The glory of the gospel is that when the church is absolutely different from the world, she invariably attracts it.
– Martyn Lloyd-Jones
The Gospel | Church
The Church is the only society that exists for the benefit of those who are not its members.
– William Temple
Church
The church is not a select circle of the immaculate, but a home where the outcast may come in. It is not a palace with gate attendants and challenging sentinels along the entrance-ways holding off at arm’s-length the stranger, but rather a hospital where the broken-hearted may be healed, and where all the weary and troubled may find rest and take counsel together.
– James H. Aughey
Church | Brokenness | Rest
We do not want a church that will move with the world. We want a church that will move the world.
– G.K. Chesterton
Church
Going to church doesn’t make you a Christian any more than going to a garage makes you an automobile.
– Billy Sunday
Church
The church is a hospital for sinners, and not a museum for saints.
– Vance Havner
Church
You never have to advertise a fire. Everyone comes running when there’s a fire. Likewise, if your church is on fire, you will not have to advertise it. The community will already know it.
– Leonard Ravenhill
Revival | Church | Community
It is scarcely possible in most places to get anyone to attend a meeting where the only attraction is God.
– A. W. Tozer
Church
You (Millennials) are the generation most afraid of real community because it inevitably limits freedom and choice. Get over your fear.
– Tim Keller
Church | Community | Fear | Relationships
Jesus is the Head of the church. He expects His body to cooperate.
– Jack Wellman
Church | Jesus
Church attendance is as vital to a disciple as a transfusion of rich, healthy blood to a sick man.
– Dwight L. Moody
Church | Discipleship | Illness
When there’s something in the Bible that churches don’t like, they call it ‘legalism.’
– Leonard Ravenhill
Church | The Bible | Legalism
The Church used to be a lifeboat rescuing the perishing. Now she is a cruise ship recruiting the promising.
– Leonard Ravenhill
Church | Apathy
Some women will spend thirty minutes to an hour preparing for church externally (putting on special clothes and makeup, etc.). What would happen if we all spent the same amount of time preparing internally for church – with prayer and meditation?
– Leonard Ravenhill
Church | Women | Meditation
The condition of the church may be very accurately gauged by its prayer meetings. So is the prayer meeting a grace-ometer, and from it we may judge of the amount of divine working among a people. If God be near a church, it must pray. And if He be not there, one of the first tokens of His absence will be slothfulness in prayer.
– Charles Spurgeon
Church | Prayer
The Church is the one institution that exists for those outside it.
– William Tyndale
Church
Christianity means a lot more than church membership.
– Billy Sunday
Christianity | Church
As we witness our religious freedoms being lost and our congregations getting itchy, it is time for our churches to again become relevant within our culture.
– Jonathan Falwell
Church
Every believer is commanded to be plugged in to a local church.
– David Jeremiah
Church
The local church is espoused to Christ, but there is always the danger of that love growing cold. Like Martha, we can be so busy working for Christ that we have no time to love Him. Christ is more concerned about what we do with Him than for Him. Labor is no substitute for love. To the public, the Ephesian church was successful; to Christ, it had fallen.
– Warren Wiersbe
Church
No church, including the one I pastor, should be measured by its attendance.
– Jim Cymbala
Church
Christians don’t tell lies they just go to church and sing them.
– A. W. Tozer
Christians | Church
This much is sure in all churches, forgetting party labels; the smallest meeting numerically is the prayer-meeting. If weak in prayer we are weak everywhere.
– Leonard Ravenhill
Prayer | Church
Too many churches are little more than four walls and a roof.
– Billy Sunday
Church
The church does not draw people in; it sends them out.
– Chuck Colson
Church | Evangelism
A man who covers up the cross though he may be an intellectual man, and draw large crowds will have no ilk there, and his church will be but a gilded sepulcher.
– Dwight L. Moody
Church | Heresy | The Cross
The church is in Christ as Eve was in Adam.
– Assorted Authors
Church
A church debt is the devil’s salary.
– Henry Ward Beecher
Church | Finances
The Christian that is bound by his own horizon, the church that lives simply for itself, is bound to die a spiritual death and sink into stagnancy and corruption. We never can thank God enough for giving us not only a whole Gospel to believe, but a whole world to give it to.
– A. B. Simpson
Church | The Gospel
I want to assist churches and to assist pastors in training pastors. But, after fourteen years of service in this capacity, I am absolutely certain that the finest theological seminary on earth is absolutely incompetent at replicating the actual life of a Gospel congregation. I want to train a generation of pastors who will train pastors, and I want to help them in that task.
– Albert Mohler
Church | Preaching
It is a shame when the church itself is a cemetery, where the living sleep above the ground, as the dead do beneath.
– Thomas Fuller
Church
In proportion as a church is holy, in that proportion will its testimony for Christ be powerful.
– Charles Spurgeon
Church | Holiness | Power
The first century money changers were in the temple, but they didn’t have the spirit of the temple… They were out of sync with the whole purpose of the Lord’s house. “The atmosphere of my Father’s house,” Jesus seemed to say, “is to be prayer. The aroma around my Father must be that of people opening their hearts in worship and supplication. This is not a place to make a buck. This is a house for calling on the Lord.
– Jim Cymbala
Money | Prayer | Church
Churches become poor if they become rich and care not for the poor.
– Lester Roloff
Church | Wealth
We cannot believe that the church of God is already possessed of all that light which God intends to give it; nor that all Satan’s lurking places have already been found out.
– Jonathan Edwards
Church | Light
Divisions in the church always breed atheism in the world.
– Thomas Manton
Church | Atheism
Bible-believing churches and pastors could well apply this principle of pointing out faults without offending. We need to be careful that we do not let a carnal spirit divide us and hurt us so the Lord finds it difficult to use us.
– Theodore Epp
Church | Carnality
A church can be unified in one of two ways. You can freeze together, as the Church of the Frozen Chosen; or you can melt together with the fire of the Holy Spirit.
– John Hagee
Church | Fire
More churches have been destroyed by the accuser of the brethren and its faultfinding than by either immorality or misuse of church funds. So prevalent is this influence in our society that, among many, faultfinding has been elevated to the status of a “ministry”!
– Francis Frangipane
Church | Satan
Miracles are the swaddling clothes of infant churches.
– Thomas Fuller
Miracles | Church
Tell me what the world is saying today, and I’ll tell you what the church will be saying in seven years.
– Francis Schaeffer
Church
We do not want, as the newspapers say, a church that will move with the world. We want a church that will move the world.
– G.K. Chesterton
Church
Trying to run a church without revivals can be done when you can run a gasoline engine on buttermilk.
– Billy Sunday
Revival | Church
It takes more than a busy church, a friendly church, or even an evangelical church to impact a community for Christ. It must be a church ablaze, led by leaders who are ablaze for God.
– Wesley L. Duewel
Church | Leadership
The Kingdom of God is not going to be advanced by our churches becoming filled with men, but by men in our churches becoming filled with God.
– Duncan Campbell
Church | The Holy Spirit
Distance does not decide who is your brother and who is not. The church is going to have to become the conscience of the free market if it’s to have any meaning in this world – and stop being its apologist.
– Bono
Church
Men are God’s method. The church is looking for better methods; God is looking for better men.
– E.M. Bounds
God | Faithful | Church
God does not love en masse. He loves you individually and independent of all others.
– Pamela Christian
Love | Church
The most useful members of a church are usually those who would be doing harm if they were not doing good.
– Charles Spurgeon
Church
Do you ever wonder what it would be like to visit a New Testament church service? I imagine it would be a far cry from our stately sanctuaries with their crystal chandeliers and misty-mauve carpets.
– John Hagee
Church
Christ holds that prayer is a tremendous power which achieves what, without it, was a sheer impossibility. And this amazing thing you can set into operation. And the fact that you are not so using it, and simply don’t believe in it and its efficiency and efficacy as our fathers did, and that so many nowadays agree with you, is certainly a major reason why the churches are so cold, and the promises seem so tardy of fulfillment.
– A. J. Gossip
Prayer | Church
Alas! Much has been done of late to promote the production of dwarfish Christians. Poor, sickly believers turn the church into a hospital, rather than an army. Oh, to have a church built up with the deep godliness of people who know the Lord in their very hearts, and will seek to follow the Lamb wherever he goes!
– Charles Spurgeon
Church | Godliness
The only way to build a church, if you have a Bible church, is to preach out of the Bible, teach out of the Bible, read out of the Bible.
– Lester Roloff
Church | The Bible
The church which is not a missionary church will be a missing church when Jesus comes.
– F.B. Meyer
Church | Missions
The Church, however, is a self-governing society, distinct from the State, having its officers and laws, and, therefore, an administrative government of its own.
– Charles Hodge
Church | Government
The chief danger of the Church today is that it is trying to get on the same side as the world, instead of turning the world upside down. Our Master expects us to accomplish results, even if they bring opposition and conflict. Anything is better than compromise, apathy, and paralysis. God, give to us an intense cry for the old-time power of the Gospel and the Holy Ghost!
– A. B. Simpson
Church | The Holy Spirit | Compromise
The right of the people to a substantive part in the government of the Church is recognized and sanctioned by the apostles in almost every conceivable way.
– Charles Hodge
Church
We must seek to ask God where we fit in and where He would have us serve.
– Victoria Thomas Pollar
Service | Church
If you trust yourself to walk in the light of your own conscience, uninstructed or little instructed by the Word of God, you will end up doing things that you are deeply and sincerely convinced are right. But they may be terribly hurtful and destructive within the Church.
– Ray C. Stedman
Ignorance | Church
Whenever God erects a house of prayer, the devil always builds a chapel there; And ’twill be found, upon examination, The latter has the largest congregation.
– Assorted Authors
Satan | Church
The church, as defined by the Word of God, is a group of Christians who dedicate themselves to meeting together for the regular preaching of the Word of God; who submit themselves to biblical eldership; who regularly celebrate the ordinances of the church (baptism and the Lord’s Supper); and who practice and submit themselves to church discipline as laid out in Scripture.
– Wayne Mack
Church
The church’s job is to equip the saints for works of service in the world.
– Chuck Colson
Church | Service
Churches that are filled with self-righteous, exclusive, insecure, angry, moralistic people are extremely unattractive. Their public pronouncements are often highly judgmental, while internally such churches experience many bitter conflicts, splits, and divisions. When one of their leaders has a moral lapse, the churches either rationalize it and denounce the leader’s critics, or else they scapegoat him. Millions of people raised in or near these kinds of churches reject Christianity at an early age or in college largely because of their experience. For the rest of their lives, then, they are inoculated against Christianity. If you are a person who has been disillusioned by such churches, anytime anyone recommends Christianity to you, you assume they are calling you to adopt ‘religion.’ Pharisees and their unattractive lives leave many people confused about the real nature of Christianity.
– Tim Keller
Church
In proportion as a church is holy, in that proportion will its testimony for Christ be powerful.
– Charles Spurgeon
Church | Holiness | Power
As the Church is the aggregate of believers, there is an intimate analogy between the experience of the individual believer, and of the Church as a whole.
– Charles Hodge
Church
A church doesn’t necessarily need space to grow; it just needs the power of God.
– Jack Hyles
Church
The Church is not a gallery for the exhibition of eminent Christians, but a school for the education of imperfect ones.
– Henry Ward Beecher
Church
The condition of the church may be very accurately gauged by its prayer meetings. So is the prayer meeting a grace-ometer, and from it we may judge of the amount of divine working among a people. If God be near a church, it must pray. And if He be not there, one of the first tokens of His absence will be slothfulness in prayer.
– Charles Spurgeon
Church | Prayer
A basic trouble is that most Churches limit themselves unnecessarily by addressing their message almost exclusively to those who are open to religious impression through the intellect, whereas … there are at least four other gateways — the emotions, the imagination, the aesthetic feeling, and the will — through which they can be reached.
– A.J. Gossip
Church | Evangelism
The Spirit of God first imparts love; he next inspires hope, and then gives liberty; and that is about the last thing we have in many of our churches.
– Dwight L. Moody
Church
All too often the church holds up a mirror reflecting back the society around it, rather than a window revealing a different way.
– Philip Yancey
Church | Carnality
I well remember how I joined the church after my conversion. I forced myself into it by telling the pastor, who was lax and slow, after I had called four or five times and could not see him, that I had done my duty, and if he did not see me and interview me for church membership, I would call a church meeting myself and tell them I believed in Christ and ask them if they would have me.
– Charles Spurgeon
Church
I well remember how I joined the church after my conversion. I forced myself into it by telling the pastor, who was lax and slow, after I had called four or five times and could not see him, that I had done my duty, and if he did not see me and interview me for church membership, I would call a church meeting myself and tell them I believed in Christ and ask them if they would have me.
– Charles Spurgeon
Church
A church that does not exist to reclaim heathenism, to fight evil, to destroy error, to put down falsehood, a church that does not exist to take the side of the poor, to denounce injustice and to hold up righteousness, is a church that has no right to be. Not for yourself, O church, do you exist, any more than Christ existed for Himself.
– Charles Spurgeon
Church
I can say as to myself, that I have been assailed on all sides, and have scarcely been able to enjoy repose for a single moment, but have always had to sustain some conflict either from enemies without or within the church.
– John Calvin
Church
Scripture speaks very clearly to the fact that identification with God’s people in a formal, public way was considered essential in…New Testament times… A careful study of the New Testament doesn’t reveal even a hint of any believer who was truly saved, but not part of a local church.
– Wayne Mack
Church
There is something childish and legalistic about churches in which all of the saints observe precisely the same standards. When all lives begin to sink into the same mould of denial and exercise of liberty, something is amiss.
– Walter J. Chantry
Church | Liberty | Legalism
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.
– Charles Spurgeon
ChurchThe Holy Spirit
The coziness between church and state is good for the state and bad for the church.
– G.K. Chesterton
Church | Politics
The church today is riddled with fad doctrines and new sounds that distract from the clear message of the Great commission in the New Testament. Any message that attracts you which does not bring glory to Christ is the message of a seducing spirit and the man giving it is in deception.
– John Hagee
Church | Heresy | Doctrine
Each generation of the church in each setting has the responsibility of communicating the gospel in understandable terms, considering the language and thought-forms of that setting.
– Francis Schaeffer
Church | The Gospel | Responsibility
I have met so many young people who do not see the church as relevant and do not consider the Bible a real book of history that can be trusted.
– Ken Ham
The Bible | Church | Youth
The most useful members of a church are usually those who would be doing harm if they were not doing good.
– Charles Spurgeon
Church
A little thing will keep them from the house of God who have no desire to go to it.
– James H. Aughey
Church
I concluded that an understanding of the biblical marks of a healthy church was absolutely foundational and necessary, but that something more should be said if Gospel ministry was going to be productive.
– Tim Keller
Church
Many come to bring their clothes to church rather than themselves.
– Thomas Fuller
Church | Apathy
The reason “other churches” don’t grow: “Jim, the truth is I couldn’t have a real prayer meeting in my church. I’d be embarrassed at the smallness of the crowd…”
– Jim Cymbala
Prayer | Church
I do not think the devil cares how many churches you build, if only you have lukewarm preachers and people in them.
– Charles Spurgeon
Church | Satan
Many a barren church owes its present sad estate to its inconsistent behavior, and many a barren Christian has come into this mournful condition by a careless, unsanctified walk before the Lord. Let not saints who are now useful run the risk of enduring the loss of their mercies, but let them be watchful that all things may go well with them.
– Albert Barnes
Church
Wherever we find the Word of God surely preached and heard, and the sacraments administered according to the institution of Christ, there, it is not to be doubted, is a church of God.
– John Calvin
Preaching | Church
Christ holds that prayer is a tremendous power which achieves what, without it, was a sheer impossibility. And this amazing thing you can set into operation. And the fact that you are not so using it, and simply don’t believe in it and its efficiency and efficacy as our fathers did, and that so many nowadays agree with you, is certainly a major reason why the churches are so cold, and the promises seem so tardy of fulfillment.
– A.J. Gossip
Prayer | Church
Everyone that hangs around the court does not speak with the king.
– Thomas Watson
Church
All too often the church holds up a mirror reflecting back the society around it, rather than a window revealing a different way.
– Phillips Brooks
Church | Carnality
A church has no right to make anything a condition of membership which Christ has not made a condition of salvation.
– A. A. Hodge
Church | Salvation
The church is not the way to heaven; the church is the sign that points to heaven.
– Adrian Rogers
Church | Heaven
The Bible does say, “My house shall be called a house of prayer for all nations.” Preaching, music, the reading of the Word–these things are fine–but they must never override prayer as the defining mark of God’s dwelling.
– Jim Cymbala
Prayer | Church
The church that is not jealously protected by mighty intercession and sacrificial labors will before long become the abode of every evil bird and the hiding place for unsuspected corruption. The creeping wilderness will soon take over that church that trusts in its own strength and forgets to watch and pray.
– A. W. Tozer
Church | Prayer | Intercession
All the reasons which require the subjection of a believer to the brethren of a particular church require his subjection to all his brethren in the Lord.
– Charles Hodge
Church
There wouldn’t be so many non-church goers if there were not so many non-going churches.
– Billy Sunday
Church
The spiritual life in the believer never has known dissension or break, because where the Spirit has perfect liberty, then they all agree and there is no schism in the body.
– Smith Wigglesworth
Church | The Holy | Spirit | Unity