"Take away the cross from the Bible, and it's a dark book." - J. C.Ryle

"The cross of Christ destroyed the equation 'religion equals happiness.'" - Dietrich Bonhoeffer

"[Somehow] we never see God in failure, but only in success - a strange attitude for people who have the cross as the center of their faith." - Cheryl Forbes in The Religion of Power

"The cross is rough and it is deadly, but it is effective." - A. W. Tozer, in The Pursuit of God

"If that was God on that cross, then the hill called Skull is a granite studded with stakes to which you can anchor." - Max Lucadoa

Cross

"It used to be said that the Victorians of the nineteenth century talked incessantly about death but were silent about sex, whereas today we talk incessantly about sex and are silent about death…In today's culture we chatter incessantly about both sex and death. Now there is nothing we cannot talk about in polite company. It is a great liberation. And a great loss, if in fact both sex and death partake a mystery. Mystery is attended by a fitting reticence." - Richard John Neuhaus, First Things

"Death: God's way of telling you not to be such a wise guy.

"Sure, it's going to kill a lot of people, but they may be dying of something else anyway." - Othal Brand, member of a Texas pesticide review board, on chlordane

"If you attempt to talk with a dying man about sports or business, he is no longer interested. He now sees other things as more important. People who are dying recognize what we often forget, that we are standing on the brink of another world." - William Law in Christian Perfection, a contemporary paraphrase by Marvin D. Hinten

"The most interesting time of human life, I think, is when your heart stops, and for between 2 and 15 minutes, your brain is still running, I think the most interesting part of my life is going to happen in those 2 to 15 minutes. Because time doesn't exist then. When the body's gone and you've got 120 billion neurons whirring, it's like LSD. More can happen in one minute than in a thousand lifetimes". - LSD guru Timothy Leary

"I mean, there's no control in life, is there? There's only one who's in control, and He'll take me when He wants me. I don't want to know about it. It's none of my business. But when it happens, I just ask that it won't be painful and that He forgives my sins." - Actor/comedian Chris Farley, who died of a drug overdose at the age of 33, Rolling Stone, Feb. 5

"So many Americans watched as Cardinal Bernardin faced his mortality... I think we were all edified by his acceptance of death as a friend and not an enemy. Any religion that doesn't deal with death realistically is not worth its salt." - Archbishop Rembert Weakland in New York Times Magazine (March 9, 1997)

"Approaching the end of life through the lens of assisted suicide is like looking through the wrong end of binoculars; the view is narrowed and distorted. Dying can be a rich and meaningful time. We must raise standards of clinical practice, reform medical education, and adopt health policy that expands access to comprehensive palliative care without pauperizing families in the process." - Dr. Ira Brock, hospice physician (quoted in Washington Post, Jan. 2, 1997)

Death

"A nation's morality used to be measured by its civic virtue - how society treated its citizens, whether justice and fairness prevailed, whether people were free to pursue happiness in their own way, and whether it was safe to be different from the majority. [Based on that definition of morality], the '50s were a time of moral depravity. The notion that we are a less moral nation today than we were in the '50s is a monument to historical revisionism." - ACLU leader Ira Glasser (quoted in Youthworker Update, Jan 1996)

"While religious pluralism may be a novel experience for us, it is putting us in touch with the world that surrounded the biblical authors...The pluralism and the paganism of our time were the common experience of the prophets and apostles. In Mesopotamia, there were thousands of gods and goddesses, many of which were known to the Israelites--indeed, sometimes known too well... Nothing, therefore, could be more remarkable than to hear the contention, even from those within the Church, that the existence of religious pluralism today makes belief in the uniqueness of Christianity quite impossible. Had this been the necessary consequence of encountering a multitude of other religions, Moses, Isaiah, Jesus, and Paul would have given up biblical faith long before it became fashionable...to do so." - David Wells in No Place for Truth, or Whatever Happened to Evangelical Theology?

"To know and to serve God, of course, is why we're here, a clear truth that, like the nose on your face, is near at hand and easily discernible but can make you dizzy if you try to focus on it hard. But a little faith will see you through. What else will do except faith in such a cynical, corrupt time? When the country goes temporarily to the dogs, cats must learn to be circumspect, walk on fences, sleep in trees, and have faith that all this woofing is not the last word." - Garrison Keillor in We Are Still Married

"This manipulation of reality may provide us with exciting games, entertainment, but it will substitute not a virtual reality, but a pseudo-reality, so subtly deceptive, as to raise the levels of public suspicion and disbelief beyond what any society can tolerate." - Alvin Toffler, futurist author discussing virtual-reality video games. Bloomburg Business News, Aug. 7, 1994

"Western culture has made a fundamental change in its religious base. We have exchanged that One who said, 'I am the Truth' (John 14:6) for the incredibly expensive doctrine of Freud and the words of all his varied disciples. Our new religion says with Pontius Pilate, 'What is truth?' and teaches that our status is one of 'original victim' rather than 'original sin.'" - Carol Tharp in a letter to the Chicago Tribune Magazine (Apr. 17, 1994)

"Recently, there's been a trend in America that I find very disturbing... rewarding immoral and illegal behavior... for example, we now give free needles to junkies, which seems to me to be only a step away from giving condoms to rapists. "- Bill Maher quoted in Books & Culture, Nov./Dec. 1996

"Schools do more damage than good when they address only the secular elements of religious holidays. This trivializes religion, withholding important learning, while blinking the message that religion is dangerous and divisive. Public schools don't exist to promote religion, but they don't exist to marginalize it either, or to promote secularism as a dominant religion... Religion is an important social force. Marginalizing it or banning neutral instruction about it from the schools is not a neutral act." - John Leo in U.S. News & World Report, Dec. 30, 1996

"It is no accident that the values and virtues that were once commonplace in America began to disappear with the explosion of government over the past 40 years. As government has become more dominant, providing programs to meet every need, the social safety net has become a hammock. As individuals have turned to government for help, they have turned away from sources of real solutions: family, work, and faith." - Phil Gramm and Gary Bauer (In Wall Street Journal, Aug. 30, 1995)

"We're happy to give our audience what they enjoy. Self-righteous nobility is extraordinarily unappealing. I will have none of it." - UPN President and CEO Dean Valentine explaining why his network has un-apologetically chosen to air some of the trashiest programs on television today (EW Daily, 12/14/00)

"As soon as television was possible, everyone was watching it, and people would have be influenced by it, either positively or negatively." - Actor Alan Alda on the power of TV

"The studio kept saying it was going to get guys after football, drinking beer. But I kept telling them that I have a female following too. That it wasn't just prisoners and firemen. It was 12-year-old girls." - Actress Pamela Lee, referring to her syndicated television show, V.I.P., and its reliance on sex appeal to lure viewers

"If you're putting stuff in your brain every day about killing this person, or for that matter, just disrespecting somebody...somehow that's going to influence you." - reformed frat rapper Mike D of the popular 90s music group Beastie Boys

"In my case, it was hard living, drinking hard and eating poorly. You play, you pay." - Actor Matthew Perry

"Half the business called Hollywood is sleaze. A lot of what we do has very little to do with art. It has to do with sleaze and gratuitous sex and unnecessary violence." - Actor Martin Sheen

"You can bury my TV. There's nothing watch - just bad things and naked people." - an elderly Moscow woman after an antenna fire disrupted television broadcasting in the Russian capital

"Some say the music is loud, stupid, excessive, vulgar, and appeals to the basic animal instinct. That's why we play it." - MTV promotional advertisement (quoted in Parental Guidance, Apr. 15, 1995)

"The Marine Corps is finding out that families, churches, and schools are falling down on the job of teaching your people morals. So they're adding an entire week to boot camp, time that will be devoted to teaching values and ethics." - Insight, Aug. 5, 1996

"We should not expect those outside the household of God to adopt every position firmly rooted in Scripture and the Judeo-Christian tradition. 'By our activism, often poorly conceived, we have created an image of rigid, prejudiced people. More and more Americans will feel entirely justified and respectable saying no to the church. They may not be rejecting Jesus, just the people who profess to follow Him. Abortion and homosexuality are unquestionably wrong. But these are not the core issues of the faith. Let's make the main thing the main thing: raising up Jesus Christ as the Son of God and Savior of sinners.'" - David Rambo, president of the Christian and Missionary Alliance (quoted in Leadership, Spr 1993)

"The video tape of history seems stuck on fast rewind - as our post-Christian era comes to resemble the pre-Christian era: Material affluence amid moral decadence...in a time of despondency and despair over the hubristic follies of our own republic, Christ's road remains open. We had the truth, we can find it again." - Patrick Buchanan in the Washington Times (April 11, 1993)

"The nineties may soon be the new sixties. However, whereas those who were part of the sixties generation had the older traditional values as an anchor (even while they rejected them), those of the nineties have no such value system to which they can retreat. The only thing left is hedonism. But it's not a hedonism anchored in 'secular humanism' or secularism. It is a hedonism anchored in a new form of paganism." - John Whitehead, Rutherford, January 1993

Culture Wars

"We live in a time of unprecedented discoveries, many of which tend to make life longer and living more comfortable and enjoyable. But with change and progress the inexorable law of change and decay also operates. Strange that so few in this world prepare for the inevitable." - L. Nelson Bell

Depravity

"Mental and emotional depression are the new maladies of modern man. They are diseases as surely as cancer or diabetes. To dismiss them with a thoughtless statement like 'there's sin in your life,' or 'it's a demon,' is a display of ignorance that reveals a lack of compassion and trivializes the suffering of others." - Ron Dunn

"As an evangelical theologian, I think the teaching about disease and healing in the Modern Faith movement is both heretical and often cruel. This approach largely follows the idea that sickness - depression and other emotional problems - is always caused by unbelief and sin. The claim is that God has done all he is going to do to provide perfect healing in Christ's spiritual atonement in hell, not his physical death on the cross. If a believer fails to appropriate this perfect healing it is because of unbelief or sin. The Apostle Paul's illness and need of a personal physician is enough to cast serious doubt upon Faith teachers' claims that a believer can and should always manifest perfect health." - Dr. Ken Hemphill

Depression

"We have proved beyond any doubt that He means what He says - His grace is sufficient, nothing can separate us from the love of Christ. We pray that if any, anywhere, are fearing that the cost of discipleship is too great, that they may be given to glimpse that treasure in heaven promised to all who forsake. - Elisabeth Elliot, on behalf of the five widows of slain missionaries to Ecuador one year after their deaths"

"Jesus promised his disciples three things: that they would be entirely fearless, absurdly happy, and that they would get into trouble." - W. Russell Maltby

"Mieczyslaw Malinski writes: 'It's easiest to see the cross on Jesus' shoulders. It's a bit harder with our neighbor's cross. Most difficult of all is seeing our own cross.' And sometimes even more difficult is to see it on the shoulders of a congregation, especially our own congregation. Yet crossbearing is for the body of Christ, as well as the individual." - Katie Funk Wiebe in the Christian Leader (Feb. 1995)

"It is not up to you to complete the work, nor are you at liberty to give it up." - from the Pirke Avoth (2:18)

"The dogs of doubt never sleep long. Our peace is forever stalked by two predators. The first is our culture of convenience. We are the well-fed, the secure. We are lovers of the large plate and the broad sofa. Material abundance keeps us from seeking any other kind…Our love of convenience trains us to believe that we can have as much as we want, of whatever we want, whenever we want it…No matter what life gives us, we always want more…We are walking wanton. The second predator that stalks our peace is narcissism. Narcissists worship themselves. This self-love produces only those inner values that we ourselves can create…When our self-contrived image begins to crumble, we always crave a more solid foundation; for 'the solid foundation of God stands, having this seal: 'The Lord knows those who are His'" (2 Tim. 2:19). - Calvin Miller in The Unchained Soul

Discipleship

"Life is this simple. We are living in a world that is absolutely transparent, and God is shining through it all the time. That is not just fable or a nice story. It is true. If we abandon ourselves to God and forget ourselves, we see it sometimes, and we see it maybe frequently. God shows Himself everywhere, in everything-in people and in things and in nature and in events. It becomes very obvious that God is everywhere and in everything and we cannot be without Him. It's impossible. The only thing is is that we don't see it." - Thomas Merton in a 1965 audiotape.

"To look up out at this kind creation and not believe in God is to me impossible. It just strengthens my faith." - Astronaut John Glenn

"Data collected by the Hubble telescope indicates that there is another galaxy racing toward our own Milky Way at 300,000 miles per hour. The devastating collision could occur a mere five billion years from now." - Newsweek Dec. 29, 1997, pg. 132.

"Tell a man there are 300 billion stars in the universe and he'll believe you. Tell him a bench has wet paint on it and he'll have to touch it to be sure." - Jarger

"Darwinism demolished the literal interpretation of the biblical creation story. The theory of evolution is a well-established theory, not speculative and on the fringe of science. The consensus of science today is that the theory of evolution is a powerful theory indeed, extremely well-supported by evidence." - Kitty Ferguson (in The Fire in the Equations: Science, Religion, and the Search for God, Eerdmans, 1996, pg. 2)

"What if the rain be falling, and the wind blowing? What if we stand alone, or, more painful still, have some dear one beside us, sharing our outness? What even if the window be not shining, because of the curtains of good inscrutable drawn across it? Let us think to ourselves, or say to our friend, "God is; Jesus is not dead. Nothing can be going wrong, however it may look so to hearts unfinished in childness." - George MacDonald in Creation in Christ

"According to most philosophers, God in making the world enslaved it. According to Christianity, in making it, He set it free. God had written not so much a poem, but rather a play; a play he had planned as perfect, but which had necessarily been left to human actors and stagemanagers, who had since made a great mess of it." - G. K. Chesterton in Orthodoxy

"I think it says something that the only form of life that we have created so far is purely destructive. Talk about creating life in our own image." - Stephen W. Hawking telling a computer convention that computer viruses represent the only life form wholly created by humans.

"If God had done all he could have done he would still be doing it. But he set it aside, sanctified it and rested." - Anonymous

"The sun and its nine known planets constitute one small dot in 1 trillion such universes that make up what we call the Milky Way galaxy. That is not all. The Milky Way, measuring 100,000 light-years from edge to edge, is one of an estimated 1 billion such galaxies known to be in space. The 200-inch Mt. Palomar telescope, penetrating 2 billion light years into space, cannot find the outer limit of the galaxies. If the psalmist could look with the human eye into the heavens and understand their witness to the glory of God. All creation is an outstretched finger pointing toward God." - Robert Cowles in The Alliance Witness

"Criticism is easy; achievement is more difficult" - Winton Churchill in Churchill on Courage

"If one man calls you a donkey, pay him no mind. If two men call you a donkey, look for hoofprints. If three call you a donkey, get a saddle." - Unknown

"Be more concerned with your character than with your reputation, because your character is what you really are, while your reputation is merely what others think you are." - John Wooden

"The secret of success is to keep the five guys who hate you away from the five guys who haven't made up their minds." - Casey Stengel, legendary baseball manager (1891-1975)

"It's not what they say about you; it's what they whisper." - Errol Flynn

"We will do nothing at all if we wait to be sure that no one will be able to find fault with what we do." - Cardinal Newman (quoted in Pulpit Digest, Mar/Apr 1997, pg. 50)

"A certain amount of discontent is inevitable. Not every infection calls for a massive dose of penicillin. At least two types of situations call for criticism to be confronted and refuted. One is if the criticism affects the health of the body. The other time I probably need to respond directly to criticism is - unfortunately - when I don't want to. Recent studies on self-esteem suggest that most issues involving our sense of worth revolve around approach/avoidance tendencies. That is, when we sense ourselves avoiding something out of fear, we interpret ourselves as wimping out, and our self-esteem drops proportionately." - John Ortbert

"If I were to try to read, much less answer, all the attacks made on me, this shop might as well be closed for any other business. I do the very best I know how - the very best I can; and I mean to keep doing so until the end. If the end brings me out all right, what is said against me won't amount to anything. If the end brings me out wrong, ten angels swearing I was right would make no difference. "- Abraham Lincoln (quoted in Ministries Today, Nov/Dec 1995)

"Attackers within the church always lack historical perspective, thus repeating history's mistakes: The death of spiritual awakenings always takes place when leaders shoot at each other." - Anonymous

"If you want to avoid criticism, say nothing, do nothing, be nothing!" - Anonymous

"It is only at trees bearing good fruit that stones are thrown." - Anonymous

"The trouble with most of us is that we would rather be ruined by praise than saved by criticism." - Anonymous

"He has the right to criticize who has the heart to help." - Abraham Lincoln

Creation

"We have a Christianity without the 'cup' and the cross, a line-of-least-resistance faith." - Charles Stanley

"Berkeley church seeks minister for local nondenominational congregation. Position open to Christians and non-Christians." - from a classified ad in Christian Century, Nov. 6, 1996.

"Christianity in modern America is, in large part, innocuous. It tends to be easy, upbeat, convenient, and compatible. It does not require self-sacrifice, discipline, humility, an other-worldly out-look, a zeal for souls, a fear as well as love of God." - Thomas Reeves (quoted in Servant, Winter 1997, page 2)

"When the church accommodates worldly culture, it deserves both the internal decay and external contempt it suffers." - Andrew Sandlin (in "Chalcedon Report", Sept. 1997, page)

"Compromise does not seem to be as objectionable to Southern Baptists when it is practiced by one's friends. And, we Southern Baptists can often be so excited and gratified by our personal participation in events, that we are no longer as willing to confront the compromised process with the passion with which we confronted it when we were not participants."- James L. Holly, M.D.

"Be on your guard against the tendency of this generation to paste a piece of blank paper over all the threatenings of the Bible." - A. Maclaren

"If you don't entertain - you can't communicate." - Rick Hughes

"In matters of style, swim with the current. In matters of principle, stand like a rock." - Thomas Jefferson

"The 'fifth gospel, the book of Ego,' …'We attempt to make Jesus' gospel a little more palatable. We live like we have a conviction that He really didn't mean us to take Him so seriously, like we're trying to improve on what He taught. That's the number one temptation for the rest of our life, doing only what we like.'" - Anonymous

"Powerlessness = worldly compromise." - Anonymous

"Once we assuage our conscience by calling something a 'necessary evil,' it begins to look more and more necessary and less and less evil." - Anonymous

"Everything is WRONG that is ALMOST RIGHT." - Anonymous

"For the past 30 years the Church has consistently taken her behavioral cues from the world, often putting Christian labels on popular trends. Many in both the Church and the secular society in America ended the 60s with this conclusion: society's evil seems surmountable and my ideals could not be made tangible by my efforts. We were externally strong and internally weak." - Anonymous

Compromise

"The core problem is not that we are too passionate about bad things, but that we are not passionate enough about good things." - Larry Crabb in Finding God

"If I could just get to the place in my life where all I wanted for my life was simply all that God wanted for my life, then all of my life, I would have all I wanted, and He would have all of me He wanted." - Dr. Tom Elliff

"Somebody should tell us, right at the start of life, that we are dying. Then we might live life to the limit, every minute... whatever you want to do, do it now! There are only so many tomorrows." - Michael Landon

"Certain it is that the reason there is so much shallow living, much talk, but little obedience, is that so few are prepared to be, like the pine on the hill-top, alone in the wind for God." - Amy Carmichael in Learning of God

"I am His by purchase and I am His be conquest; I am His by donation and I am His by election; I am His by covenant and I am His by marriage; I am wholly His; I am peculiarly His; I am universally His; I am eternally His. Once I was a slave but now I am a son; once I was dead but now I am alive; once I was darkness but now I am light in the Lord; once I was a child of wrath, an heir of hell, but now I am an heir of heaven; once I was Satan's bondman but now I am God's freeman; once I was under the spirit of bondage but now I am under the Spirit of adoption that seals up to me the remission of my sins, the justification of my person and the salvation of my soul." - Thomas Brooks

"When a man says the church seats are too hard and uncomfortable - then goes on Saturday to sit for hours in a drizzle watching 22 men push one another back and forth across a mud lot - who is he kidding?" - Anonymous

"When General Booth was asked what had been the secret of his success, he replied, "…from the day I got the poor of London on my heart and a vision of what Jesus Christ would do for them, I made up my mind that God should have all of William Booth there was; and if anything has been achieved, it is because God has had all the adoration of my heart, all the power of my will, and all the influence of my life."

"This is an intensely religious nation, but people don't want the church saying anything about their wallets or their bedrooms. We want 'God Lite.' Everybody believes in God, in religious experiences, in life after death, and in justice. Nobody believes it has anything to do with the nuts and bolts of our lives." - Terry Mattingly (quoted in Christian Research Journal, Sum 1995)

"Bad decisions can alter your life." - Rick Hughes

"Where are our wounds? Is there nothing to fight for? How complacent are we about the world's causes, both great and small? Have we accepted with weak resignation that nothing can change, and that to try isn't worth the effort? Perhaps the call to comfort rings louder than the call to bear a cross…If the church is the body of Christ, as Paul claims, shouldn't it also have some wounds? Yet too often, churches avoid controversy. A pastor at mid-life wrote, "Wherever the Apostle Paul went, there was a riot. Wherever I go, they serve tea." - Craig V. Anderson in the Christian Century (Jan. 29, 1992)

"We have to give ourselves wholeheartedly to God, and if we fail, we must give ourselves again. We all need daily forgiveness for our sins and failures. But what matters is whether we want to be faithful - faithful to the end of our lives. This means surrendering everything - our self-will, our hopes for personal happiness, our private property, even our weaknesses - and believing in God and in Christ. This is all that is asked of anyone. Jesus does not expect perfection, but he wants us to give ourselves wholeheartedly." - J. Heinrich Arnold in Discipleship: Living for Christ in the Daily Grind

"It is not for us to decide our own destinies. It is not for us to say we shall not be overwhelmed by certain storms. We do not know how hard the trial is yet to be. This, however, we can say. "Sink me if You will, or save me if You will, but whatever happens I will never drift. I will steer straight; I will keep my rudder true." - Anonymous

"A committee is a group of people who meet and decide that no one can do any thing!" - Anonymous

"I would rather be in this chair knowing Him, than on my feet without Him." - Joni

"Most churches are neck deep in talent and ankle deep in commitment." - Anonymous

"Challenging the young people not to become like a tumbleweed, which has been uprooted and becomes "a slave to the wind." Instead, he encouraged them to plant their "roots firmly in the things that matter" - living for Christ." - Grady Nutt

"Struggle is God's gift. Charismatic people are often the most vulnerable, and may collapse from sheer cockiness." - Anonymous

"This hour in history needs a dedicated circle of transformed nonconformists. The saving of our world from pending doom will come not from the action of a conforming majority but from the creative maladjustment of a dedicated minority." - Martin Luther King, Jr.

Commitment

"What marks a 'healthy' church? Crucial to the answer is Mt. 18:20: 'For where two or three are gathered together in my name, there am I in the midst…' Christ Himself must be the central focus-not a pastor, gripping sermons, a strong missionary emphasis, exciting youth programs, compatible fellow members, or even agreeable doctrines, important as all these factors are. A fervent love for Christ and a heartfelt corporate worship of His Person must be the primary mark of a healthy church. It isn't primarily a matter of my need, my edification, my enjoyment, or my spiritual satisfaction, but of His worth in my eyes and the eyes of the church." - Dave Hunt (in The Berean Call, Feb. 1993)

"A Zulu proverb says that when a thorn pierces the foot, the whole body must bend over to pull it out. This kind of interdependence is a basic characteristic of the church." - Larry Miller, executive secretary of the Mennonite World Conference (quoted in Salt, Jul/Aug 1994)

"Church ministries fall into two categories - obligations, opportunities."

"While the calendar says it is 1996, we are living in the 21st century. The calendar simply has not kept up with the culture. And in terms of the mission and ministry opportunities before the church, the 21st century is going to be more like the first century than most of the 2,000 intervening years." - NetFax, Apr. 15, 1996 (pg. 1)

"A church is no stronger than its fellowship and no bigger than its visitation." - anonymous

"God never intended His church to be a refrigerator in which to preserve perishable piety. He intended it to be an incubator in which to hatch the faithful." - anonymous

"Someone suggested that in most communities the Christian movement is there to negotiate peace with the devil and God and just keep everything quiet. They represent, for the most part, a gentle God, who has a soft word to say against this world of sin. And yet, the facts are, we represent a hostile God who is totally opposed to this world's system, and who is not open to negotiate for no peace with the devil. He's not gentle toward evil." - E.V. Hill

"Anyone can love the ideal church. The challenge is to love the real church." - Bishop Joseph McKinney

"I am not content to believe that it was the plan of God that the church should begin in a flame of fire and end up in a fizzle of faithlessness. Jesus Christ is the same today! He is the Unchanging Overcomer in us and through our obedience to Him we become habitual overcomers!" - Jack Taylor

"To the extent that the church has touched others with the exciting good news, to that degree it has been blessed with the abundance of God. And to the degree the church has busied itself about other things to the exclusion of this great work, it has become little more than a secular force for good…if that." - George Fuller

"One who ignores the church is like a man who builds a house without windows and then blames God because he has to live in the dark! - anonymous

"I believe more profoundly in the church every hour that I live. A man can make his testimony go further through the church than through any independent movements. He can make his money, his testimony, and all his work go further. He can do more constructive work through the church than any other way in the world. That is my deepest conviction. I have watched all kinds of independent movements, and my conviction steadily deepens that a Christian is doing the wisest thing possible when he links his life with the church." - G. W. Truett

"The means and end of building the household of faith are distinctively ordained by God and not discovered through sociological analysis or psychological profiles. The latest trends and popular expectations do not change the church's agenda or alter its course. The Church remains focused on eternal truths. It is sustained not by numbers or worldly recognition - which may in fact be detrimental to its effectiveness - but by the Word and the Spirit of God. - Douglas D. Webster, in Selling Jesus: What's Wrong with Marketing the Church"

"I love Thy kingdom, Lord,
The house of Thine abode,
The church our blest Redeemer saved
With His own precious blood.
I love Thy church, O God:
Her walls before Thee stand,
Dear as the apple of Thine eye,
And graven on Thy hand.
For her my tears shall fall,
For her my prayers ascend;
To her my cares and toils be giv'n,
Till toils and cares shall end."

- Timothy Dwight (1752-1817)

"What would my church be if all the members were just like me?" - anonymous

"The church does not exist to ask what needs doing to keep the world running smoothly and then to motivate our people to go do it. The Church is not to be judged by how useful we are as a 'supportive institution' and our clergy as members of a 'helping profession.' The Church has its own reason for being, hid within its own mandate and not found in the world." - Stanley Hauerwas and William Willimon in Resident Aliens

"In the beginning the church was a fellowship of men and women centering on the living Christ. Then the church moved to Greece, where it became a philosophy. Then it moved to Rome, where it became an institution. Next, it moved to Europe, where it became a culture. And finally, it moved to America, where it became an enterprise." - Richard Halverson, former chaplain of the U.S. Senate (quoted in The Awesome Power of Shared Beliefs, Word, 1995)

"The church is like the ark. You wouldn't be able to stand the stink inside if it weren't for the storm outside." Neil Anderson at the Global Conference on Prayer Evangelism (Nov 1995)

"The Church of God apart from the Person of Christ is a useless structure. However ornate it may be in its organization, however perfect in all its arrangements, however rich and increased with goods, if the Church is not revealing the Person, lifting Him to the height where all men can see Him, then the Church becomes an impertinence and a sham, a blasphemy and a fraud, and the sooner the world is rid of it, the better." - G. Campbell Morgan in Giant Steps

"Jesus Christ has called His church to set a standard, not to gain a following. If in setting that standard, the church does gain a following, all the better. If, however, the church fails to set the standard and then gains a following, it will be to her detriment." - Joseph Webb, in Till Death Do Us Part? 1992

"I look at the 350,000 religious congregations in this country - with an average membership of roughly 100 people each - and I think of what those 35 million Christians could accomplish. The potential is awesome. We have five times more churches than post offices and 35 times more churches than McDonald's restaurants. The church is clearly the most sustainable local organization, yet I hear so little about the role the church and its members can play in the process of reconciling and healing lives." - Dr. Virgil Gulker

"We'd have a hard time coming up with a topic that creates more bitterness and strife in the church than the doctrine of the church. Isn't that cozy?" - Pastor Steve Schlissel, in Chalcedon Report, Jan 1997, page 7

"It is surprising how easily we can see the place of the church community in terms of social reform in some directions but not in others. The Church stands usually against liquor and the liquor 'interests,' that is, the business of liquor. The church community is always against organized vice, against narcotics. In the past the Church as such took a stand against slavery and felt called upon to speak out against child labor even when such speaking hurt profits. We accept these victories over injustice in former days as assumptions of the position of the Church in our own day; it is harder to see in our contemporary scene just what it is that the Church is called upon to do." - Addison Leitch, Oct. 15, 1956

"If you are too busy or too tired to attend worship services regularly, you are just too busy to die; but you will anyway." - anonymous

Church

There is plenty of room for cultural diversity in the world, but not within a single country. A Tower of Babel has not culture. One cannot be a Christian one day, a pagan the next and a Muslim the day after. A hodgepodge of cultural and religious values provides no basis for law-except the raw power of the pre-Christian past. All Americans have a huge stake in Christianity. Whether or not we are individually believers in Christ, we are beneficiaries of the moral doctrine that has curbed the power and protected the weak." -Paul Craig Roberts (December 29, 1999)

"The nation's problems are not the result of too much religion practiced too fervently, but of too little religion practiced infrequently." -Cal Thomas

"Preach the gospel at all times. If necessary, use words." -Francis of Assisi

"Christianity can be condensed into these words: submit, commit, transmit." -Wilberforce

"If your religion does not change you, then you should change your religion." - Elbert Hubbard

"To refer to oneself as a black Christian, white Christian, Mexican Christian, or Chinese Christian is technically incorrect. Our Christianity should never be modified by our culture. Our Christianity should modify our culture. We must see ourselves as Christian blacks, Christian whites, Christian Mexicans, or Christian Chinese. The Bible teaches…that we are Christians who may happen to be black, white, brown, or yellow. If anything changes, it is to be our cultural orientation, not our Christianity." -Tony Evans in 'Good News", November/December 1996

"Let's study the doctrines and be serious about it and look at the Bible not so much for what God is going to give us with a magic wand as for what we're going to be able to do as members of the Kingdom of God to serve that Kingdom." - Anonymous

"Many Christians feel more comfortable with the idea that apart from Christ they can do nothing, than they do with the other side of that coin: that they can do all things through Him who strengthens them. "I can do nothing" lets me off the hook; "I can do all things" makes me wonder why I'm not doing anything. It's easier to piddle around wondering whether it's God's will that you rent this apartment or that one, than it is to face up to God's ultimate will for you: that you become conformed to the image of His Son." - John Boykin in The Gospel of Coincidence

"So much so-called "testimony" today is really autobiography and even sometimes thinly disguised self-advertisement, that we need to regain a proper biblical perspective. All true testimony is testimony to Jesus Christ, as he stands on trial before the world." - John Stott in Authentic Christianity

"Press attention has been to stereotype all Christians as flamboyant frauds. Current caricature of Christian leaders is unfair and untrue." - Charles Colson

"A woodpecker tapped with his beak against the stem of a tree just as lightning struck the tree and destroyed it. He flew away and said, "I didn't know there was so much power in my beak!" When we bring the Gospel there is a danger that we will think or say, "I have done a good job." Don't be a silly woodpecker. Know where your strength comes from. It is only the Holy Spirit who can make a message good and fruitful." - Corrie Ten Boom in Each New Day

"The distinctive messages of the world's various religions and philosophies have been epitomized as follows. Greece said, "Be wise, know yourself." Rome said, "Be strong, acquit yourself." Confucianism says, "Be superior; correct yourself." Shintoism says, "Be loyal; suppress yourself." Buddhism says, "Be disillusioned; annihilate yourself." Hinduism says, "Be absorbed; merge yourself." Mohammedanism says, "Be submissive; yield yourself." Judaism says, "Be holy, conform yourself." Modern psychology says, "Be self-confident; fulfill yourself." Modern materialism says, "Be acquisitive, enjoy yourself." Modern Communism says, "Be collective, secure yourself." But in characteristic contrast to all these, Christianity says, "BE CHRISTLIKE; GIVE YOURSELF FOR OTHERS." JESUS IS LORD!" - J. Sidlow Baxter

"Church has to be more than warming pews and occupying pulpits. God intended it to be a corporate reflection of what life in Christ is all about. Until this happens, we should not wonder that the world hardly notices us. Until we reflect the real, spontaneous, authentic life in Christ, we will be little more than saints frozen in time." - Joseph M. Stowell

"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

"You cannot have Christian principles without Christ." - D.L. Sayers

"Christians are in an awkward intermediate stage in Western culture: having once been culturally established, they are not yet clearly disestablished. This helps make liberalism attractive, since it keeps people vaguely related to the church. Through translation, we attempt to show that Christians are really interested in what interests "the best" in our culture. We translate Christian eschatological hopes into Marxist revolutionary ones, or we translate salvation into self-fulfillment. Our bishops speak out on "important issues," showing society that the church cares about the same things society cares about -- and in the same way. We keep people interested in the church even though they no longer worship its God." - William H. Willimon in The Christian Century, Jan. 28, 1987

"I spent sometime today with a fellow I admire very much. He doesn't drink alcoholic beverages, nor use tobacco in any form. I never heard him gossip or tell a lie. He doesn't patronize the road houses, or theaters or dance halls. I can't recall him ever resorting to cursing or blasphemy, profanity or obscenity. I never heard of him cheating another in a business deal. By some folks' standards we could call him a "good Christian." But I think you ought to know that I have been describing my dog. Which is all to say that being a "good Christian" involves infinitely more than having a list of things one does not do. "But put ye on the Lord Jesus Christ..." (Rom. 13:14) is the scriptural admonition." - J. Douthitt

Christianity