Quotes & Sayings About Pews

We Christians are bound hands and feet, sitting down in the pews instead of going out to explore the earth for the Son of God, king of kings and the Lord of Lords — Sunday Adelaja

The weight of time and history felt profound in the quiet night in a tiny chapel with several wooden pews and a granite altar. If I were a religious man, someplace like this might move me to speak with God. — Bonnie Dee

imagine the desert
mothers, with hair tangled
tighter than their theology
and breasts that flowed milk
and mystic wisdom. they
knew how to draw the singing
sigils in the sand, how to dig
rough and bitten fingers
into desiccated dirt for water
to wet the lips of their young.

women of hips and heft, who
learned how to burn
beneath the wild and searing
sun, who made loud love
against the star-flecked threat
of night, who knew that strength
is not always a matter of muscle.

imagine your ancestresses,
the prophetesses of the arid
lands, before these starched
traditions and pews too hard
to pray from, who bled true
ritual and birthed their own fierce
souls at creation's crowning -- — Beth Morey

But how odd that in this heathen nation of empty pews, where churches' bare, ruined choirs are converted into luxury loft living, a Labour government - yes, a Labour government - is deliberately creating a huge expansion of faith schools. — Polly Toynbee

No one has a calling to sit in the pews of the church — Sunday Adelaja

I had no one to hold. What if this was my life, attending weddings, sitting in pews, listening to I do's, perpetually wishing for someone to share my life with? Where the fuck was the alcohol? — Stephanie Klein

The Catholic Church made a serious mistake when they started caring about how many people are in the pews. — Michel Templet

Almost succeeded in single-handedly shooing the faithful out of their pews in the French cathedrals. Unfortunately for him, this notion of God the Creator is nearly as rampant in the world today as it was when the first prophet sat down to put words in God's mouth. — Jesse Bering

An alternative food system is rising up on the margins," Joel continued. "One day Frank Perdue and Don Tyson are going to wake up and find that their world has changed. It won't happen overnight, but it will happen, just as it did for those Catholic priests who came to church one Sunday morning only to find that, my goodness, there aren't as many people in the pews today. Where in the world has everybody gone? — Michael Pollan

Familiar mahogany-stained pews with red velvet cushions sucked the light from the interior. — Sally Kilpatrick

His [brother in law Jim Hampson] appointment to the Episcopal parish in Wenham, near Gordon College brought them in close touch with leading evangelical faculty members in their pews and church leadership, including Elizabeth Elliot and Addison Leitch. They were instrumental in drawing Jim and and Sarah into the cutting edge of evangelical intellectual leadership, with friendships with Tom Howard and J.I. Packer. My ongoing relationship with Jim Packer, FitzSimons Allison and many other brilliant Anglican evangelicals would not have happened without Jim Hampson. His early influence on me in my transition from modern to classic Christian teaching was immense. While I was trying to demythologize Scripture, he was taking its plain meaning seriously. His strong preaching led him to become one of the founding sponsors and supporters of Trinity School of Ministry in Abridge, Pennsylvania ... — Thomas C. Oden

We have heard talk enough. We have listened to all the drowsy, idealess, vapid sermons that we wish to hear. We have read your Bible and the works of your best minds. We have heard your prayers, your solemn groans and your reverential amens. All these amount to less than nothing. We want one fact. We beg at the doors of your churches for just one little fact. We pass our hats along your pews and under your pulpits and implore you for just one fact. We know all about your mouldy wonders and your stale miracles. We want a this year's fact. We ask only one. Give us one fact for charity. Your miracles are too ancient. The witnesses have been dead for nearly two thousand years. — Robert G. Ingersoll

In many of our modern, sophisticated congregations, children are often viewed as distractions. We tolerate children only to the extent they promise to become "adults" like us. Adult members sometimes complain that they cannot pay attention to the sermon, they cannot listen to the beautiful music, when fidgety children are beside them in the pews. "Send them away," many adults say. Create "Children's Church" so these distracting children can be removed in order that we adults can pay attention.
These professors at Duke University conclude their point by noting,
Interestingly, Jesus put a child in the center of his disciples, "in the midst of them," in order to help them pay attention.... The child was a last-ditch effort by God to help the disciples pay attention to the odd nature of God's kingdom. Few acts of Jesus are more radical, countercultural, than his blessing of children. (Nashville: Abingdon, 1989, p. 96) — Robbie Fox Castleman

(Pastor Chuck) Smith told his elders in no uncertain terms that if the church had to turn away young people because of bare feet and clothes that they would be better off ripping up the carpet and replacing the pews with steel folding chairs. — Larry Eskridge

We need to close every church in the land for one Sunday and cease listening to a man so we can hear the groan of the Spirit which we in our lush pews have forgotten. — Leonard Ravenhill

The design is based on the old St. Stephen's Chapel, where the earliest parliamentarians sat, like choirboys in facing pews, yet there is little that is angelic in the modern set-up. Members face each other in confrontation, as antagonists. They are separated by two red lines on the carpet, whose distance apart represents the distance of two sword lengths, yet this is misleading, for the most imminent danger is never more than a dagger's distance away, on the benches behind. — Michael Dobbs

Yes, I heard my people singing!-in the glow of parlor coal-stove and on summer porches sweet with lilac air, from choir loft and Sunday morning pews-and my soul was filled with their harmonies. Then, too, I heard these songs in the very sermons of my father, for in the Negro's speech there is much of the phrasing and rhythms of folk-song. The great, soaring gospels we love are merely sermons that are sung; and as we thrill to such gifted gospel singers as Mahalia Jackson, we hear the rhythmic eloquence of our preachers, so many of whom, like my father, are masters of poetic speech. — Paul Robeson

Shopkeepers - the great landed and commercial interests - regularly sat and slept, and where the two publicans occupied pews, but seldom made even the pretence of worshipping. — Thomas Hughes

As I look around on Sunday morning at the people populating the pews, I see the risk that God has assumed. For whatever reason, God now reveals himself in the world not through a pillar of smoke and fire, not even through the physical body of his Son in Galilee, but through the mongrel collection that comprises my local church and every other such gathering in God's name. (p. 68, Church: Why Bother?) — Philip Yancey

In the parable of the ten virgins, Jesus is clearly saying that prior to his return the whole church will be asleep (Mt. 25:5), not just the foolish virgins but the wise as well. This verse turned my thinking upside down. No matter how I looked at it, no matter what commentary I read, no one had an adequate answer for what this verse really says. Denomination Presidents, Seminary Professors, Pastors and everyone in the pews: Jesus is telling us that we're all snoozing. — Nelson Walters

Any honest evaluation of contemporary evangelicalism will acknowledge that there are many people walking the streets and sitting in pews who have "obtained like precious faith with us" as the demons (2 Peter 1:1).11 They know something of the person and work of Christ, and they will make something of a confession when it is convenient. However, there is little evidence of an ongoing reality of the saving work of Christ in their lives. Their hope of eternal salvation is founded upon a decision they made long ago, which they believed was sincere, to "accept Christ" by means of a simple prayer. Ministers of the gospel who should have known better confirmed their hope. Like demons, they are lost. Yet, unlike demons, they do not know it. — Paul David Washer

The problem is not that the churches are filled with empty pews, but that the pews are filled with empty people. — Charlie W Shedd

Everyone always sat in the same place. It just kind of happens. We're creatures of habit. There were families who sat in the same pew, generation upon generation. If I didn't know better, I'd think the people of Levan bequeathed their pews in their wills. — Amy Harmon

Our powerlessness is largely a result of our prayerlessness. We are eating the bitter fruit of our failure to pray. Our children, government, churches and society are reaping the result of dry eyes in the pews and crusty hearts in the pulpits. Ed Silvoso says it well in his book That None Should Perish: When Christians begin to pray for the felt needs of the lost, God surprises them with almost immediate answers to prayer. In fact, prayer for the needs of that one-hundredth sheep is the spiritual equivalent of dialing 911.3 — Alice Smith

Hiding had been effortless in New York City. Getting lost in a sea of people was as easy as stepping onto a crowded Subway car. Sweet Laurel Cove would be very different. Generations of families filled its church pews, ran its farms, and schooled its children. Anonymity was as rare as lightning bugs in wintertime - as her grandmother would say. — Teresa Tysinger

After hours of wearing stifling suits while seated on rigid pews and high-backed dining chairs, to enter water and splay our limbs was freeing. The midday sun fell full on the pool, so when we waded in up to our waists, heat and cold balanced as if by a carpenter's level. That was the best sensation, knowing in a moment, but not quite yet, I'd dive into cold but emerge into warmth. Years later at Wake Forest, when I still believed I might create literature, I'd write a mediocre poem about those mornings in church and afterward the 'baptism of nature. — Ron Rash

If all the Christians- I mean all of 'em- got outta the pews on Sundays and into the streets, we'd shut the city down.
We'd shut down hunger.
We'd shut down loneliness.
We'd shut down the notion that there is any such of a thing as a person that don't deserve a kind word and a second chance. — Ron Hall

When we stand before Christ and He evaluates our ministries, He will not be asking us how many people sat in the pews, watched our TV programs, gave in our telethons or filled out response cards. He is not going to evaluate us based on how many people fell under the power of God or how many healings we counted in each service. He will ask how many faithful disciples we made. I pray we make this our priority. — J. Lee Grady

We get too comfortable with this orphanage universe, though. We sit in our pews, or behind our pulpits, knowing that our children watch "Christian" cartoons instead of slash films. We vote for the right candidates and know all the right "worldview" talking points. And we're content with the world we know, just adjusted a little for our identity as Christians. That's precisely why so many of us are so atrophied in our prayers, why our prayers rarely reach the level of "groanings too deep for words" (Rom 8:26). We are too numbed to be as frustrated as the Spirit is with the way things are. — Russell D. Moore

Relationships versus programs. Programs ordinarily presuppose that the people in the pews are simply an audience. On the other hand, building relationships in the church - through scripturally teaching one another, encouraging one another, listening to one another, confessing to one another, forgiving one another, and interacting with one another in a host of other ways - will transform the church from a passive audience to a living family. — Randall Arthur

The church was stuffed with mourners, of course. No one from work - I tried to keep my life and my magazine separate - but otherwise everybody Andrew and I knew was there. It was disorientating, like having the entire contents of one's address book dressed in black and exported into pews in non alphabetical order. — Chris Cleave

Lord, save the Church from desiring to have pews, choirs, organs, or instrumental music, and a congregational ministry, like other heathen Churches around them! — Peter Cartwright

On Saturday night, I would see men lusting after half-naked girls dancing at the carnival, and on Sunday morning when I was playing organ for tent-show evangelists at the other end of the carnival lot, I would see these same men sitting in the pews with their wives and children, asking God to forgive them and purge them of carnal desires. And the next Saturday they'd be back at the carnival or some other place of indulgence. I knew then that the Christian church thrives on hypocrisy, and that man's carnal nature will out no matter how much it is purged or scoured by any white-light religion. — Anton Szandor LaVey

Allen once recalled that even local blacks doubted the efficacy of an independent black church in Philadelphia, so fearful were they of a white backlash. But after segregated seating policies were instituted at white churches, Allen appeared to be a visionary, and many blacks soon joined his exodus from segregated Northern pews and galleries for independent black churches. For subsequent generations, Allen's act of defiance had all the meaning and power of Rosa Parks's sit-in during the mid-twentieth century. The comparison is not superficial. For while both events - Parks's sit-in and Allen's walkout of segregated pews - were courageous nonviolent acts in and of themselves, they also set the stage for new black freedom struggles. — Richard S. Newman

We have the means of evangelizing our country, but they are slumbering in the pews of our churches. — John Stott

When will we realize that one of the greatest mission fields in the West is the pews of our churches every Sunday morning? — Paul David Washer

How, when she showed no desire to understand, could I explain to her what the act of worship meant to me; or how many unseen presences thronged the pews around me, who down the centuries had all shared my belief and prayed as I did; or how those sixty minutes of service constituted the one hour when I could be sure of communing with my late father and mother? — Magda Szabo

One of them stepped from the crowd. It was Zeebo, the garbage collector. "Mister Jem," he said, "we're mighty glad to have you all here. Don't pay no 'tention to Lula, she's contentious because Reverend Sykes threatened to church her. She's a troublemaker from way back, got fancy ideas an' haughty ways - we're mighty glad to have you all." With that, Calpurnia led us to the church door where we were greeted by Reverend Sykes, who led us to the front pew. First Purchase was unceiled and unpainted within. Along its walls unlighted kerosense lamps hung on brass brackets; pine benches served as pews. Behind the rough oak pulpit a faded pink silk banner proclaimed God Is Love, the church's only decoration except a roto-gravure print of Hunt's The Light of the World. — Harper Lee

An associate of mine named William Congreve once wrote a very sad play that begins with the line 'Music has charms to sooth a savage beast,' a sentence which here means that if you are nervous or upset, you might listen to some music to calm you down or cheer you up. For instance, as I crouch here behind the alter of the Cathedral of the Alleged Virgin, a friend of mine is playing a sonata on the pipe organ, to calm me down and so that the sounds of my typewriter will not be heard by the worshipers sitting in the pews. The mournful melody of the sonata reminds me of a tune my father used to sing when he did the dishes, and as I listen to it I can temporarily forget six or seven of my troubles. — Lemony Snicket

Or maybe I was just hungry. I'd forgotten to eat the day before, and possibly what I should do was go back to my hotel and sit down to a few duck's legs instead of falling down between the pews in an attack of mystical hypoglycemia. — Michel Houellebecq

Pine trees with low limbs spread over fresh snow made a stronger vault for the spirit than pews and pulpits ever could. — Daniel Woodrell

We need to pray for our nation like never before, and then put legs to our prayers and preach the gospel to a sin-loving and Hell-bound world. To pray for America and at the same time ignore that command to preach the gospel to every creature, is nothing but empty hypocrisy. It is to honor God with our lips and have cold hearts that are far from Him. May He give us a love that moves us from the pews into the streets, and from our homes into our universities. God save us from the cozy comfort of lukewarm contemporary Christianity. — Ray Comfort

Thirty years ago, we were in a movie theater and thought it was so cool because we were finally delivered from the horrors of stained glass and wooden pews. — Bill Hybels

I remember when I was growing up and there would be sick people in the church. I was always so sensitive to them sitting in the pews alone, and I would not pass by without saying hello. But even at those tender ages of 5 through 14, I felt like they carried the plague, and after seeing them I would turn around praying really hard to never experience sickness like that, ever. I'd pray that I wouldn't make God angry enough to curse me like that with really awful things, but I didn't think about grace. I did not understand that it does not work that way, that God's grace is so much bigger than our sin because of Jesus - but I do get it now. We go through what we do so that we can fulfill God's glory in our lives. — Jacquelyn Nicole Davis

None but praying leaders can have praying followers. A praying pulpit will beget praying pews. We do greatly need pastors and evangelists who will set the saints to this business of praying. We are not a generation of praying saints. Who will restore this breach? The greatest will he be of reformers who can set the Church to praying. — Edward McKendree Bounds

Church and court, it's all the same - pews, a throne, a God, the accused. — Mitchell S. Jackson

A minister may fill his pews, his communion roll, the mouths of the public, but what that minister is on his knees in secret before God Almighty, that he is and no more. — John Owen

In the hall stood Richard Campbell Gansey III in his school uniform and overcoat and scarf and gloves, looking like someone from another world. Behind him was Ronan Lynch, his damn tie knotted right for once and his shirt tucked in.
Humiliation and joy warred furiously inside Adam.
Gansey strode between the pews as Adam's father stared at him. He went directly to the bench, straight up to the judge. Now that he stood directly beside Adam, not looking at him, Adam could see that he was a little out of breath. Ronan, behind him, was as well. they had run.
For him. — Maggie Stiefvater

According to the historian William H. McNeil, European churches did not have pews until sometime in the eighteenth century. People stood or milled around, creating a very different dynamic than we find in today's churches, where people are expected to spend most of their time sitting. — Barbara Ehrenreich

It is often the parishioners, the men and women in the pews, who set the tone. — Andrew Pettegree

To think there are men who dare so defile a church, a sacred sanctuary dedicated to God. We have to hold up our skirts and walk tiptoe, so covered is the floor, the aisle and pews, with the dark shower of tobacco juice. — Mary Boykin Chesnut

The minister should preach as if he felt that although the congregation own the church, and have bought the pews, they have not bought him. His soul is worth no more than any other man's, but it is all he has, and he cannot be expected to sell it for a salary. The terms are by no means equal. If a parishioner does not like the preaching, he can go elsewhere and get another pew, but the preacher cannot get another soul. — Edwin Hubbel Chapin

Women were expected to sit in the pews, receiving messages from men in the pulpit. Their role was to recognize God in their pastor, not to expect or demand that he recognize God in them. — Melissa V. Harris-Perry

Adam finally sat down on one of the pews. Laying his cheek against the smooth back of it, he looked at Ronan. Strangely enough, Ronan belonged here, too, just as he had at the Barns. This noisy, lush religion had created him just as much as his father's world of dreams; it seemed impossible for all of Ronan to exist in one person. Adam was beginning to realize that he hadn't known Ronan at all. Or rather, he had known part of him and assumed it was all of him.
The scent of Cabeswater, all trees after rain, drifted past Adam, and he realized that while he'd been looking at Ronan, Ronan had been looking at him. — Maggie Stiefvater

The TV shouted an old black-and-white film he didn't recognize, wheelchairs facing it like church pews. — Sere Prince Halverson

When I was growing up, I grew up in church
my father was a pastor
so when I was growing up in Trinidad, I'd close all the windows in the church and go in the church every day after school and get a little microphone and pretend all these people were in the pews, and I would sing to them. — Heather Headley

In light of his criticism, maybe we need to reevaluate Jesus' commendation - and look more closely at our own church and our own lives. The church at Ephesus was a hardworking church, but without the hot fire of love for Christ, their work was simply a performance. The services were well planned, the pews were packed, and the pastor's sermons were polished, but Jesus says, "I miss the love you had at first." He misses the extravagance of love poured out; he misses the spontaneous expressions of praise; he misses the full sacrifice of their hearts. The ministry at the Ephesian church in your neighborhood is very impressive, but Jesus is not pleased. — Douglas Connelly

On the whole, I do not find Christians, outside of the catacombs, sufficiently sensible of conditions. Does anyone have the foggiest idea what sort of power we so blithely invoke? Or, as I suspect, does no one believe a word of it? The churches are children playing on the floor with their chemistry sets, mixing up a batch of TNT to kill a Sunday morning. It is madness to wear ladies' straw hats and velvet hats to church; we should all be wearing crash helmets. Ushers should issue life preservers and signal flares; they should lash us to our pews. For the sleeping god may wake someday and take offense, or the waking god may draw us out to where we can never return. — Annie Dillard

Christians best thrive as a minority, a counterculture. Historically, when they reach a majority they too have yielded to the temptations of power in ways that are clearly anti-gospel. Charlemagne ordered a death penalty for all Saxons who would not convert, and in 1492 Spain decreed that all Jews convert to Christianity or be expelled. British Protestants in Ireland once imposed a stiff fine on anyone who did not attend church and deputies forcibly dragged Catholics into Protestant churches. Priests in the American West sometimes chained Indians to church pews to enforce church attendance. After many such episodes in Christendom it became clear that religion allied too closely to the state leads to the abuse of power. Much of the current hostility against Christians evokes the memory of such examples. The blending of church and state may work for a time but it inevitably provokes a backlash, such as that seen in secular Europe today. — Philip Yancey

Y'know, if those pews reclined, and the priests gave the Raiders scores I'd go to church every Sunday. — George Lopez

Sadly, the doctrinal ignorance in the pulpits of today is being replicated in the doctrinal ignorance and indifference of the pews, and the people are not even seeing the picture, much less getting it. — Albert Mohler