Inspiring and convicting words about the Christian church:
God has ordained the church to be where his people gather to worship, to be taught the Scriptures, to receive correction, and to enjoy fellowship, among other things. But because Christians are still finite and fallen, they bring their imperfections into church. So there are no perfect churches. But we should have a high view of what God’s church is meant to be and look like.
The following 45 brief quotes from 28 noted Christians speak to this. Most are from more recent authors and pastors. And many of them feature much-needed rebukes and corrections to where much of the church is at today – at least in the West. (And note how many pick up on Lewis’ idea of the church being an outpost.)
Anon
“Don’t build a church that attracts people — build a church that attracts God and God will attract the people.”
Dietrich Bonhoeffer
“The Church is the Church only when it exists for others.”
E. M. Bounds
“The Church is looking for better methods; God is looking for better men. The Holy Ghost does not flow through methods, but through men. He does not come on machinery, but on men. He does not anoint plans, but men…Men of prayer.”
John Calvin
“The pastor ought to have two voices: one, for gathering the sheep; and another, for warding off and driving away wolves and thieves. The Scripture supplies him with the means of doing both.”
Tim Chester and Steve Timmis
“The church is not something additional or optional. It is at the very heart of God’s purposes. Jesus came to create a people who would model what it means to live under His rule. It would be a glorious outpost of the kingdom of God, an embassy of heaven. This is where the world can see what it truly means to be human. Our identity as human beings is found in community. Our identity as Christians is found in Christ’s new community. And our mission takes place through communities of light. Christianity is ‘total church’.”
G. K. Chesterton
“The Church is always defending, on behalf of humanity, what the world at the moment is stupidly attacking.”
Charles Colson
“The church’s job is to equip the saints for works of service in the world.”
Ligon Duncan
“May the Lord raise up churches that display the glory and power of God’s saving grace, outposts of heaven, suburbs of eternity. For the church is God’s strategy, and there is no plan B.”
Billy Graham
“The church isn’t just a particular building or congregation but the spiritual fellowship of all who belong to Jesus Christ. If we belong to Christ, we also belong to each other.”
Vance Havner
“The church is so subnormal that if it ever got back to the New Testament normal it would seem to people to be abnormal.”
C. S. Lewis
“[The New Testament] thinks it is a civil war, a rebellion, and that we are living as part of the universe occupied by the rebel. Enemy-occupied territory—that is what this world is. Christianity is the story of how the rightful king has landed, you might say landed in disguise, and is calling us all to take part in a great campaign of sabotage. When you go to church you are really listening–in to the secret wireless from our friends: that is why the enemy is so anxious to prevent us from going.”
“It was one of the Wesleys, I think, who said that the New Testament knows nothing of solitary religion. We are forbidden to neglect the assembling of ourselves together. Christianity is already institutional in the earliest of its documents.”
Martyn Lloyd-Jones
“When the church is absolutely different from the world, she invariably attracts it. It is then that the world is made to listen to her message, though it may hate it at first.” Martyn Lloyd-Jones
“Do not misunderstand me, but I have a feeling that the Christian Church today is dying of dignity, dying of decorum. Services are beautiful, and perfect, but where is the breath of the Spirit?”
John MacArthur
“Churching the unchurched is an absolute fallacy – it is like purposing to let the tares in. It is absolutely bizarre to want to make unsaved people feel comfortable in a church. The church is not a building – the church is a group of worshiping, redeemed, and sanctified people among whom an unbeliever should feel either miserable, convicted and drawn to Christ, or else alienated and isolated. Only if the church hides its message and ceases to be what God designed the church to be, can it make an unbeliever comfortable.”
F. B. Meyer
“I believe that if there is one thing which pierces the Master’s heart with unutterable grief, it is not the world’s iniquity but the church’s indifference.”
“The Church right now has more fashion than passion, is more pathetic than prophetic, is more superficial than supernatural.”
“The world has lost the power to blush over its vice; the Church has lost her power to weep over it.”
“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?”
“If the fires go out in the boiler room of the church, the place will still look smart and clean… but it will be cold. The prayer room of the church is the boiler room for the spiritual life.”
J. C. Ryle
“If you want to warm a church, put a stove in the pulpit.”
R. C. Sproul
“It is the task of the pastor and of the church to feed the sheep. If someone who is not a sheep comes in, that’s fine, but we’re not going to change the menu and give the sheep goats’ food. Worship is for the sheep.”
Charles Spurgeon
“A church in the land without the Spirit is rather a curse than a blessing. If you have not the Spirit of God, Christian worker, remember that you stand in somebody else’s way; you are a fruitless tree standing where a fruitful tree might grow.”
“The church is not formed to be a social club, to produce society for itself; not to be a political association, to be a power in politics; not even to be a religious confederacy, promoting its own opinions: it is a body created of the Lord to answer His own ends and purposes, and it exists for nothing else.”
“The church is not an institution for perfect people. It is a sanctuary for sinners saved by grace, a nursery for God’s sweet children to be nurtured and grow strong. It is the fold for Christ’s sheep, the home for Christ’s family. The church is the dearest place on earth.”
“The day we find the perfect church, it becomes imperfect the moment we join it.”
Owen Strachan
“Recognize that the church is the outpost of sanctification. In the eyes of the New Testament writers, the local church—ordinary as it may be—is the fundamental work of God on the earth. It is the center of his kingdom. It is the outpost of his gospel. It is the foremost display of his glory. It is the laboratory of sanctification, the entity that, as the dwelling place of God, we are to love, serve, edify, pray for, and devote ourselves to.”
Billy Sunday
“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.”
“Hypocrites in the Church? Yes, and in the lodge and at the home. Don’t hunt through the Church for a hypocrite. Go home and look in the mirror. Hypocrites? Yes. See that you make the number one less.”
“Going to church doesn’t make you a Christian any more than going to a garage makes you an automobile.”
William Temple
“The Church is the only society that exists for the benefit of those who are not its members.”
A. W. Tozer
“It is now common practice in most evangelical churches to offer the people, especially the young people, a maximum of entertainment and a minimum of serious instruction. It is scarcely possible in most places to get anyone to attend a meeting where the only attraction is God. One can only conclude that God’s professed children are bored with Him, for they must be wooed to attend a meeting with a stick of striped candy in the form of religious movies, games and refreshments.”
“Almost everything the Church is doing these days has been suggested to her by the world.”
“To the average church, God is desirable and maybe even useful, but he is not necessary. Most of our churches can get on without God.”
“The church’s mightiest influence is felt when she is different from the world in which she lives. Her power lies in her being different, rises with the degree in which she differs and sinks as the difference diminishes.”
“There is a passion today to be relevant. This, I believe, is one of the gods of the modern church. We will go to great lengths to prove that the message fits in nicely with the culture around us.”
“The Holy Spirit is not necessary to the church; we have arranged it so that he is not required. He has been displaced by what we call ‘programming’ and by social activity.”
“The only power God recognizes in His church is the power of His Spirit; whereas the only power actually recognized today by the majority of evangelicals is the power of man. God does His work by the operation of the Spirit, while Christian leaders attempt to do theirs by the power of trained and devoted intellect. Bright personality has taken the place of the divine afflatus.”
“If the Holy Spirit was withdrawn from the church today, 95 percent of what we do would go on and no one would know the difference. If the Holy Spirit had been withdrawn from the New Testament church, 95 percent of what they did would stop, and everybody would know the difference.”
Andrew Walker
“The church is God’s outpost on the earth bearing institutional witness to God’s mission to the world.”
David Wells
“The temptation the church always experiences is to be like the world. It is the temptation to enjoy the comfort of a majority, to be at home, to be at peace, to have no enemies. Is it not true that we all yearn for such an experience? However, if the church is to be truly successful, it must be unlike anything else we find in life.”
George Whitefield
“The reason why congregations have been so dead is because they have had dead men preach to them.”
Two final quotes from Christian musicians
“I’ve been in Christian music for I don’t know how long. I grew up in the church, you know, which is, it’s hard to be in the church and not be involved in Christian music. In fact, I think the best Christian music is the music of the church. I think that’s what Christian music is really about. And the rest of it, you know, it’s, it’s so funny being a Christian musician because it always scares me when I talk to you guys and you guys think so highly of Christian music, contemporary Christian music especially, because I kind of go, ‘Man, I know a lot of us, and we don’t know jack about anything.’ Not that I don’t want you to buy our records. Or come to our concerts. I sure do. But you should come for entertainment. If you really want spiritual nourishment, you should go to church.” The late Rich Mullins
“What I have seen in the past 10 years of traveling – performing at a church one day and a casino the next- is that a lot of people in the church want to be entertained, and people in casinos want to be ministered to. That’s hard to understand, but I see a hunger in the world that I don’t see in the church.” Ricky Skaggs
Thanks Bill for all those wise quotes. The last paragraph made me think of why, then I remembered my own life going to full time work 5 days a week with a child, house and husband to look after and not going to church or much fellowship and how drained my spirit got which means these people with plenty of entertainment have spirits that need feeding.
Thanks Bill for all those wise quotes. The last paragraph made me think of why, then I remembered my own life going to full time work 5 days a week with a child, house and husband to look after and not going to church or much fellowship and how drained my spirit got which means these people with plenty of entertainment have spirits that need feeding.