I Love Going To Church Quotes & Sayings

To all fathers and mothers of the Church, tell your children that you love them and that you are so happy to have them in your family. — Patricia P. Pinegar

Consider my Lover; the yellow church
of his skin, the clean wells of his ears;
How the notes of a song come to him
like birds descending on a power line;
How in his absence I am of two
throats
each of them cramped. — Cecilia Llompart

I had always sung, as far back as I can remember, for the pure love of it. My voice was contralto, and I sang in a church in Naples from fourteen till I was eighteen. — Enrico Caruso

Thus, to serve one another through love, that is to instruct him that goeth astray, to comfort the afflicted, to raise up the weak, to help thy neighbour, to bear his infirmities, to endure troubles, labours, ingratitude in the Church, and in civil life to obey the magistrates, to give honour to parents, to be patient at home with a froward wife, and an unruly family; these and such like, are works which reason judgeth to be on no value. But, indeed, they are such works, that the whole world is not able to comprehend the excellency and worthiness thererof, for it doth not measure things by the word of God, yea, it knoweth not the value of any of the least good works, which are good works indeed. — Martin Luther

Now I think ultimately our hope is certainly that people can feel and taste the goodness of God and to find the salvation in Jesus's love and sacrifice. Sometimes the biggest barrier to that has been Christians and has been a Church that is numb to the poverty of the world or just sees our Christianity as a ticket into heaven while ignoring the hells of the world around us. And we're not willing to settle for that kind of Christianity. We believe in a kingdom that begins now and that the kingdom of God Jesus preached is not just something we're to go to when we die but that we're to bring down on earth as it is in heaven. — Shane Claiborne

It may be a product of me being raised in episcopal church, but I have a love for ritual and theater and the significance of doing the exact same thing over and over. So I really love knowing every little thing I'm going to do during a show. — Jonathan Meiburg

I'm very interested in religion and different religions, and I know quite a lot about it. I love gospel music, and I love going to churches, but the one drawback is that I don't actually believe in God. And it is quite a handicap, you know. — Nick Lowe

The term revolution means: a sudden, radical, and complete change from the way things are normally done. I love that definition because I really feel that in order for us to start walking in the kind of love that Christ commanded us to - the "love your neighbor as yourself" kind - it's going to take a radical change in our current behavior. The church has become passive and selfish and it's going to take a revolution to get us back to the place where we are not just talking the talk, but walking in a love that shows the world Christ's love. — Joyce Meyer

Six months ago when she first came up with the idea to kill Wilson, back when she was living in Memphis, she'd started going to church again. Since she was spending so much time thinking about sinister things, the least she could do, she reasoned, was to think about God and his love twice a week at church so that she wouldn't become a total sociopath. And rather than kill other people who were stand-ins for the person she really wanted to kill, like serial killers did, she'd be kind and generous to others and hone in on the one who deserved to die. And her plan had worked extremely well. Since she'd started planning to kill Wilson, and then decided to destroy his family instead, she felt no animosity toward anyone but him. Almost none at all! — Elizabeth Stuckey-French

And as Craig Brown - he's an English humorist, not a comedian but he's just a writer and humorist - I'm quite a fan of. I heard him talking in a rather similar way on the radio. He said I'm the sort of person - I can't remember exactly what he said, but it was rather interesting - he said I'm the sort of person that can be reduced to tears in an empty church and feel like I'm the CEO of the Devil's organization in a full one, and I tend to feel like that as well. I love empty churches and going into them looking around, but I'm not a churchgoer at all. — Nick Lowe

Newt had said I loved Ivy more than the church. I wasn't going to deny it, but there were all kinds of love, and how shallow would I be if my anchor to reality was a hunk of real estate? It was the people who were there that made it mean something. — Kim Harrison

Churches are the primary partners that work with Habitat in an almost infinite variety of creative overlapping circles. We cherish these partnerships with churches ... I have always seen Habitat for Humanity as a servant of the church and as a vehicle through which the church and its people can express their love, faith, and servanthood to people in need in a very tangible and concrete (literally!) way. — Millard Fuller

What I miss today more than anything else - I don't go to church as much anymore - but that old-time religion, that old singing, that old praying which I love so much. That is the great strength of my being, of my writing. — Ernest Gaines

When we approach theology as facts to look at, it is easy to allow certain theological debates to replace Scripture as our primary theological subject matter. These debates - such as the categorization of God's attributes, the nature of predestination, the age of the earth, and the continuation of certain spiritual gifts - are not unimportant issues, and sometimes the church must return to them for extended theological reflection. However, the church's mission is derailed when theology becomes little more than a discipline helping people know what to believe about these particular issues. These debates are necessary to the task of theology, but they are not primary. The primary role of theology is to cultivate in us a love for and knowledge of — Daniel L. Akin

The church must not teach the submission of wives apart from the sacrificial love and servanthood required of husbands. — Gary L. Thomas

False religion may prevail, iniquity may abound, the love of many may wax cold, the cross of Calvary may be lost sight of, and darkness, like the pall of death, may spread over the world; the whole force of the popular current may be formed to overthrow the people of God; but in the hour of greatest peril the God of Elijah will raise up human instrumentalities to bear a message that will not be silenced. — Ellen G. White

Then, overcome by joy, I cried, 'Jesus, my love. At last I have found my vocation. My vocation is love. In the heart of the Church, my mother, I will be love, and then I will be all things. — Therese De Lisieux

I'm happiest in an empty church. I love the smell of a church. — Michael Patrick King

I love Sara, but something was taken from me at the church, something that she can't relate to. Every time I walk outside I think maybe someone is going to grab me. I take a sip of a glass of water I got out of my own tap and swish it around in my mouth first, like maybe it's a threat. And I'm starting to understand why Alex walks around on the balls of her feet, why her back muscles are always tensed, like a cat ready to spring.
She knows. She gets it. So that's why I'm going to tell Sara that I'm okay and leave it at that. — Mindy McGinnis

Christ, invisible to the bodily eye, manifests Himself on earth clearly through His Church ... The Church is the Body of Christ both because its parts are united to Christ through His divine mysteries and because through her Christ works in the world. — John Of Shanghai And San Francisco

God language can tie people into knots, of course. In part, that is because 'God' is not God's name. Referring to the highest power we can imagine, 'God' is our name for that which is greater than all and yet present in each. For some the highest imaginable power will be a petty and angry tribal baron ensconced high above the clouds on a golden throne, visiting punishment on all who don't believe in him. But for others, the highest power is love, goodness, justice, or the spirit of life itself. Each of us projects our limited experience on a cosmic screen in letters as big as our minds can fashion. For those whose vision is constricted (illiberal, narrow-minded people), this can have horrific consequences. But others respond to the munificence of creation with broad imagination and sympathy. Answering to the highest and best within and beyond themselves, they draw lessons and fathom meaning so redemptive that surely it touches the divine. — Forrest Church

I've always been a quitter. I quit the Boy Scouts, the glee club, the marching band. Gave up my paper route, turned my back on the church, stuffed the basketball team. I dropped out of college, sidestepped the army with a 4-F on the grounds of mental instability, went back to school, made a go of it, entered a Ph.D. program in nineteenth-century British literature, sat in the front row, took notes assiduously, bought a pair of horn-rims, and quit on the eve of my comprehensive exams. I got married, separated, divorced. Quit smoking, quit jogging, quit eating red meat. I quit jobs: digging graves, pumping gas, selling insurance, showing pornographic films in an art theater in Boston. When I was nineteen I made frantic love to a pinch-faced, sack-bosomed girl I'd known from high school. She got pregnant. I quit town. — T.C. Boyle

I LOVE WAL-MART. I CONSIDER MY JOKES TO BE VERY JEUVINILLE. STUFF A 14 YEAR OLD WOULD LAUGH AT BECAUSE THATS THE SENCE OF HUMOR I HAVE. ALL THE STUFF I TALK ABOUT MAY NOT BE APPROPRIATE FOR CHURCH GROUPS HOWEVER WAL-MART AINT SUNDAY SCHOOL. AS LONG AS I DIDNT USE OFFENSIVE FOUL LANGUAGE I KNEW ID BE FINE. WAL-MART GETS IT, THATS WHY THEY BLOW AWAY THE COMPETITION. BESIDES ITS THERE STORE THEY CAN DO WHAT THEY WANT. THATS AMERICA BABY! — Larry The Cable Guy

No, I don't party; no, I don't dress in black leather and chains; that's not my style. That's how I was raised. I worry about getting good grades and I go to church and I watch sci-fi movies and I generally follow the rules. Most people would call me a geek or a nerd. You've called me that many times. But that isn't everything that defines me. I mean, look at me, sitting here in a rainstorm under a tree that's probably going to kill us when the lightning hits it, holding the hand of a pretty cool girl who really is the opposite of me, a girl that I happen to be in love with. A girl I couldn't have imagined would want to be with me. But here she is, letting me hold her hand, trying to tell me why she isn't good enough for me. That's crazy. — Cindy C. Bennett

To be like God is not to have perfect doctrinal integrity, to get the details of church "right," or to be religiously and moralistically pure. To be like God is to dirty our hands with the labor of love. — Ronnie McBrayer

Faith, not cowardice, takes the step into unknown territory for the sake of Jesus Christ and His church. Love, not self-preserving protectiveness, sacrifices its own life that others might live. Hope of new life, not resignation to inevitable decline, yields itself up in the quest for a better future. — Darrin Patrick

In order to get some help in your love walk, all you have to do is ask God to let you see these people through His eyes. — Anna M. Aquino

There are no buts," she said. "Not about this. Not with me. I love you, Wilson, and I know that you love me. And if we're going to make it work between us, we're both going to have to give a little. I'm not asking you to believe. I'm asking you to it's acome with me to church. Marriage is about compromise; it's about doing something for the other person, even if you don't want to. Like I did with the wedding. — Nicholas Sparks

I have made up my mind to say my say. I shall do it kindly, distinctly; but I am going to do it. I know there are thousands of men who substantially agree with me, but who are not in a condition to express their thoughts. They are poor; they are in business; and they know that should they tell their honest thought, persons will refuse to patronize them - to trade with them; they wish to get bread for their little children; they wish to take care of their wives; they wish to have homes and the comforts of life. Every such person is a certificate of the meanness of the community in which he resides. And yet I do not blame these people for not expressing their thought. I say to them: 'Keep your ideas to yourselves; feed and clothe the ones you love; I will do your talking for you. The church can not touch, can not crush, can not starve, cannot stop or stay me; I will express your thoughts. — Robert G. Ingersoll

Tess passed by the Church's sign, and then made the turn right. Her expectations for a degree of improvement were met with passed echoes of indecisive hand claps from mental bodied insecurities that infiltrated her subconscious with a disruptive applause in an attempt to divert her focus from the road of progression by putting it back on her publicized devastations. — Calvin W. Allison

My father was very strict with me, and I kept seeing a disparity between their freedom and my lack of it, or how I had all the responsibilities and they had none. And the Catholic Church, all of the rules, and why did I have to wear a dress when they could wear pants? I would say to my dad: 'Will Jesus love me less if I wear pants? Am I going to hell?' — Madonna Ciccone

I disagree with a couple of the stances of the Catholic Church. My older brother is gay, and it's important for me to be able to love him completely and freely, and it's important for me to spread beliefs in the world that are not going to limit people in their love. I can't support a religion that doesn't support my brother. — Anne Hathaway

I love going to the feed store and drinking coffee and talking about how much rain we need. — Thomas Haden Church

I would like to encourage you to stop thinking of what you're doing as ministry. Start realizing that your ministry is how much of a tip you leave when you eat in a restaurant; when you leave a hotel room whether you leave it all messed up or not; whether you flush your own toilet or not. Your ministry is the way that you love people. And you love people when you write something that is encouraging to them, something challenging. You love people when you call your wife and say, 'I'm going to be late for dinner,' instead of letting her burn the meal. You love people when maybe you cook a meal for your wife sometime, because you know she's really tired. Loving people - being respectful toward them - is much more important than writing or doing music. — Rich Mullins

Does she know you're in love with her?"
This time I can't help but smile. If this had been last week, or even two days ago, I would've frowned and denied it. Never again. "She knows."
"And she loves you?" Mrs. Jones asks in a motherly tone.
"She does. We're going to give us a try and see where it goes."
"It better go to church for the wedding," she mumbles as she walks by me with the papers in hand. — L.P. Dover

I'm Catholic and Mum taught me the comfort that you can get from going to church. But I'm an a la carte Catholic. I love all the pomp and ceremony of it. — Patsy Kensit

Well, eighteen, then. And I saw you with him the other night at the opera." She laughed nervously as she spoke, and watched him with her vague forget-me-not eyes. She was a curious woman, whose dresses always looked as if they had been designed in a rage and put on in a tempest. She was usually in love with somebody, and, as her passion was never returned, she had kept all her illusions. She tried to look picturesque, but only succeeded in being untidy. Her name was Victoria, and she had a perfect mania for going to church. — Oscar Wilde

I love going to black churches, and I love some of these black preachers. The best preacher I ever saw in my life was a 93-year-old in a black church in Hamilton, Virginia. What a preacher! — Robert Duvall

Personally, I am a church-going Christian. I love my church, my congregation; it's my favorite place to be. — Pauley Perrette

There's a little bit of gospel in everything I do. But I don't know if I will ever do a gospel album. There's a big universe out here, and I don't want to just sing to the church. I want to sing to the world and bring them a message of love. I love going to church and singing gospel songs, but right now there's a message that the world needs. — El DeBarge

I was baptized Episcopalian when I was maybe two years old and we went to an Episcopalian church. When we moved to Georgia, we started going to a Lutheran church and I fell in love with the church there - Lutheran Church of the Good Shepherd in Douglasville, Georgia. I really have a home there. — Elana Meyers

The prayer of listening makes things simple but it also makes us vulnerable, and that is frightening. Listening makes us open to Christ, the Word of God, spoken in all things: in the material world, the Scriptures, the Church, and sacraments and, sometimes most threateningly, in our fellow human beings. To listen at prayer is to take the chance of hearing the voice of Christ in the poor, the weak, those whom we love and those whom we do not love. — Benedict Groeschel

The Church, if it is to be the Church, must be the revelation of that divine Love which God "poured out into our hearts." Without this love nothing is "valid" in the Church because nothing is possible. The content of Christ's Eucharist is Love, and only through love can we enter into it and be made its partakers. — Alexander Schmemann

You're going to come across some truly gifted people in your lifetime that seem to know all the answers. However, they lost their personal relationship with God, along the way. Love them anyways, and do everything you can to help them restore that relationship. They are fighting a war that you don't know anything about. — Shannon L. Alder

Nothing in the church makes people in the church more angry than grace. It's ironic: we stumble into a party we weren't invited to and find the uninvited standing at the door making sure no other uninviteds get in. Then a strange phenomenon occurs: as soon as we are included in the party because of Jesus' irresponsible love, we decide to make grace "more responsible" by becoming self-appointed Kingdom Monitors, guarding the kingdom of God, keeping the riffraff out (which, as I understand it, are who the kingdom of God is supposed to include). — Mike Yaconelli

In the politics of Jesus the world will be changed by non-coercive love or not at all. It's not the task of the church to change the world by legislative force. It's the task of the church to be the world changed by Christ. This is revolutionary in a way that conventional politics never can be. — Brian Zahnd

Marriage is not mainly about prospering economically; it is mainly about displaying the covenant-keeping love between Christ and his church. Knowing Christ is more important than making a living. Treasuring Christ is more important than bearing children. Being united to Christ by faith is a greater source of marital success than perfect sex and double-income prosperity. — John Piper

Where Christ's Spirit is, it will bring men from their altitudes and excellencies, and make them to stoop to serve the church, and account it an honour to be an instrument to do good. — Richard Sibbes

The most important condition necessary for our success is to have a sincere love for God — Sunday Adelaja

Apparently "love thy neighbour" changes to "judge thy neighbour" if your family doesn't follow the church playbook. — Miranda Kenneally

The true idea of a church has not yet been shown the world, a visible Church, I mean, unless it was in the very earliest times; yes, the twelve disciples bound to their Lord in love, to do his work forever, that was a church, a Christian family. — Lucy Larcom

Other and more powerful forms of association have existed, but the major moral and psychological influences on the individual's life have emanated from the family and local community and the church. Within such groups have been engendered the primary types of identification: affection, friendship, prestige, recognition. And within them also have been engendered or intensified the principal incentives of work, love, prayer, and devotion to freedom and order. — Robert A. Nisbet

I still love church. My favorite church service is T.D. Jakes at the Potter's House. I don't think there is a better preacher in the country. His ability to interpret scripture is like no other. — Oprah Winfrey

What he felt during his Spanish encounter with left-wing anti-Christianity was similar to his reactions to the anti-Christianity of the right. The "novelty and shock of the Nazis", Auden wrote, and the blitheness with which Hitler's acolytes dismissed Christianity "on the grounds that to love one's neighbor as oneself was a command fit only for effeminate weaklings", pushed him inexorably toward unavoidable questions. "If, as I am convinced, the Nazis are wrong and we are right, what is it that validates our values and invalidates theirs?" The answer to this question, he wrote later, was part of what "brought me back to the church. — Ross Douthat

Alfred was obsessed by order, obsessed by the task of marshaling life's chaos into something that could be controlled. He would do it by the church and by the law, which are much the same thing, but I wanted to see a pattern in the strands of life. In the end I found one, and it had nothing to do with any god, but with people. With the people we love. — Bernard Cornwell

Lips, breath, tongue, hands, and every other inch of his body worships mine like I'm his religion and this bed is our church. And I swear his love is God sent and his touch is a glimpse of Heaven here on Earth. — Jewel E. Ann

Nothing will divide the church so much as the love of power. — Saint John Chrysostom

When I was a young priest in the 1960s and 1970s, there was much experimentation and confusion in the Church. Teachers and clergy were encouraged to communicate an experience of God's love, but to do it without reference to the Creed, the sacraments, or the tradition. — Donald Wuerl

doing what you love with people you like the way you want. — Matt Church

We pass a church with a massive blue neon cross, and I am spiritually lifted by feelings of great religiosity. No, I'm not, for crying out loud. Don't be ridiculous. But what I do love about this road is how the gaudy becomes grand, how tastelessness is a way of everyday life. You have to admire how these people shamelessly try to get your attention as you drive by, whether they're trying to feed you a hamburger or a savior. (p.37) — Michael Zadoorian

A church of dialogue in the contemporary world ... a church, taking on the mission of Jesus, which is in the world not to judge humanity, but to love it and to save it. — Claudio Hummes

You talk like there is no church or laws. Like you want to marry me. — Val Kovalin

The band and I were leading at a Youth Specialties convention. We were asked to back up Matt Maher for one of the sessions. Matt handed us the chord charts and, with less than 5 minutes of practice, we were playing it live. I fell in love with this song immediately. You can't hear the message of God's sufficient grace too many times. Matt is a great lead worshiper and is a part of Life Teen, a growing worship movement in the Catholic Church. — Chris Tomlin

Make us love and obey you so that the works of our hands may always display what your hands have done, until we gaze upon the beauty of your face. — The Catholic Church

My religion is my whole life. I love sharing it with people and clearing up any misunderstandings people might have about our Church. — Carmen Rasmusen

God does not want a church filled with white-robed saints. He does not want a church filled with theological authorities or cultured clergyman. He wants a church filled with ordinary men and women who exemplify the extraordinary integrity, temperament, wholeness, compassion, individuality, boldness, righteousness, earnestness, love, forgiveness, selflessness, and faithfulness of Jesus Christ! — Ray Stedman

We are a church of sinners but we must not be afraid of holiness. Do not be afraid to aim for holiness and turn yourselves over to the love of God. Holiness does not mean performing extraordinary things but carrying out daily things in an extraordinary way that is with love, joy and faith. — Pope Francis

Caught between the longing for love, and the struggle for the legal tender, where the sirens sing and the church bells ring, and the junk man pounds his fender. Where the veterans dream of the fight, fast asleep at the traffic light, and the children solemnly wait for the ice cream vendor. — Jackson Browne

And I ask why am I black, they say I was born in sin, and shamed inequity. One of the main songs we used to sing in church makes me sick, 'love wash me and I shall be whiter than snow. — Peter Tosh

I was born in the summer of 1970, the last of five boys stretched over eight years. My parents were a struggling young couple who had been married one afternoon under a shade tree by a preacher without a church. No guests or fancy dress, just the two of them, lost in love, and the preacher taking a break from working on a house. — Charles M. Blow