Church 5 Minute Quotes & Sayings

Set a church clock wrong to fool the devil, my mother always told me. But in this case I suspect the devil is not fooled.

Not for a minute. — Joanne Harris

When I finally got to 30, I'll admit that there was a little anxiety, but at the same time I actually really liked it. — Hamilton Leithauser

The minute you decide to get back in the business the church was commissioned for in the first place, you will pray for boldness. — Andy Stanley

Worship is not a twenty minute period during a church service, but a lifestyle of relating to God in a particular way. — Mike Bickle

Do you ever wonder why a battered wife stays with her husband? Why people continue to spend money they don't have even though they know they are deeply in debt? Why some keep jamming food in their mouths when they're already overweight? Why do people stay in bad relationships? Why are some people still racist? Why do people still drink and drive? You'd think the response to all these things would be obvious and cause them to scream, "Duh, of course I need to change this." Why do we keep doing church the same way even when we know it's in critical decline? Why do paid church leaders spend so much time preparing for a 90-minute service for Christians who have heard it all before? Why do we still call our message the good news when it clearly seems to be bad news or no news to Sojourners? Why do we think Pharisees are only found in the Bible? Why is returning to a simpler form of ancient church so hard to grasp? — Hugh Halter

My mother was an unbeliever - and still is. My father was a nominal Catholic. We would go in to church at the last minute before the gospel reading, take Communion, and walk right out again. — Frederica Mathewes-Green

With chaste affections man and wife In solemn wedlock it entwines. Love's laws most trusty comrades bind. How happy is the human race, 30 If Love, by which the heavens are ruled, To rule men's minds is set in place! — Boethius

The higher Christian churches ... come at God with an unwarranted air of professionalism, with authority and pomp, as though they knew what they were doing, as though people in themselves were an appropriate set of creatures to have dealings with God ... if God were to blast such a congregation to bits, the congregation would be, I believe, genuinely shocked. But in the low churches you expect it any minute. — Annie Dillard

Frequently over the years, people have thought that they know me. Every character actor has this story, I'm sure. It goes like this: 'Um, do you play soccer?' 'Did you go to such and such church?' 'I knew you when you were with so and so ... ' Then I go, 'Well, sorry ... ' and then they say, 'Wait a minute. Are you an actor?' — Beth Grant

He was, and she had to swallow very hard to keep from choking, the most terribly beautiful man she had ever seen. He had a long, wicked scar that traveled from his temple down his cheek to the side of his chin and below his jaw. Somehow, though, it just didn't detract from his handsomeness, dark though that was. His face was all planes and angles, harsh even in the deepening gloom. His hair was dark and his eyes were full of cynicism. — Lynn Kurland

When there was a disaster, it used to be that people went to church and all held hands. Now the minute anything happens they run to CNN. — Don Hewitt

She felt nervy as all her excitements turned into weaknesses — Munia Khan

Dan was thrilled that the second clue had been safely smuggled out of the church in his pants.
"So, really, I saved the day," he decided.
"Wait a minute," Amy said, "I climbed onto the roof in the middle of a thunderstorm."
"Yeah, but the clue was in my pants. — Rick Riordan

Thrice, to the mighty heave-ho of his invisible tossers, he would fly up in this fashion, and the second time he would go higher than the first and then there he would be, on his last and loftiest flight, reclining, as if for good, against the cobalt blue of the summer noon, like one of those paradisiac personages who comfortably soar, with such a wealth of folds in their garments, on the vaulted ceiling of a church while below, one by one, the wax tapers in mortal hands light up to make a swarm of minute flames in the mist of incense, and the priest chants of eternal repose, and funeral lilies conceal the face of whoever lies there, among the swimming lights, in the open coffin. — Vladimir Nabokov

Having faith is believing in something you just know ain't true. — Mark Twain

The minute the church and pastors start saying what do people want and then giving it to them, we betray our calling. We're called to have people follow Jesus. We're called to have people learn how to forgive their enemies. — Eugene H. Peterson

The dirty secret she'd learned about grief was that nobody wanted to hear about your loss a week after the funeral. People you'd once considered friends would turn their heads in church or cross to another side of a shopping mall to avoid the contamination of your suffering. "You might imagine I'm coping day by day," she murmured. "But it's more a case of hour by hour, and during my worst times, minute by minute. — Susan Dormady Eisenberg

If you limit worship to where you are, the minute you leave that place of worship you will leave your attitude of worship behind like a crumpled-up church bulletin. — Tony Evans

In the United States of America there are twenty-seven million people under twenty-one years of age who receive no Christian training at all. Juvenile crime in the big cities is tremendous - sometimes it seems absolutely out of control. Every week one million people are dying without Jesus. In one minute, eighty-five people pass into eternity. In just the brief span of a church service hundreds are passing out into the presence of God. Does that mean anything to you? — Alan Redpath

Few politicians are good at taking the high ground and throwing themselves off it. — Peter Mandelson

The Sunlight on the Garden

The sunlight on the garden
Hardens and grows cold,
We cannot cage the minute
Within its nets of gold,
When all is told
We cannot beg for pardon.

Our freedom as free lances
Advances towards its end;
The earth compels, upon it
Sonnets and birds descend;
And soon, my friend,
We shall have no time for dances.

The sky was good for flying
Defying the church bells
And every evil iron
Siren and what it tells:
The earth compels,
We are dying, Egypt, dying

And not expecting pardon,
Hardened in heart anew,
But glad to have sat under
Thunder and rain with you,
And grateful too
For sunlight on the garden. — Louis MacNeice

Six wasn't sure religion was any more than a lot of people caught up in a collective delirium that disappeared the minute they stepped out of the church doors and onto the street. — Ayana Mathis

When I started off, I didn't only ride to fame on my looks though many people I know think otherwise. — Natasha Henstridge

I cannot actually see him, but there he is in my mind's eye, crouching or down on all fours, on a hillock, black clouds racing past over his head, and the hillock becomes a hill and the next minute it is the atrium of a church, an atrium as black as the clouds, charged with electricity like the clouds, and glistening with moisture or blood, and the wizened youth trembles more and more violently, wrinkles his nose and then pounces on the story. But only I know the story, the real story. And it is simple and cruel and true and it should make us laugh, it should make us die laughing. But we only know how to cry, the only thing we do wholeheartedly is cry. The curfew was in force. — Roberto Bolano

I don't see anything Wal-Mart can do that other retailers can't. — Sergey Galitsky

Are you lonely?" Why had he asked that? Or, better question, why hadn't he considered that before right this minute? Kane always stayed so busy with Autumn and Robert. But they were new to town, no real friends yet, and Kane hadn't found a church like the one they had at home. Damn, why hadn't he thought about this before? — Kindle Alexander

The man who is ostentatious of his modesty is twin to the statue that wears a fig-leaf. — Mark Twain

Turning away, I stared at the long road winding off ahead of me.
I sighed. This trip might take awhile.
"Then start walking, Rose," I muttered to myself.
I set off, off to kill the man I loved. — Richelle Mead

The matter is quite simple. The bible is very easy to understand. But we Christians are a bunch of scheming swindlers. We pretend to be unable to understand it because we know very well that the minute we understand, we are obliged to act accordingly. Take any words in the New Testament and forget everything except pledging yourself to act accordingly. My God, you will say, if I do that my whole life will be ruined. How would I ever get on in the world? Herein lies the real place of Christian scholarship. Christian scholarship is the Church's prodigious invention to defend itself against the Bible, to ensure that we can continue to be good Christians without the Bible coming too close. Oh, priceless scholarship, what would we do without you? Dreadful it is to fall into the hands of the living God. Yes it is even dreadful to be alone with the New Testament. — Soren Kierkegaard

We have our values from the church, the temple, the mosque. Do not rob, do not murder. But our behaviour changes the minute we go into the corporate place. Suddenly all of this is irrelevant. — Anita Roddick

The words of confirmation into the Church are an invitation: 'Receive the Holy Ghost.' And that choice must be made not once, but every day, every hour, every minute. — Henry B. Eyring

No church is perfect, but don't let that discourage you. Someone has said that if you ever find one that is, it will stop being perfect the minute you join! — Billy Graham

I guessed that only at the last possible minute did the soul in a determined fashion flee the dying flesh. Who could blame it for its reluctance? We loved our lives more than we ever knew, and at the end felt the bounty of them, as one would say in church, felt even the richness of their missed opportunities, or just understood that they were more than we had realized during the living of them and a lot to give up. — Lorrie Moore

I was working in a church in Florida as a youth intern, which means I really didn't do much other than staple stuff. I'm from Dallas, Texas, and every time my grandmother would call-she would call me any time of the day-I'd be home answering the phone. She was like, "What do you do all day?" and sarcastically I would say, "Well, I'm trying to chalk off the next year to spend time finding a band name." And she said, "Well mercy me, why don't you get a real job?" I thought, "Wait a minute. That's the perfect name." That kind of freed up my year but that's where the name came from. — Bart Millard

Seth stepped out of the church. "Are you ladies ready?" He cocked an eyebrow at his wife. "The Viking's chomping inside, aye, chomping on his chainmail." His voice slid into a drawl for he obviously wanted to banish any female displays of emotion. "Another minute, he's liable to toss Grace over his shoulder and carry her off. Reverend Norton will have to chase after them, calling out the words to sanctify the rampaging abduction. — Debra Holland

If you're in the exorcism business, you must know a lot about demons." "Qliphoth," he says. "What?" "It's the proper word for what you call a demon. A demon is a bogeyman, an irrational entity representing fear in the collective unconscious. The Qliphoth are the castoffs of a greater entity. The old gods. They're dumb and their lack of intelligence makes them pure evil." "Okay, Daniel Webster. What happened at the exorcism?" Traven takes a breath and stares at his hands for a minute. "You should know that I don't follow the Church's standard exorcism rites. For instance, I seldom speak Latin. If Qliphoth really are lost fragments of the Angra Om Ya, the older dark gods, they're part of creatures millions of years old. Why would Latin have any effect on them? — Richard Kadrey

The minute you walk outside of your church on Sunday you're in mission territory. — Robert Barron