti
Every Christian family ought to be as it were a little church. — Jonathan Edwards
The best remedy for a sick church is to put it on a missionary diet. — David Livingstone
The church is never a place to show off. Do your good deeds quietly. Serve; don't seek to be seen — Max Lucado
Local Church Image Quotes
Church Service Quotes
I believe that a great number of people are going to die and go to hell because they’re counting on their religiosity in the church instead of their relationship with Jesus to get them to heaven. They give lip service to repentance and faith, but they’ve never been born again. — Adrian Rogers
The Sunday morning service shows how popular your church is. The evening services show how popular your pastor is. Your private prayer time shows you how popular God is! — Leonard Ravenhill
The perfect church service would be one we were almost unaware of. Our attention would have been on God. — C. S. Lewis
You don't have to be in church service to worship, you can be in your own home. You enhance your spirituality, through the instrument of worship, when you really connect with the invisible, almighty God. — T. D. Jakes
I have devoted my energies to the study of the scriptures, observing monastic discipline, and singing the daily services in church; study, teaching, and writing have always been my delight. — Venerable Bede
I like the silent church before the service begins, better than any preaching. — Ralph Waldo Emerson
Christmas: It's the only religious holiday that's also a federal holiday. That way, Christians can go to their services, and everyone else can sit at home and reflect on the true meaning of the separation of church and state. — Samantha Bee
New rule: If churches don't have to pay taxes, they also can't call the fire department when they catch fire. Sorry reverend, that's one of those services that goes along with paying in. I'll use the fire department I pay for. You can pray for rain. — Bill Maher
You are as much serving God in looking after your own children, & training them up in God’s fear, & minding the house, & making your household a church for God, as you would be if you had been called to lead an army to battle for the Lord of hosts. — Charles Spurgeon
Love never ends or fails. Love never ends. Everything must be based on love - the relation between two friends, my ministry, my service; the church services in every field must be based on love. Why? Because God is Love. — Pope Tawadros II of Alexandria
Church Quotes
There are not one hundred people in the United States who hate The Catholic Church, but there are millions who hate what they wrongly perceive the Catholic Church to be. — Fulton J. Sheen
A church that doesn't provoke any crises, a gospel that doesn't unsettle, a word of God that doesn't get under anyone’s skin, a word of God that doesn't touch the real sin of the society in which it is being proclaimed — what gospel is that? — Oscar Romero
The Bible is not the light of the world, it is the light of the Church. But the world does not read the Bible, the world reads Christians! “You are the light of the world.” — Charles Spurgeon
The less Holy Spirit we have, the more cake and coffee we need to keep the church going. — Reinhard Bonnke
When the church hears the cry of the oppressed it cannot but denounce the social structures that give rise to and perpetuate the misery from which the cry arises. — Oscar Romero
It is better to go skiing and think of God, than go to church and think of sport. — Fridtjof Nansen
I am in love with every church
And mosque
And temple
And any kind of shrine
Because I know it is there
That people say the different names
Of the One God. — Hafez
If the presence of God is in the church, the church will draw the world in. If the presence of God is not in the church, the world will draw the church out. — Charles Grandison Finney
To be spiritual is not by praying and going to church. Spiritualism is the understanding of the universe so that it can be a better place to live in. — Fela Kuti
Church Mission Quotes
Any church that is not seriously involved in helping fulfill the Great Commission has forfeited its biblical right to exist. — Oswald J. Smith
The Church exists for nothing else but to draw men into Christ, to make them little Christs. If they are not doing that, all the cathedrals, clergy, missions, sermons, even the Bible itself, are simply a waste of time. God became Man for no other purpose. — C. S. Lewis
Missions is not the ultimate goal of the church. Worship is. Missions exists because worship doesn't. — John Piper
The church that does not evangelize will fossilize. — Oswald J. Smith
It is possible for the most obscure person in a church, with a heart right toward God, to exercise as much power for the evangelization of the world, as it is for those who stand in the most prominent positions. — John Mott
Because we believe that somewhere in the nest of paradigms contained in the phrase "missional church" lies nothing less that the future viability of Western Christianity. — Alan Hirsch
Mission is not primarily an activity of the church, but an attribute of God. — David Bosch
I spent twenty years of my life trying to recruit people out of local churches and into missions structures so that they could be involved in fulfilling God's global mission. Now I have another idea. Let's take God's global mission and put it right in the middle of the local church! — George H. Miley
God is a God of motion, of movement, and of mission... Mission is not an activity of the church but an attribute of God. God is a missionary God, Jesus is a missionary Messiah, and the Spirit is a missionary Spirit. Missions is the family business. — Leonard Sweet
Christian Church Quotes
Going to church doesn't make you a Christian any more than going to a garage makes you an automobile. — Billy Sunday
You cannot pray at home, like you can at church, where there is a great multitude; where exclamations are cried out to God as from one great heart, and where there is something more: the unions of minds, the accord of souls, the bond of charity, the prayers of priests. — Saint John Chrysostom
[A]ll churches, whether Jewish, Christian or Muslim, are simply human inventions. They use fear to enslave us. They are a monopoly for power and profit. — Thomas Paine
The Church must take right ground in regard to politics... Politics are a part of a religion in such a country as this, and Christians must do their duty to the country as part of their duty to God... God will bless or curse this nation, according to the course Christians take in politics. — Charles Grandison Finney
Socialism is precisely the religion that must overwhelm Christianity. … In the new order, Socialism will triumph by first capturing the culture via infiltration of schools, universities, churches and the media by transforming the consciousness of society. — Antonio Gramsci
Christianity is being concerned about [others], not building a million-dollar church while people are starving right around the corner. Christ was a revolutionary person, out there where it was happening. That's what God is all about, and that's where I get my strength. — Fannie Lou Hamer
The Church is like a great ship being pounded by the waves of life's different stresses. Our duty is not to abandon ship, but to keep her on her course. — Saint Boniface
Probably the greatest tragedy of the church throughout its long and checkered history has been its constant tendency to conform to the prevailing culture instead of developing a Christian counter-culture . — John Stott
The Christian that is bound by his own horizon, the church that lives simply for itself, is bound to die a spiritual death and sink into stagnancy and corruption. We never can thank God enough for giving us not only a whole Gospel to believe, but a whole world to give it to. — A. B. Simpson
Those who live by mystery & charlatanerie, fearing you would render them useless by simplifying the Christian philosophy - the most sublime and benevolent, but most perverted system that ever shone on man - endeavored to crush your well-earned & well-deserved fame. — Thomas Jefferson
Church Community Quotes
When the devil sees a man or woman who really believes in prayer, who knows how to pray, and who really does pray, and, above all, when he sees a whole church on its face before God in prayer, he trembles as much as he ever did, for he knows that his day in that church or community is at an end. — R. A. Torrey
A religion is a unified system of beliefs and practices relative to sacred things, that is to say, things set apart and forbidden-beliefs and practices which unite into one single moral community called a Church, all those who adhere to them. — Emile Durkheim
An unchurched christian is a grotesque anomaly. The New Testament knows nothing of such a person. For the church lies at the very center of the eternal purpose of God. It is not a divine afterthought. It is not an accident of history. On the contrary, the church is God's new community. — John Stott
You never have to advertise a fire. Everyone comes running when there's a fire. Likewise, if your church is on fire, you will not have to advertise it. The community will already know it. — Leonard Ravenhill
The church is not a religious community of worshippers of Christ but is Christ himself who has taken form among people. — Dietrich Bonhoeffer
Church gives people a sense of community, a sense of how to behave... social support when times get tough. — James David Vance
It's not just that government has failed us. It's not just that we have failed ourselves. It's government. It's individuals. It's sort of everything in between, from families and communities and neighborhoods, churches and so forth. — James David Vance
The church is not an institution forcing us to follow rules but a community inviting us to still our hunger and thirst at its table. — Henri Nouwen
I'm absolutely, utterly, and completely certain that God wouldn't be homophobic. I'd much rather go to hell - I really would much rather go to hell - than go to a homophobic heaven. — Desmond Tutu
You know, who tells the stories of a culture really governs human behavior. It used to be the parent, the school, the church, the community. Now it's a handful of global conglomerates that have nothing to tell, but a great deal to sell. — George Gerbner
Church Life Quotes
You could remove the powerful preaching from our church and it would still continue. You could remove the administration of pastoral care through the cell group system and the church would still continue. But if you remove the prayer life of our church it would collapse. — David Yonggi Cho
I looked in temples churches and mosques. But I found the Divine within my heart. — Rumi
Worship is more than singing beautiful songs in church on a Sunday. It is more than instruments and music. As a true worshipper, your heart will long to worship Him at all times, in all ways and with all your life. — Darlene Zschech
When one loses the deep intimate relationship with nature, then temples, mosques and churches become important. — Jiddu Krishnamurti
I am a conservative Republican, but I believe in democracy and the separation of church and state. The conservative movement is founded on the simple tenet that people have the right to live life as they please as long as they don't hurt anyone else in the process. — Barry Goldwater
I am a person that believes in different emotions with music. Music can bring about different vibes on the field, off the field, urban life, going to church, leaving church. Everything the world may bring, there's a song for it to put you in the right frame of mind. — Cam Newton
Christians don't tell lies, they just go to church and sing them. How many times have you stood and sang, “Take my life and let it be” when you haven't given Him one ounce? — Leonard Ravenhill
The true church lives and moves and has its being in prayer. — Leonard Ravenhill
I needed a lot of the good things that church provided. But as I grew older, it became increasingly hard for me to rationalize the importance of church in my life with the beliefs that it required that were at odds with modern science. — James David Vance
The Christian churches and Christianity have nothing in common save in name: they are utterly hostile opposites. The churches are arrogance, violence, usurpation, rigidity, death; Christianity is humility, penitence, submissiveness, progress, life. — Leo Tolstoy
Local Community Quotes
We can begin by doing small things at the local level, like planting community gardens or looking out for our neighbors. That is how change takes place in living systems, not from above but from within, from many local actions occurring simultaneously. — Grace Lee Boggs
Firefighters are essential to the safety and security of our local communities. We owe it to these men and women to provide them with better training and equipment so they can do their jobs more effectively and safely. — Carl Levin
My father is a doctor and my mother ran the local pharmacy. Growing up, I saw firsthand the difference they made to our community. — Rishi Sunak
The terrorists who committed the 2003 Istanbul attacks were locals, that is, Turks. And when filmmaker Theo van Gogh was murdered in the Netherlands last year, the murderer and his supporters were also part of the Muslim community. — Otto Schily
By fostering the economic health and vitality of local communities throughout the country, community banks play a central role in our national economy. — Jerome Powell
In 2003, I introduced and passed The Tornado Shelters Act, which allows local governments to use Community Development Block Grant funds to construct storm shelters in manufactured housing communities. — Spencer Bachus
Life does not stand still for families and local communities when our brave men and women are deployed, but we can make their time apart more bearable by recognizing their sacrifice and fulfilling our commitments to them. — Mark Pryor
Over the years, the diamond industry has had a devastating impact in countries such as Sierra Leone, Angola and the Congo, where profits from the sale of diamonds have been used to fund brutal wars, with disastrous effects on local communities. — Sheherazade Goldsmith
There was a time in the United States when most of our financial institutions were local. Which essentially meant that local communities were able to create their own credit, or their own money, in response to their own needs. We still depended on banks, but it was a much more democratic process. — David Korten
For our welfare reform efforts to be successful, we must empower local charitable organizations with the resources to address their local community needs. — Mel Carnahan
Church History Quotes
C. S. Lewis observed that almost all crimes of Christian history have come about when religion is confused with politics. Politics, which always runs by the rules of ungrace, allures us to trade away grace for power, a temptation the church has often been unable to resist. — Philip Yancey
The church would betray its own love for God and its fidelity to the gospel if it stopped being . . . a defender of the rights of the poor . . . a humanizer of every legitimate struggle to achieve a more just society . . . that prepares the way for the true reign of God in history. — Oscar Romero
The early church didn’t say, ‘Look what the world is coming to!’ They said, ‘Look what has come into the world’! — Carl F. H. Henry
Food history is as important as a baroque church. Governments should recognize cultural heritage and protect traditional foods. A cheese is as worthy of preserving as a sixteenth-century building. — Carlo Petrini
You have to get past the idea that music has to be one thing. To be alive in America is to hear all kinds of music constantly: radio, records, churches, cats on the street, everywhere music. And with records, the whole history of music is open to everyone who wants to hear it. — Jerry Garcia
The day will come when the mystical generation of Jesus, by the Supreme Being as his father, in the womb of a virgin, will be classed with the fable of the generation of Minerva in the brain of Jupiter. — Thomas Jefferson
...It would be more consistent that we call [the Bible] the work of a demon than the word of God. It is a history of wickedness that has served to corrupt and brutalize mankind. — Thomas Paine
The history of the Church of Rome is a constant leakage of members into such breakaway cults, which go on splitting. — Mary Douglas
The 'wall of separation between church and state' is a metaphor based on bad history, a metaphor which has proved useless as a guide to judging. It should be frankly and explicitly abandoned. — William Rehnquist
And we find from Church history that the primitive Christians thus understood it; for that women did actually speak and preach amongst them we have indisputable proof. — Catherine Booth
A good local pub has much in common with a church, except that a pub is warmer, and there's more conversation. — William Blake
When a person becomes a Christian, he doesn’t just join a local church because it’s a good habit for growing in spiritual maturity. He joins a local church because it’s the expression of what Christ has made him—a member of the body of Christ. — Mark Dever
I have a group of people, about 40, in a local church in Surrey in England, who pray for me regularly. — Cliff Richard
Preaching is the primary means of growth for the local church. There is a great deal of debate about this in our day, but it is the preaching of the Word that God most uses to build up a church, not only numerically but above all (and far more importantly) in spiritual depth and understanding of the people who make up the congregation. — James Montgomery Boice
The gospel of grace nullifies our adulation of televangelists, charismatic superstars, and local church heroes. It obliterates the two-class citizenship theory operative in many American churches. For grace proclaims the awesome truth that all is gift. All that is good is ours, not by right, but by the sheer bounty of a gracious God. — Brennan Manning
I remember one of the first gigs I played with that amp was at a local church. They wanted someone to fill in with the guitar and my friend say, 'Ah, he can play.' And so I dragged the amplifier down and started playing and everybody started yelling 'turn it down!' — Angus Young
The primary role of the church is to reflect God's value system in society and to train people in that value system. It's not the government's responsibility, nor are they equipped to do that on the most local level where the need exists. — Tony Evans
Local churches are ten times more segregated than the neighborhoods they are in and they are twenty times more segregated than the schools than the nearby schools. — Derwin L. Gray
The bells are a very good investment. They never break if they are maintained. I can teach the kids the basics. They may play bells for only one year, but many of them go on to play at local churches. — Dan Gable
Every believer is commanded to be plugged in to a local church. — David Jeremiah
In autumn 2012 I conducted a dedication and blessing service following the Civil Partnership of two wonderful gay Christians. Why? Not to challenge the traditional understanding of marriage - far from it - but to extend to these people what I would do to others: the love and support of our local church. — Steve Chalke
God wants every local church to be the first place people think to go when they've really messed up...not the last. — Tullian Tchividjian
I think that local school districts - not the federal government - should make the decision about how they teach science, biology, economics. I want my kids to be taught about evolution; I want my kids to be taught about other theories. — Bobby Jindal
I come from a blue collar family, but my personal life isn't. I didn't get the gene that my grandfather had in spades. He was a local hero. Built the church that I went to. Built the house I grew up in. Steamfitter, pipefitter, electrician, mechanic and plumber. I wanted to do those things. But it just didn't come easy. — Mike Rowe
The first thing my family did when we moved was join the local church. The second was to go to the library and get library cards. — John Grisham
Centralized sounds good ... but the reality is that the National Guard and Army don't have the kind of ties with local organizations that ultimately deliver lots of service, your nonprofits, churches, humanitarian organizations. Those types of linkages get built up over time, in local communities. — Peter May
Ten years ago, 15 years ago, I think the church would have been asleep at the switch. This level of activism and engagement with the needs of society by local churches I never thought I'd see it in my lifetime. — Bill Hybels
Many churches of all persuasions are hiring research agencies to poll neighborhoods, asking what kind of church they prefer. Then the local churches design themselves to fit the desires of the people. True faith in God that demands selflessness is being replaced by trendy religion that serves the selfish. — Billy Graham
The person who had the greatest influence in my life was my dad, who was a wonderful small businessman, devoted to his family, devoted to the local church. — Mike Pence
If...we do not think that a local church is worthy of joining, why should we be considered worthy of serving in it? — Wayne Mack
The life function of [the local church] is to love the God who created it - to care for others out of obedience to Christ, to heal those who hurt, to take away fear, to restore community, to belong to one another, to proclaim the Good News while living it out. The church is the invisible made visible. — Charles Colson
In the real world, I see conservatives volunteering at adoption agencies, at churches, at bake sales and the local American Legion Post while the only charity a progressive sends is a smug sermon on fair share and what fairness is. — Allen West
Praying for revival equates to blaming God for the condition of your local church. — Andy Stanley
It is a high Christian privilege to pray for one another within each local church body and then for other believers throughout the world. As a Christian minister, I have no right to preach to people I have not prayed for. That is my strong conviction. — Aiden Wilson Tozer
The scarily brilliant Romantic poet and visionary William Blake dared to say what many of us have perhaps thought but kept to ourselves: “A good local pub has much in common with a church, except that a pub is warmer, and there’s more conversation. — Brian D. McLaren
The local church is the outcrop of the church universal. — Peter T. Forsyth
Sunday is the best day of the week because we celebrate the risen Christ of the cross in the local church, the dearest place on earth. — C. J. Mahaney
If you are a local church or non-profit, you live and die with volunteers. — Andy Stanley
Being disconnected from the local church, for whatever reason, is a dangerous way to live. Not only do these “ lone rangers” miss out on the blessings of functioning within the context of the body of Christ, but like lone sheep away from the safety of the flock and the watchful care of the shepherd, they are vulnerable to predators of every sort. — Nancy Leigh DeMoss
The local church is the outcrop of the church universal. — Peter Forsyth
One of my beliefs is that there are certain institutions within a community which stand for the spirit and heart of that community, there's the church, the local football team, the local pub and the theatre. — David Soul
They should go back to the medieval tradition, which is that the nave of the church is always used for local business. — Andrew Lloyd Webber
When I speak at my local church, which I try to do 35 to 40 times a year, I try in every lesson to take the Old Testament text or New Testament text and apply them to what is happening to me or how that applies to the audience that I'm teaching in a modern, fast-changing, technological world. I use headlines, interfaith and that sort of thing. — Jimmy Carter
I don't have any complaints about homosexuals being married in a civil ceremony. But I don't think that the government ought to require religious organizations, churches, should perform marriages between homosexuals if a local congregation decides otherwise. I believe in the autonomy of individual churches. — Jimmy Carter
You have to wear a different face when you're interacting with the larger culture. And you can be more of yourself at home or in the local market or in the local church speaking your own language. That was my sense growing up as a Vietnamese refugee in San Jose. — Nguyen Viet Thang
When I was young, it was sort of built to intimidate. Even on this very local level in this very small church in this small town, it still held that sort of - held you in the palm of its darkness. — Bruce Springsteen
You might get rid of the Bishop and get to the local Ku Klux Klan leader. That, on the whole, has been the fate of certain types of Protestantism. They get under the control of a White Citizens Council while the Catholic Church has an authoritarian system, yes, in which the Bishop expresses the conscience of the whole Christian community and they say there are some things that you can't do on this matter. — Reinhold Niebuhr
In Conclusion
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