Church Problems Quotes & Sayings

Contemporary American churches in particular do not require following Christ in his example, spirit, and teachings as a condition of membership-either of entering into or continuing in fellowship of a denomination or a local church ... Most problems in contemporary churches can be explained by the fact that members have not yet decided to follow Christ. — Dallas Willard

Most problems in contemporary churches can be explained by the fact that members have never decided to follow Christ. — Dallas Willard

The most highly promoted of all was William Laud, who directed Church affairs as Bishop of London from 1628, although he had to wait for Canterbury until Archbishop Abbot had the good taste to die, in 1633. Laud was prominent in a royal regime which after 1629 ceased to trouble itself with meeting Parliament and instead tried to sort out England's problems with royal proclamations, Privy Council orders and the decisions of law courts. Its enemies sarcastically named the period 'Thorough', and looked back on it as the 'Eleven Years' Tyranny — Diarmaid MacCulloch

Protestants are the more segmented group. Mainline churches - you have problems in the U.S., Europe, the Scottish Church, the Dutch Protestant Church, the state church in Norway. The evangelicals have been pro Israel, but a major effort is to bring them in on the Palestinian side. A huge problem and the problems are rising. — Manfred Gerstenfeld

[The Drafters of the Constitution] were intent on avoiding more than 100 years of religious intolerance and persecution in American colonial history and an even longer heritage of church-state problems in Europe. — John M Swomley

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

I had received Christ as my savior when I was a child, but I didn't know anything. I didn't have any knowledge. I didn't go to church. And I had a lot of problems, and I needed somebody to kind of help me along. And I think sometimes even people who want to serve God, if they have got so many problems that they don't think right and they don't act right and they don't behave right, they almost need somebody to take them by the hand and help lead them through the early years. And that's really what discipleship is. It's helping people. — Joyce Meyer

The ministry of mercy, then, is the best advertising a church can have. It convinces a community that this church provides people with actions for their problems, not only talk. It shows the community that this church is compassionate. — Timothy Keller

We come to church not to hide our problems but to heal them. — Dieter F. Uchtdorf

But don't let them talk you into anything you don't feel comfortable with."
"They're my friends."
"So what?" He shrugged. "If your friends walked off a cliff, would you do it too?"
"Why would they walk off a cliff?" I asked in alarm. "Is someone having problems at home? — Alexandra Adornetto

I think the church is often a culprit in the busyness, especially in the evangelical church. Again, it's part of being Americans. Part of being evangelicals too is that we're highly activist. We are always diving in, willing to solve problems, and again there's a lot good there. But we also need the theological balance that the Kingdom is not ours to bring or ours to create. — Kevin DeYoung

I regularly tell our seminary students that if I happen to visit the church in which one of them serves, I will not ask first, "Is this man a good preacher?" Rather, first of all I will ask the secretaries, office staff, janitors, and cleaners what it is like to work for this pastor. I will ask, "What kind of man is he? Is he a servant? Is he demanding and harsh, or his he patient, kind, and forbearing as a man in authority?" One of our graduates may preach great sermons, but if he is a pain to work for, then you know he will cause major problems in any congregation. Leaders in the church are required by Scripture to set an example in the areas of love, kindness, gentleness, patience, and forbearance before they are appointed to preach, teach, and rule. If we obediently require these attitudes and character traits of our leaders, what will our "new community" look like — Jerram Barrs

The Papacy attempted to deal with this movement by sending out missionaries, originally Dominicans in 1240, and then Franciscans a century later, in 1340. But it was only in the mid-fifteenth century that the campaign to uproot the heresy began to really bear fruit, and those local Church leaders who refused to recant were forced to emigrate. But despite this, a legacy of Bogomil influence was left in which the local Church was not closely linked to the Papacy, and this was to sow the seeds of future problems.[2] — Donal Anthony Foley

A controlling God, who is usually represented by a controlling church leadership, is just not good news. How can church leadership create freedom and not more rules? How can we bring out the best in human beings and keep it at the surface even as we deal with their problems and shortcomings? Can we empower others and release them to live from their best natures and from the truest reasons they are alive? Will we as Christian leaders, parents, and employers take on the responsibility to learn how to draw out the dreams and destiny in the people we lead? — Danny Silk

The morality of the church is anachronistic. Will it ever develop a moral insight and courage sufficient to cope with the real problems of modern society? If it does it will require generations of effort and not a few martyrdoms. We ministers maintain our pride and self-respect and our sense of importance only through a vast and inclusive ignorance. If we knew the world in which we live a little better we would perish in shame or be overcome by a sense of futility. — Reinhold Niebuhr

Maybe that is why there are not a whole lot of problems between the church and worldly culture today, because we are not confronting the culture around us. — Paul David Washer

The solution to the problems of the church today lies in solving the problems of individual Christians, and the remedy is a person - the Holy Spirit. — Charles C. Ryrie

if we can't worship the same God together inside the same church buildings, then we will still knock on your door and so irritate you thatyou cannot worship your white God in peace, that you cannot escape thinking about the problems of segregation even on Sunday morning, that we are just letting you know that every single aspect of your Southern Way of Life is under attack. — Stephen R. Haynes

Catharism was the greatest heretical challenge faced by the Catholic Church in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries. The attempt by the Cathars to find an answer to the fundamental religious and philosophical problems posed by the existence of evil, combined with their success in persuading large numbers of Christians in the West that they had solved these problems, shook the Catholic hierarchy to its very core, and provoked a series of reactions more extreme than any previously contemplated. — Malcolm Barber

There's nobody who doesn't have problems with the church, because there's sin in the church. But there's no other place to be a Christian except the church. — Eugene H. Peterson

In leadership there are always problems to be solved and tensions to be managed. When you try to solve a tension, you create a problem. — Andy Stanley

Does the church offer answers for the complexions of 21st century problems? — Sunday Adelaja

Your problems are not just your problems. Ultimately, they belong to the church body that God has placed you in. — Francis Chan

A final irony has to do with the idea of political responsibility. Christians are urged to vote and become involved in politics as an expression of their civic duty and public responsibility. This is a credible argument and good advice up to a point. Yet in our day, given the size of the state and the expectations that people place on it to solve so many problems, politics can also be a way of saying, in effect, that the problems should be solved by others besides myself and by institutions other than the church. It is, after all, much easier to vote for a politician who champions child welfare than to adopt a baby born in poverty, to vote for a referendum that would expand health care benefits for seniors than to care for an elderly and infirmed parent, and to rally for racial harmony than to get to know someone of a different race than yours. True responsibility invariably costs. Political participation, then, can and often does amount to an avoidance of responsibility. — James Davison Hunter

He spoke a kind of ecclesiastical jargon; a debased rhetoric that explained nothing but brought the truth into disrepute. It begged all the questions and answered none. The massive structure of reason and revelation on which the church was founded was reduced to ritual incantation, formless, fruitless and essentially false. Peppermint piety. It deceived no one but the man who peddled it. It satisfied no one but old ladies and girls in green-sickness; yet it flourished most rankly where the Church was most firmly entrenched in the established order. It was the mark of accommodation, compromise, laxity among the clergy, who find it easier to preach devotion than to affront the moral and social problems of the time. It covered fatuity and lack of education. It left people naked and unarmed in the face of terrifying mysteries: pain, passion, death and the great perhaps of the hereafter. — Morris L. West

At this time of crisis we cannot be concerned solely with ourselves, withdrawing into loneliness, discouragement and a sense of powerlessness in the face of problems. Please do not withdraw into yourselves! This is a danger: we shut ourselves up in the parish, with our friends, within the movement, with the like-minded ... but do you know what happens? When the Church becomes closed, she becomes an ailing Church, she falls ill! That is a danger ... A Church closed in on herself is the same, a sick Church. — Pope Francis

As missional leaders we need to see God as:

Bigger than the problems we endure.
Bigger than the pressures we experience.
Bigger than the people who criticize us.
Bigger than the pain we suffer.
Bigger than the praise we receive.
Bigger than the pride in our hearts. — Gary Rohrmayer

We are to celebrate what God has done for us (18; 106; 136).10 Prayer: Father God, give me insight into what form of worship is pleasing to You. I don't want to be negative in my church regarding how we come to You and worship. Amen. Action: Pray about this new division in our churches. Be willing to create harmony, not discord. Today's Wisdom: It is in the whole process of meeting and solving problems that life has meaning. Problems are the cutting edge that distinguishes between success and failure. Problems call forth our courage and our wisdom; indeed, they create our courage and our wisdom. It is only because of problems that we grow mentally and spiritually. It is through the pain of confronting and resolving problems that we learn. - M. SCOTT PECK — Emilie Barnes

No one can serve two masters," declared Jesus to his disciples (Matt. 6:24). However, Christians have spent the greater portion of the past two millenniums apparently trying to prove Jesus wrong. We have told ourselves that we can indeed have both - the things of God and the things of this world. Many of us live our lives no differently than do conservative non-Christians, except for the fact that we attend church regularly each week. We watch the same entertainment. We share the same concerns about the problems of this world. And we are frequently just as involved in the world's commercial and materialistic pursuits. Often, our being "not of this world" exists in theory more than in practice. — David Bercot

All societies are addicted to themselves and create deep codependency on them. There are shared and agreed-upon addictions in every culture and every institution. These are often the hardest to heal because they do not look like addictions because we have all agreed to be compulsive about the same things and blind to the same problems. The Gospel exposes those lies in every culture: The American addiction to oil, war, and empire; the church's addiction to its own absolute exceptionalism; the poor person's addiction to powerlessness and victimhood; the white person's addiction to superiority; the wealthy person's addiction to entitlement. — Richard Rohr

Sometimes we see problems in our church. Such occasions are not opportunities to criticize or to leave, but to let Christ use our lives to be a part of His solution. If you are presently in a church that is suffering difficulties, could it be that Christ added you to your congregation for such a time as this? — Richard Blackaby

Excellent ministers cannot be those who yearn for earthly applause. Neither can they be lovers of earthly comfort. The life of ministry is not a life of leisure.
No ministry of any value comes without pain. I often encounter young men headed for the ministry who are looking for a church without problems, a ministry without challenges, a congregation that will make life easy. There is no such place for the faithful preacher of the Word. The notion that ministry can be both effective and painless is a lie. You will encounter hardship if you preach the unadulterated Word. And when adversity strikes, you have two choices. You can endure and remain steadfast, or you can compromise. The faithful minister holds the line for the truth. You cannot do that and escape suffering (2 Tim. 3:12). — John F. MacArthur Jr.

A church that is committed to Christian Community Development sees not only the soul of a person as significant but also his or her whole life on Earth. It is being completely pro-life for a person, not only eternally, but also as the person lives on this earth. Therefore, Christian Community Development sees that the Church must be involved in every aspect of a person's life. In order to accomplish the wholistic aspect of ministry, pastors and leaders must be networkers. Christian Community Development builds coalitions in communities so that they can work together to solve the problems. — Robert Lupton

Don't want problems," Dust says, "but you know the rules. She's not allowed in Church. — Katie McGarry

I don't go to church regular. But I pray for answers to my problems. — Loretta Lynn

I have tried to show how religion, the backbone of civilisation, hardens into a Church that is unacceptable to Outsiders, and the Outsiders - the men who strive to become visionaries - become the Rebels. In our case, the scientific progress that has brought us closer than ever before to conquering the problems of civilisation, has also robbed us of spiritual drive; and the Outsider is doubly a rebel: a rebel against the Established Church , a rebel against the unestablished church of materialism. Yet for all this, he is the real spiritual heir of the prophets, of Jesus and St. Peter, of St. Augustine and Peter Waldo. The purest religion of any age lies in the hands of its spiritual rebels. The twentieth century is no exception. — Colin Wilson

The second dynamic is that each vocation presents many spiritual and moral issues, ethical quandaries, temptations, discouragements, and other questions that particularly confront the Christians in that profession. A good deal of spiritual nurture in the church is very general and only addresses generic or private-world matters. But we spend most of our week in our vocational field, and we need to hear how other Christians have dealt with the same problems we face every day. — Timothy J. Keller

There is no problem with the wider culture that you cannot see in the spades in the Christian Church. The rot is in us, and not simple out there. And Christians are making a great mistake by turning everything into culture wars. It's a much deeper crisis. — Os Guinness

In my view, the Catholic Church as a community of faith will be preserved, but only if it abandons the Roman system of rule. We managed to get by without this absolutist system for 1,000 years. The problems began in the 11th century, when the popes asserted their claim to absolute control over the Church. — Hans Kung

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. — Dietrich Bonhoeffer

Look in your local Christian Bookstore. You could take most of the books there, throw them into the sea, and not lose anything valuable. The vast majority of them are just placebos that superficially attack trivial problems. During the eras when the church was most holy, Christians had very few books to read, but the ones they did have told them how to have a relationship with God. Most books today don't do that. — John F. MacArthur Jr.

A most obstinate misconception associated with the gospel of Jesus Christ is that the gospel is welcome in this world. The conviction endemic among church folk persists that, if problems of misapprehension and misrepresentation are overcome and the gospel can be heard in its own integrity, the gospel will be found attractive by people, become popular and even be a success of some sort.
This idea is curious and ironical because it is bluntly contradicted in Scripture, and in the experience of the continuing biblical witness in history from the event of Pentecost unto the present moment. During Jesus' earthly ministry, no one in His family and not a single one of the disciples accepted Him, believed His vocation or loved the gospel He bespoke and embodies.
Since the rubrics of success, power, or gain are impertinent to the gospel, the witness of the saints looks foolish where it is most exemplary. — William Stringfellow

I am drawn to Christ but I have real problems with the Catholic Church. — Andres Serrano

Too often pastors address problems from within the flawed assumptions of their culture and training. Unable to see how problems are forming, and how their leadership is often a cause, church leaders employ legalistic or democratic remedies to issues that require Spirit-directed discernment, repentance, and forgiveness. Meanwhile, leaders have to deal with members who, as noted above, insist on rights and want to "vote" instead of submit. — Jim Van Yperen

We view men's gifts as vital to the church. In contrast, we caution women to exercise their gifts discreetly to avoid causing problems or trespassing some invisible line - which changes location from church to church, sometimes even within the same denomination. — Carolyn Custis James

It was a strange feeling going into a church I did not know for a service that I did not really believe in, but once inside I couldn't help a feeling of warmth and security. Outside there were wars and road accidents and murders, striptease clubs and battered babies and frayed tempers and unhappy marriages and people contemplating suicide and bad jokes, but once in St. Martin's there was peace. Surely people go to church not to involve themselves in the world's problems but to escape from them. — Michael Palin

It is so easy to have problems with people when you are not God's will. — Paul Gitwaza

As a young cavalry officer out of St-Cyr, de Mun first became acquainted with the lives and problems of the poor through the charitable work of the Society of St-Vincent de Paul in his garrison town. During the Commune, as an aide to General Galliffet, who commanded the battalion that fired on the insurgent Communards, he saw a dying man brought in on a litter. The guard said he was an "insurgent," whereupon the man, raising himself up, cried with his last strength, "No, it is you who are the insurgents!" and died. In the force of that cry directed at himself, his uniform, his family, his Church, de Mun had recognized the reason for civil war and vowed himself to heal the cleavage. He blamed the Commune on "the apathy of the bourgeois class and the ferocious hatred for society of the working class." The responsible ones, he had been told by one of the St. Vincent brothers, were "you, the rich, the great, the happy ones of life who pass by the people without seeing them." To — Barbara W. Tuchman

Perhaps I shouldn't call it shit. That's a bit crude. I don't really despise Christianity or even the Roman Church, and certainly not the incontrovertible glory of the Middle Ages. What I do despise is the contemporary inclination to flop to the knees and crawl back into the past, to shy from what seem like impossible problems in order to bury the head, asshole aloft and twitching, in the Sands of Time. Cowardice, I calls it. Illusion-seeking. Womb-crawling. And treason. Desertion in the face of the enemy.
Strong words indeed. But I've always been rather a blunt, tough, plain-spoken type ... — Edward Abbey

A new country seems to follow a pattern. First come the openers, strong and brave and rather childlike. They can take care of themselves in a wilderness, but they are naive and helpless against men, and perhaps that is why they went out in the first place. When the rough edges are worn off the new land, businessmen and lawyers come in to help with the development
to solve problems of ownership, usually by removing the temptations to themselves. And finally comes culture, which is entertainment, relaxation, transport out of the pain of living. And culture can be on any level, and is.
The Church and the whorehouse arrived in the Far West simultaneously. — John Steinbeck

Brothers and sisters, if only we had more compassion for those who are different from us, it would lighten many of the problems and sorrows in the world today. It would certainly make our families and the Church a more hallowed and heavenly place. — Joseph B. Wirthlin

All over America, churchgoers chafe at a Sunday morning service that runs an hour and ten minutes, but have no problem with three-hour football games on television. — Jim Cymbala

We have seen the results of unrestrained greed, corruption, and manipulation on Wall Street, financial mismanagement in the halls of government, fraud and perversion at the highest levels of both church and state. Many people sense the possibility of an even greater unraveling in the world. We are constantly confronted by the realities of new problems in this age of crisis. — Billy Graham

This is one of the most serious problems with seeker-sensitive churches. I was talking to a pastor at a seeker-friendly church not long ago about his idea that prospective Christians needed to "feel welcome" and "accepted" before anything else: no "threats," no "judgmental baggage." I asked, "If you had a person living in sin come to your church, would you confront him?" He furrowed his brow and shook his head disapprovingly. "Oh, no! We'd want him to feel loved and welcome." My eyes widened. "How long would it be before you would actually say something about that?" "Maybe a year and a half, two years," he said, smiling. "Because then he would really feel a part of things." That was shocking to me. Is there some virtue in leaving a man in his sin for the sake of feeling accepted? "Well, that's the difference between your church and our church," I said finally. "Openly practicing sinners come to our church, and they either get saved or they don't come back. — John F. MacArthur Jr.

Stepping back and connecting reconciliation to God's story also helps us move away from dramatic visions of fixing the world, as if our job were to provide solutions to problems outside us. If Christians believe anything, it is that no one - including ourselves and the church - is separate from the brokenness as an untainted solution to the problems of our world. The new creation contends with the old. The dividing line between good and evil runs straight through each one of us. So the journey of reconciliation begins with a transformation of the human person. — Chris Rice

Why would god allow the Holocaust to happen? If god made everything, why did he invent sin to trick us and then hold our sins against us? Why are there so many religions in the world if god created the world and wants us to be Christian? Why does god allow people to fight wars over him? What if you were born in a different culture and never even heard of Jesus Christ - would god send you to hell for not being Christian? And if so, do you believe that's fair? Why are men always the leaders in your church? Aren't women capable of leading too? Isn't such a patriarchal system sexist in this day and age? Why do so many babies die? Why are there so many poor people in the world? Did Jesus visit any other planets in distant unknown universes? — Matthew Quick

Galileo got into trouble because he maintained that since the new discoveries seemed to contradict scripture, those passages of scripture should be reinterpreted in a metaphorical way. He did not seek to oppose the Church nor to doubt the inspiration of scripture. The problem is that he abandoned science and started talking theology and so attracted the notice of the Roman Inquisition. If he had left theology out of his writings and discussions he would probably never have had problems. And he remained a faithful and devout Catholic to the end of his life. — Michael Coren

What if the preacher or father's saying 'Someone here's lost and hopeless' was tantamount to those Sun-Times horoscopes that are specially designed to be so universally obvious that they always give their horoscope readers that special eerie feeling of particularity and insight, exploiting the psychological fact that most people are narcissistic and prone to the illusion that they and their problems are uniquely special and that if they're feeling a certain way then surely they're the only person who is feeling like that. — David Foster Wallace

Many of the liberal people tend to say, "Well, the solution is government." I couldn't disagree more. The government cannot solve the problem and never will. I believe the solution to these problems is the church and that the church should be responsible for caring for the sick, and assisting the poor, and educating. — Rick Warren

The Church has its problems, but the older I get, the more comfort I find there. — Edward De Bono

Our women are not incredible because they have managed to avoid the difficulties of life - quite the opposite. They are incredible because of the way they face the trials of life. Despite the challenges and tests life has to offer - from marriage or lack of marriage, children's choices, poor health, lack of opportunities, and many other problems - they remain remarkably strong and immovable and true to the faith. Our sisters throughout the Church consistently succor the weak, lift up the hands which hang down, and strengthen the feeble knees. — Quentin L. Cook

Times are changing, and we must change with them. The twenty-first-century church does and will continually face radical change and much uncertainity with undefined problems that require organizatonal models and leadership qualities and competencies far different from those that were successful in the twentieth century. — Steve Raimo

Frequently, we act as arbiters of grace rather than its facilitators. But the Church is not a tollhouse; it is the house of the Father, where there is a place for everyone, with all their problems. — Pope Francis

When we talk about values, I think of rationality in solving problems. That's something I value. [Values are things like] Fairness, kindness, generosity, tolerance. When they [Conservative right wing Republicans] talk about values, they're talking about things like going to church, voting for Bush, being loyal to Jesus, praying. These are not values. — Bill Maher

This is our first interest as a church-to save and exalt the souls of the children of men. There is no richer program anywhere in the world than we have in the Church today for the building of men and women and providing the answers to the problems that face parents, families, and individuals. It is a program that is needed today as never before. — Ezra Taft Benson

When the problems in Northern Ireland started, it was not a question of Protestantism or Catholicism, because the Catholic church was the only church at that time-it was a nationalist conflict. — Harri Holkeri

In a world torn by every kind of fundamentalism - religious, ethnic, nationalist and tribal - we must grant first place to economic fundamentalism, with its religious conviction that the market, left to its own devices, is capable of resolving all our problems. This faith has its own ayatollahs. Its church is neo-liberalism; its creed is profit; its prayers are for monopolies. — Carlos Fuentes

The only group large enough to handle," the world's biggest, "problems is the network of millions of local churches around the world. We have the widest distribution, largest group of volunteers, local credibility, the promises of God, the power of the Holy Spirit, and the inevitability of history. — Rick Warren

Remarkable is the greater openness of the Catholic Church towards people of other religious traditions and persuasions. The development has not been without problems, since some people have resisted it and others have pushed openness beyond the desirable point. — Francis Arinze

When serious people of good faith disagree, they've got to go back into the narratives and come at it again. One of the problems in the church is that people are not willing to do that. People have arrived at a place where they think they have got the answer. — Walter Brueggemann

Men will surrender to the spirit of the age. They will say that if they had lived in our day, faith would be simple and easy. But in their day, they will say, things are complex; the Church must be brought up to date and made meaningful to the day's problems. — Anthony Of Padua

You have to work at having quality in your church, because people that are influential in your city may be God's instruments for resolving all kinds of problems that will most surely come up in the future. — Sunday Adelaja

Robert Hayward THE THIRTEENTH STEP Ancient Solutions to Contemporary Problems of Alcoholism and Addiction Using the Timeless Wisdom of the Native American Church Ceremony — Robert Hayward