Congregation Quotes - Page 5

• I am accounted by some people as a good man. How cheap that character is acquired! Pay your debts, don't borrow money, nor twist your kitten's neck off, nor disturb a congregation, etc., your business is done. I know things of myself, which would make every friend I have fly me as a plague patient.

  Charles Lamb

  Business, Character, Men

  Charles Lamb (1884). “Little essays, sketches and characters, by C. Lamb, selected from his letters by P. Fitzgerald”

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• I found myself in a maze where I'd taken the wrong turn. In my wish to do well for that congregation I wasn't doing particularly well for myself or my friends or my family, and I even found that the work for God was taking me away from God.

  Barbara Brown Taylor

  Taken, Wish, Mazes

  Source: www.pbs.org

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• You probably can't get much closer to God than serving a congregation 24/7. At the same time, there's a different kind of closeness in this present life I have in which I have much more freedom to come and go and to engage some of the silence and stillness and solitude that I was missing before.

  Barbara Brown Taylor

  Silence, Missing, Solitude

  Source: www.pbs.org

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• So we didn't get the denominations and the separate congregations really till about into Civil War time. What's happened then, of course, is now that we've had well over 100 years of this history to establish separate cultures, different ways of worshipping, and different ways of understanding theology so that when people try to come together makes it very difficult. And then, of course, social networks, you know, how do we find a place to worship?

  Michael Emerson

  War, Years, People

  Source: www.pbs.org

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• Jesus our Lord is Prophet, Priest, and King. The concept is not new, yet many preachers never preach it, and many congregations never hear it.

  Aiden Wilson Tozer

  Jesus, Kings, Lord

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• In Freethinkers Hall, which before the Nazi resurgence was the national headquarters of the German Freethinkers League, the Berlin Protestant church authorities have opened a bureau for advice to the public in church matters. Its chief object is to win back former churchgoers and assist those who have not previously belonged to any religious congregation in obtaining church membership. The German Freethinkers League, which was swept away by the national revolution, was the largest of such organizations in Germany. It had about 500,000 members.

  Adolf Hitler

  Religious, Winning, Organization

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• The boarded-up homes, the decaying storefronts, the aging church rolls, kids from unknown families who swaggered down the streets - loud congregations of teenage boys, teenage girls feeding potato chips to crying toddlers, the discarded wrappers tumbling down the block - all of it whispered painful truths.

  Barack Obama

  Girl, Teenage, Block

  Barack Obama (2007). “Dreams From My Father”, p.157, Canongate Books

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• As I've taught our congregation, within the Christian faith the question of homosexuality is not a question of biblical authority, but biblical interpretation.

  Adam Hamilton

  Christian, Biblical, Taught

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• We look for evidence of the divine and we find it in nature, in art, in literature, in music in film, so, rather than fear the surrounding culture, and the surrounding cities which predictably results in a bunker mentality the emerging congregation embraces the culture and expects to find God in it" the emerging congregation embraces the culture recognizing that its not all pretty but it embraces the culture and even then expects to find god in it because there is nowhere god isn't. there are many places where the church isn't but I don't think that means there are places where god isn't.

  John Middendorf

  Art, Mean, Thinking

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• It might work in the short term, but it's not going to keep the people who hop from congregation to congregation. Church is about one's relationship with God and one's relationship with people. The gimmick may attract you for the moment, but it's the substance that will hold you there.

  J. Gordon Melton

  God, People, Church

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• Because religious training means credulity training, churches should not be surprised to find that so many of their congregations accept astrology as readily as theology, or a channeled Atlantean priest as readily as a biblical prophet.

  Barbara G. Walker

  Religious, Mean, Biblical

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• The church is only the church when it exists for others. To make a start, it should give away all its property to those in need. The clergy must live solely on the free-will offerings of their congregations, or possibly engage in some secular calling. The church must share in the secular problems of ordinary human life, not dominating, but helping and serving. It must tell men of every calling what it means to live in Christ, to exist for others.

  Dietrich Bonhoeffer

  Mean, Men, Offering

  Dietrich Bonhoeffer (1986). “Bonhoeffer for a New Generation”

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• It ought to be considered a great misfortune, not only for individuals, but also for Houses and Congregations, to have everything in conformity with their wishes; to go on quietly, and to suffer nothing for the love of God. Yes, consider it certain that a person or a Congregation that does not suffer and is applauded by all the world is near a fall.

  St. Vincent

  Fall, House, Suffering

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• I say that a Christian congregation can survive and often appear to prosper in the community by the exercise of human talent and without any touch from the Holy Spirit! All that religious activity and the dear people will not know anything better until the great and terrible day when our self-employed talents are burned with fire and only that which was wrought by the Holy Ghost will stand forever!

  Aiden Wilson Tozer

  Christian, Religious, Exercise

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• It's time to start bringing the congregations down to City Hall and to ask the mayors, the city councils and the school boards, "What's the plan? What's the local government going to do for us?"

  Van Jones

  School, Government, Cities

  Source: aalbc.com

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• Fonny and I just sat there... while the voices of the congregation rose and rose around us, without mercy... Teddy had the tambourine, and gave the cue to the piano player-I never got to know him: a long dark, evil-looking brother, with hands made for strangling; and with these hands he attacked the keyboard like he was beating the brains out of someone he remembered. No doubt the congregation had their memories, too, and they went to pieces. The church began to rock.

  James A. Baldwin

  Music, Brother, Memories

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• The fact that a man is to vote forces him to think. You may preach to a congregation by the year and not affect its thought because it is not called upon for definite action. But throw your subject into a campaign and it becomes a challenge.

  John Jay Chapman

  Men, Thinking, Years

  John Jay Chapman (1900). “Practical Agitation”

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• The pastors and ministry leaders came away energized to have voter registration drives at their churches and motivated to encourage their congregations to "vote their values."

  Paul Smith

  Past, Opportunity, Leader

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• There is real value in these local congregations. For me, a lot of it is the value of the sacraments we share. In neighborhoods like ours, the churches provide stability.

  Shane Claiborne

  Real, Church, Share

  "Interview with Shane Claiborne on Common Prayer". www.readthespirit.com. 2012.

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• If my life is any example, the work that youth workers are doing is very, very important. It tends to get marginalized in the church or seen as less important than being a senior minister in a large, prosperous congregation; but I don't believe that for a minute. I think this is absolutely critical work in the life of the church; and I think my path in life would have been much different if it hadn't been for my youth minister, Burt Randle, and a series of campus ministers in both college and graduate school.

  Parker J. Palmer

  Senior, Believe, School

  "The Teacher's Journey: An Interview with Parker J. Palmer". Interview with Ron Jackson, www.youthworker.com.

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• When I had something I thought God was talking to me about, the first thing I did, before I ever talked to the congregation, was to sit down with the major influencers of the church and share with them what I thought God was speaking to me. I gave them time for input or questions. Many times they would ask questions and I would reply, "I need to spend more time on this. I'm not sure I'm thinking clearly there." Other times they added value and helped make this vision better or more accessible to the people.

  John C. Maxwell

  Thinking, Talking, People

  Source: enrichmentjournal.ag.org

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• By the time I went to the pulpit, the vision was never on the same level as when God first gave it to me; it was clearer and bigger. It was better because the body of Christ complemented what God had given me. So when I gave the vision to the congregation, the influencers already bought it. Then after the people have heard my message, and migrate to the influencers, these influencers are already my allies and help me communicate the vision to the congregation.

  John C. Maxwell

  People, Vision, Allies

  Source: enrichmentjournal.ag.org

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• They will be like shadows, they will be like wraiths, gray members of a congregation of nightmare; hark! his long wavering howl . . . an aria of fear made audible. The wolfsong is the sound of the rending you will suffer, in itself a murdering.

  Angela Carter

  Long, Suffering, Shadow

  Angela Carter (1997). “Burning your boats: the collected short stories”, Penguin Group USA

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• In certain ways, I think the work in the Evangelical community has been the most interesting and the most promising. Partly because Evangelical congregations may be harder to convince about issues but, on the other hand, are more likely to do something about it.

  Bill McKibben

  Thinking, Hands, Issues

  Source: theotherjournal.com

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• Not one of the orthodox ministers dare preach what he thinks if he knows a majority of his congregation think otherwise. He knows that every member of his church stands guard over his brain with a creed, like a club, in his hand. He knows that he is not expected to search after the truth, but that he is employed to defend the creed. Every pulpit is a pillory, in which stands a hired culprit, defending the justice of his own imprisonment.

  Robert Green Ingersoll

  Thinking, Hands, Justice

  Robert Green Ingersoll (1907). “The works of Robert G. Ingersoll”, p.103, Library of Alexandria

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