Just in terms of allocation of time resources, religion is not very efficient. There’s a lot more I could be doing on a Sunday morning. – Bill Gates (quoted in Chicago Tribune, Jan. 13, 1997)

A world of nice people, content in their own niceness, looking no further, turned away from God, would be just as desperately in need of salvation as a miserable world – and might even be more difficult to save. – C.S. Lewis

We have supplanted:
• Prophets with performers, who lack God's power, perseverance and purpose.
• Pastors with promoters, who often confuse an organization with the Kingdom of God, and who promote an organization with church-growth techniques, and neglect the Growth of the Kingdom of God.
• Proclaiming the truth with prattling trivialities, which amuse and entertain, and which sometimes stimulate and excite, but which do not challenge or transform.
• Preaching with propaganda embracing a false eschatology, which looks for Christ's peace to be produced by a political process, rather than by righteous and separated living.
• Piety with pretense, which replaces sanctification and substance with superficiality and success.
- James L. Holly, M.D.

For a society that’s secular by law, America is a very religious place. Virtually all Americans say they believe in God; 90% say religion is important in their lives; 72% pray every day. – April 1, 1996, USA TODAY

I certainly don’t think that the death required that “ye be born again,” is the death of reason…One of the effects of modern liberal Protestantism has been gradually to turn religion into poetry and therapy, to make truth vaguer and vaguer and more and more relative, to banish intellectual distinctions, to depend on feeling instead of thought, and gradually to come to believe that God has no power, that he cannot communicate with us, cannot reveal himself to us, indeed has not done so, and that religion is our own sweet invention. – Flannery O’Connor in Habit of Being

Religion in our time has been captured by the tourist mindset. Religion is understood as a visit to an attractive site to be made when we have adequate leisure. For some it is a weekly jaunt to church. For others, occasional visits to special services. – Eugene Peterson in A Long Obedience in the Same Direction (quoted in Sharing the Practice, Spr 1996, page 1)

Too much of our orthodoxy is correct and sound, but like words without a tune, it does not glow and burn; it does not stir the heart; it has lost its hallelujah. One man with a genuine glowing experience with God is worth a library full of arguments. – Vance Havner

We have found hundreds that have allowed the “system” to overshadow the Savior…This is not Biblical and it is weakening the church wherever we find it…It’s not new…Jesus had to ask Peter three times, “Lovest thou me more than these?”…consider this seriously…when the system overshadows the Savior you have a sickness that demands serious surgery…God is now performing some of this surgery in His church…Some will recover to shine and bless…some will be laid aside never to be heard from again…a host of others will just plain die leaving no fruit behind them. – Rev. Don Miller

Give up your good Christian life and follow Christ. – Garrison Keillor (quoted in Salt of the Earth, Sept/Oct 1996. Pg. 35)

Religion