Congregation Quotes - Page 4

• I do not like the late resurrection of the Jesuits. . . . If ever any congregation of men could merit eternal perdition on earth, and in hell, according to these historians, though, like Pascal, true Catholics, it is this company of Loyolas.

  John Adams

  Men, Catholic, Earth

  John Adams (1856). “The Works of John Adams, Second President of the United States: With a Life of the Author, Notes and Illustrations”, p.219

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• Men go crazy in congregation. They only get better one by one.

  Sting

  Crazy, Men, Get Better

  Sting (2011). “Sting - Easy Piano Collection (Songbook)”, p.9, Hal Leonard Corporation

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• I think it's easier, I really do, because of not having that similar history, so that's why I think two-thirds of these mixed congregations are either white with Asian and Hispanic, or black with Asian and Hispanic.

  Michael Emerson

  Thinking, White, Two

  Source: www.pbs.org

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• Worship isn't God's show. God is the audience. God's watching. The congregation, they are the actors in this drama. Worship is their show. And the minister is just reminding the people of their forgotten lines.

  Soren Kierkegaard

  Drama, People, Actors

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• I served as a missionary for my church. I served as a pastor in my congregation for about 10 years. I’ve sat across the table from people who were - were out of work and worked with them to try and find new work or to help them through tough times.

  Mitt Romney

  Years, People, Tough Times

  Mitt Romney at the Second Presidential Debate at Hofstra University in Hempstead, New York, www.nytimes.com. October 16, 2012.

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• Why the jailer does not leave open his prison doors,--why the judge does not dismiss his case,--why the preacher does not dismisshis congregation! It is because they do not obey the hint God gives them, nor accept the pardon which he freely offers to all.

  Henry David Thoreau

  Doors, Law, Giving

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• There's a lot of terminology, like "washes whiter than snow," and these things which when they're said in a uniracial congregation, they just go fine. But when they're said in a mixed congregation, some people will get offended and wonder, "Why are you saying that? What are you saying?"

  Michael Emerson

  People, Snow, Wonder

  Source: www.pbs.org

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• That's a big fear, right, and when I talk with black pastors, the same thing: If we try to have this move towards interracial congregations, whites will just dominate then. There are so many more of them, and they're used to being in the position of power. So they'll just take over, and we'll lose the one thing we do have.

  Michael Emerson

  Moving, Position Of Power, Black

  Source: www.pbs.org

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• The Eucharist has been preempted and redefined in dualistic thinking that leaves the status quo of the world untouched, so congregations can take the meal without raising questions of violence; the outcome is a "colonized imagination" that is drained of dangerous hope.

  Walter Brueggemann

  Thinking, Imagination, Meals

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• Modern church music is so constructed that the congregation cannot hear one distinct word.

  Desiderius Erasmus

  Church Music, Modern, Music Is

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• The attention of the congregation is a major part of the attention that the pastor gives to his or her utterance. It's very exceptional. I don't know anyone who doesn't enjoy a good sermon. People who are completely nonreligious know a good sermon when they hear one.

  Marilynne Robinson

  Past, People, Giving

  Source: www.pbs.org

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• If we go into white congregations, non-whites will sometimes say it felt like worship never started. It was sort of dead and didn't feel that warmly received. But so - and there are different realities either way, and it makes it difficult for all groups to try and cross boundaries.

  Michael Emerson

  Reality, White, Trying

  Source: www.pbs.org

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• And he that blasphemeth the name of the Lord, he shall surely be put to death, and all the congregation shall certainly stone him.

  Gary North

  Names, Stones, Lord

  Gary North (1990). “Victim's rights: the biblical view of civil justice”, Inst for Christian Economics

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• A team is not a bunch of people with job titles, but a congregation of individuals, each of whom has a role that is understood by other members.

  Meredith Belbin

  Teamwork, Jobs, People

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• If people don't know their pastor, it's easy to put the pastor on a pedestal and depersonalize him or her. It's also easy for pastors, who don't know their congregations, simply to classify congregants as saved or unsaved, involved or not involved, tithers or non-tithers.

  Eugene H. Peterson

  People, Pedestal, Easy

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• Democracy destroys the unity of the Rumanian nation, dividing it among political parties, making Rumanians hate one another, and thus exposing a divided people to the united congregation of Jewish power at a difficult time in the nation's history. This argument alone is so persuasive as to warrant the discarding of democracy in favor of anything that would ensure our unity - or life itself. For disunity means death.

  Corneliu Zelea Codreanu

  Hate, Party, Mean

  "For My Legionaries: The Iron Guard". Book by Corneliu Zelea Codreanu, 1936.

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• Seventh-Gay Adventists isn't just a helpful movie, important for the way it can help congregations of any denomination deal graciously and truthfully with the issue of homosexuality. It's also a beautifully-filmed and artfully-conceived movie. It does what the best art does - it 'humanizes the other.' You should see it, and when you do, you'll encourage others to see it as well.

  Brian D. McLaren

  Art, Gay, Issues

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• Let’s not forget that American democracy started with ‘We the People’ agreeing to work hard to create ‘a more perfect union.’ We’ve lost the idea that politics begins at home with what happens in families, in neighborhoods, in classrooms, in congregations. We called this democracy into being – and if we want to call this democracy back to its highest values, it’s got to be the us doing that calling. That’s not going to happen if ‘We the People’ don’t know how to talk to one another with civility and hold our differences in a creative, life-giving way.

  Parker J. Palmer

  Hard Work, Home, Ideas

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• For I am verily persuaded the generality of preachers talk of an unknown and unfelt Christ; and the reason why congregations have been so dead is, because they have had dead men preaching to them.

  Gilbert Tennent

  Men, Reason Why, Christ

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• If God really became incarnate, and if His Incarnation can with justice compel man to change his life,then we have no alternative but to conceive of this Incarnation as something which is still present and which will remain present for all future time. ... What happens in the liturgical celebration of the Eucharist is something for which all religions of mankind have exressed longing, dimly sensed was coming, and as a rule even prefigured- the physical presence of the divine Logos made man, and the presence of his sacrificial death, in the midst of the congregation celebrating the mysteries.

  Josef Pieper

  Men, Justice, Logos

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• We complain today that ministers do not know how to preach; but is it not equally true that our congregations do not know how to hear?

  J. I. Packer

  Complaining, Today, Ministers

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• Christ [is] the very essence of all delights and pleasures, the very soul and substance of them. As all the rivers are gathered into the ocean, which is congregation or meeting-place of all waters in the world: so Christ is that ocean in which all true delights and pleasures meet. . . .

  John Flavel

  Ocean, Essence, Rivers

  John Flavel (1699). “The Method of Grace in Bringing Home the Eternal Redemption ... Being the Second Part of Gospel Redemption: Wherein the Great Mystery of Our Union and Communion with Christ is Opened and Applied ...”, p.238

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• HOMILETICS, n. The science of adapting sermons to the spiritual needs, capacities and conditions of the congregation.

  Ambrose Bierce

  Spiritual, Science, Needs

  Ambrose Bierce (2016). “The Devil's Dictionary: The Devil World”, p.91, 谷月社

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• Prosperity Gospel”. At his United Church Science of Living Institute in New York he would tell his congregation “close your eyes and see green. Money up to your armpits, a roomful of money and there you are, just tossing around in it like a swimming pool.

  Reverend Ike

  New York, Eye, Swimming

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• On summer evenings, when every flower, and tree, and bird, might have better addressed my soft young heart, I have in my day been caught in the palm of a female hand by the crown, have been violently scrubbed from the neck to the roots of the hair as a purification for the Temple, and have then been carried off highly charged with saponaceous electricity, to be steamed like a potato in the unventilated breath of the powerful Boanerges Boiler and his congregation, until what small mind I had, was quite steamed out of me

  Charles Dickens

  Funny, Summer, Powerful

  Charles Dickens (1870). “Novels”, p.57

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