Quotes & Sayings About Singing In Church

When you come to our meetings, you can see nothing outwardly. But in all [454] probability you do see something - God Himself expressed. Perhaps after attending a meeting you wonder within yourself, "My, it was very good there with them, but I can't pin down exactly in what way they are good. Their singing is not that musical. No one is dressed in an attractive way. There is no outward beauty or form. But, there is something there among them." This "something" is the expression of God. God is our expression. He is our form, beauty, and attraction. As the church, we have returned to God's original purpose, to the purpose He had in the beginning - that man express Him and represent Him. This is the Lord's recovery. — Witness Lee

It is the voice of the Church that is heard in singing together. It is not you that sings, it is the Church that is singing, and you, as a member of the Church, may share in its song. — Dietrich Bonhoeffer

I was a country kid who went to a public school, and she was more of a middle-class girl who attended a private school. I was into hunting and fishing, and she liked drama and singing in the choir at school and church. Our lives up until that point were totally different. — Jase Robertson

You can often tell the difference between a singer that grows up in the church and one that just can sing. There's a connection to love and support and care. You feel good when you hear it. You feel the people have so much conviction in what they're singing. They believe it, so you believe it. — Keke Palmer

I'm very soulful. I grew up singing in church. When I sing a song, I like to feel what I'm singing. — Fantasia Barrino

I love Aretha [Franklin] and I've loved her all my life. I think she's an incredible songstress, obviously. She consistently has had this incredible voice. I remember when she was singing gospel in her father's church. — Stevie Wonder

The church and the whorehouse arrived in the Far West simultaneously. And each would have been horrified to think it was a different facet of the same thing. But surely they were both intended to accomplish the same thing: the singing, the devotion, the poetry of the churches took a man out of his bleakness for a time, and so did the brothels. — John Steinbeck

Yet, even for us, there is left some loveliness of environment, and the dullness of tutors and professors matters very little when one can loiter in the grey cloisters at Magdalen, and listen to some flute-like voice singing in Waynfleete's chapel, or lie in the green meadow, among the strange snakespotted fritillaries, and watch the sunburnt noon smite to a finer gold the tower's gilded vanes, or wander up the Christ Church staircase beneath the vaulted ceiling's shadowy fans, or pass through the sculptured gateway of Laud's building in the College of St. John. — Oscar Wilde

am inclined rather to approve the practice of singing in church, although I do not offer an irrevocable opinion on it, so that through the pleasure afforded the ears the weaker mind may rise to feelings of devotion. However, when it so happens that I am moved more by the singing than by what is sung, I confess that I have sinned, in — Augustine Of Hippo

62. It is neither wise nor laudable to reduce everything to antiquity by every possible device. Thus, to cite some instances, one would be straying from the straight path were he to wish the altar restored to its primitive table form; were he to want black excluded as a color for the liturgical vestments; were he to forbid the use of sacred images and statues in Churches; were he to order the crucifixes designed that the Divine Redeemer's Body shows no trace of His cruel sufferings; lastly were he to disdain and reject polyphonic music or singing in parts, even where it conforms to regulations issued by the Holy See. — Pope Pius XII

I thought that some of the hymns bespoke the true religion of the place. The people didn't really want to be saints of self-deprivation and hatred of the world. They knew that the world would sooner or later deprive them of all it had given them, but still they liked it. What they came together for was to acknowledge, just by coming, their losses and failures and sorrows, their need for comfort, their faith always needing to be greater, their wish (in spite of all words and acts to the contrary) to love one another and to forgive and be forgiven, their need for one another's help and company and divine gifts, their hope (and experience) of love surpassing death, their gratitude. — Wendell Berry

My dad sung and played piano. But he was also a man of God. He was a minister. So when Sam Cooke would come in town, you know, with The Soul Stirrers at that time, he was singing gospel, they would end up at my dad's church, and it would always be a guest singer for Sunday morning. — Merry Clayton

Some of the stuff I'm writing is almost like hymns, some of my first singing and choral experiences were in church, the Church of Christ in Hicksville. — Billy Joel

Still i knew because of my own feelings there was something wrong with me and i knew it wasnt only me. I knew it was everybody. It was like a bacteria or a cancer or a trance. It wasnt on the skin, it was in the soul. It showed itself in lonliness, lust, anger , jealousy and depression. It had people screwed up bad everywhere you went- at the store, at home, at church, it was ugly and deep. Lots of singers on the radio were singing about it and cops had jobs because of it. It was as if we were broken I thought, as if we were never supposed to feel these sticky emotions. It was as if we were cracked, coudlnt love right, couldnt feel good things for a long before screwing it all up.
I am talking about the broken quality of life. — Donald Miller

Paul commands the Church to let the word of Christ dwell in us richly when we meet together, singing psalms, hymns, and spiritual songs. It seems clear here that style is not the important issue as much as the depth of content. — Keith Getty

I would think, to me, growing up in the south, growing up with all the gospel music, singing in the church and having that rhythm and blues - the blues background was my big inspiration. — Jackie DeShannon

We should protect our legacy of a free church in a free state. We ought to pray and work for a "quiet and peaceable life in all godliness and honesty" (1 Tim. 2:2 kjv). But that is not the ultimate sign of our success. It is better for our future generations to be willing to go to jail - for the right reasons - than to exchange the gospel of the kingdom for a mess of Esau's pottage. Sometimes jails filled with hymn-singing, letter-writing, gospel-preaching Christians can do extraordinary things. — Russell D. Moore

To glorify God is not just to do so in religious worship, singing praise and enacting the traditional rites of the church. To glorify God is to reveal his character by being who we were created to be-the embodiment of the image of God in human form. — James W. Sire

Some of us enter deconstruction willingly. We sat through too many church services that made us queazy with songs-with-words-we-stopped-feeling-good-about-singing, predictable messages, certainty, and focus on belief instead of practice. Something stirred within us, and we started asking the questions swirling around in our head. Others of us were pushed into deconstruction by wounding church experiences. We saw one too many inconsistencies, abuses of power, or crazy-stuff-that-only-insiders-sometimes-see that pushed us over the edge and called everything into question. — Gerardo Marti

Like all soul singers, I grew up singing in church but sometimes I would leave early and sit in the car listening to gospel band, The Blind Boys of Alabama. Hearing their lead singer Clarence made me connect the idea of church and show business and see how I could make a career singing music that stirred the soul. — Daryl Hall

I started singing in church and I was probably around seven and I started singing anywhere that I could. I used to sing at my school. I was in musicals and then it kind of got to a point where I started to - wanted to do my own songs. — Avril Lavigne

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

When you put biblical truth to the songs used in churches, you'll have the congregation leave singing the sermon. You'll have God's thoughts, things that are God-breathed, stuck in their heads. It's sad to think about a really catchy tune paired up with bad theology because that could, honestly, do a lot of damage in church. — Laura Story

We could never predict what moment in the service would trigger a full-blown crisis of faith. Once, it was the kids' choir singing "Nothing but the Blood" during special music.
"Surely I'm not the only one who thinks it's creepy to hear all those little voices singing about getting washed in the flow of someone's blood," I muttered as Dan and I escaped out the double doors.
Another time it was a prayer about God granting our troops victory over their enemies as they served him in Iraq.
"Don't you think the Iraqis are just as convinced God is on their side?" I whispered.
Sometimes it was just the way people chatted in the fellowship hall about "those liberals," as if feminists or Democrats or Methodists couldn't possibly be in their midst.
Often it was the assumption that women were unfit to speak from the pulpit or pass the collection plate on Sunday mornings, but were welcome to serve the men their key lime pie at the church picnic. — Rachel Held Evans

I got put out of my church choir because my pastor said, 'We can't have baby sister singing the blues and coming in here and singing on Sunday morning.' — Merry Clayton

My father's a deacon, my mother's a choir director, so I grew up in the church and singing in the choir, begging my mom if I could have a solo. — Keke Palmer

I started singing in church with my sister Maria when I was four, and I've been pretty much singing ever since. There's never been anything else for me to do. — Imelda May

Since Jimmy Carter, religious fundamentalists play a major role in elections. He was the first president who made a point of exhibiting himself as a born again Christian. That sparked a little light in the minds of political campaign managers: Pretend to be a religious fanatic and you can pick up a third of the vote right away. Nobody asked whether Lyndon Johnson went to church every day. Bill Clinton is probably about as religious as I am, meaning zero, but his managers made a point of making sure that every Sunday morning he was in the Baptist church singing hymns. — Noam Chomsky

Under the leadership of religious professionals, modern worship has become passive - listening to a message and singing some songs. Seldom is there a call to service or an invitation to trust Christ. Baptisms take place inside the church where it is safe and comfortable rather than in public where there is opportunity to give witness to the saving grace of Christ. The great needs of society are left to para-church groups, government agencies, and other social service organizations. All the while the church is losing its muscle tone, its biceps are becoming loose and flabby and its belly is becoming round and soft. Not a pretty picture for one who once was toned and buff - a lean, mean fighting machine. — Craig Olson

I've been singing all my life. I've always wanted this. I sang in church, in school plays, and my parents gave me vocal lessons. My parents always said this was destined for me. — Aaliyah

Worship is more than singing beautiful songs in church on a Sunday. It is more than instruments and music. As a true worshipper, your heart will long to worship Him at all times, in all ways and with all your life. — Darlene Zschech

During the ten years I lived in the U.K., I frequently attended an Anglican church just outside of London. I enjoyed the energetic singing and the thoughtful homilies. And yet, I found it easy to be a pew warmer, a consumer, a back row critic. — Gary Hamel

I actually started singing in church when I was about five years old. I remember looking at the choirs and just hearing all of those great big beautiful voices. And there was this one woman who could just wail. And I remember trying to sing like her when I was like going home. — Kelly Rowland

I was pretty young when I decided I wanted to, well, more so be a singer. I started singing in church in my hometown, East Orange, New Jersey. I knew when I was about five or six that I wanted to be a performer. — Naturi Naughton

It is an easy matter, Olav, to be a good Christian so long as God asks no more of you than to hear sweet singing in church, and to yield Him obedience while He caresses you with the hand of a father. But a man's faith is put to the test on the day God's will is not his. — Sigrid Undset

In today's church, the word "music" is often freely substituted for the idea of "worship"; however, music is not necessarily synonymous, or automatically interchangeable with, the idea of worship. People will often say, "It's time to worship" and what they mean is that it is time to begin singing. But, music is merely one form or means by which individuals can act on and express their worship to God. The substantive content of worship does not change, but there are many different ways in which worship of God is manifested through the actions of individuals. — Rick Ryan

I grew up in the church, singing in choirs, and I went to a performing arts school, and I had a gospel group, so music has always been in my blood. — Tweet

I was born in Alabama and my first live music experiences were in church. Every Sunday we watched regional gospel groups on television singing their hearts out. — Tommy Shaw

They always loved my sense of humor. There used to be a light switch inside one of the nurseries that was a cutout of Jesus putting his arm around two children on each side of him as he towered above them. The switch was ironically located in the spot of where his penis would have been and I was the first to point this out. Everyone thought it was funny until I started singing the childhood church song "Jesus Loves the Little Children." In fear of being struck by lightning or being involved in a massive pile-up car accident after leaving, their laughing ceased. I still thought it was funny. — Chase Brooks

It's only when we understand [Jesus'] presence in the church as being the fulfillment of God's promise in Zephaniah 3:17 to "quiet you with his love" and "rejoice over you with singing" that a crucial aspect of our salvation comes into perspective. Jesus didn't coldly settle accounts for us. He doesn't bark us into improving ourselves. He united us to himself in the glorious communion he has enjoyed for eternity with his heavenly Father. He resides within us to heal the broken places and refresh cauterized hearts. He sings us into a new mode of existence ... When, as Paul does, we imagine Jesus singing nations into submission to his rule, our hearts come joyfully under the sway of a love that is infinite and powerful. — Reggie M. Kidd

All our time spent making lists would be better spent painting, or writing, Or singing, or learning to speak stories. Sometimes I feel as though the Church has a kind of pity for Scripture, Always having to come behind it and explain everything, put everything into actionable steps, acronyms and hidden secrets, as though the original writers, and for that matter the Holy Spirit Who worked in the lives of the original writers, were a bunch of you literate hillbillies. I think the methodology God used to explain His Truth is quite superior. My life is a story, more than a list. I don't feel that a list could ever explain the complexity of all this beauty. — Donald Miller

Do you know what I think Jesus Christ would do if He came now? He would go to church and chapel ever so many times and listen, and no one would speak to him. He would look to see who sat round Him and He would see no ragged people, no thieves, no harlots, only respectable people. And He would hear all these respectable people singing hymns to Christ, and giving all the glory to Christ, and then after standing it a long time, Jesus would stand up some day in the middle of the church and just say two words, 'Damn Christ! — W. Sydney Robinson

Here I am looking at my lovely ten-year-old daughter, Maggie, in her white dress, singing Protestant hymns with the choir at the Plymouth Church of the Brethren when I should be at Mass praying for the repose of the soul of my mother, Angela McCourt, mother of seven, believer, sinner, though when I contemplate her seventy-three years on this earth I can't believe the Lord God Almighty on His throne would even dream of consigning her to the flames. A God like that wouldn't deserve the time of day. — Frank McCourt

A Hank Cochran song in the studio is spiritual. It's like singing a hymn in a church. — Jamey Johnson

Luther had passed many a white church in his day, heard them singing their hymns and chanting their "Amens" and seen them gather on a porch or two afterward with their lemonade and piety, but he knew if he ever showed up on their steps, starving or injured, the only response he'd get to a plea for human kindness would be the amen of a shotgun pointed in his face. — Dennis Lehane

Baptists:
I'm a pious guy, but even I have my limits. I draw the line right around spending 8 hours in church every Sunday. Church should be a solemn 45 minutes to sit quietly and feel guilty, with donuts at the end to make you feel better. I don't go in for a full day of singing and dancing and rejoicing, no matter how nice the hats are. I prefer my Gospel monotonously droned to me from a pulpit, thank you very much. — Stephen Colbert

I've met people in the last year or two who have stopped going to their local church because people have started singing new songs and dancing in the aisles. And I've met others who have started going for precisely the same reason. It's time to give ourselves a shake
to recognize that different people need different kinds of help at different stages of their lives
and get on with it. — N. T. Wright

My father started me singing in church. — DeForest Kelley

Singing is my pleasure, but not in church, for the parson said the gargoyles must remain on the outside, not seek room in the choir stalls. So I sing inside the mountain of my flesh, and my voice is as slender as a reed and my voice has no lard in it. When I sing the dogs sit quiet and people who pass in the night stop their jabbering and discontent and think of other times, when they were happy. And I sing of other times, when I was happy, though I know that these are figments of my mind and nowhere I have been. But does it matter if the place cannot be mapped as long as I can still describe it? — Jeanette Winterson

When I was 5 years old I started singing in church and I hated my voice because I sounded like a grown woman, not a child. I was ashamed of it. — Loleatta Holloway

If we understood it, the silence of Christ is the most eloquent of all appeals. Can you remember when you used to hear Him - when the words of the Book and the preacher used to move you in church, when the singing awoke aspiration, when the Sabbath was holy ground, when the Spirit of God strove with you? And is that all passed of passing away? — James Stalker

I feel comfortable singing in the great cathedrals of the world because I spent so much time as a child singing in church. And it isn't very different. Of course, nothing looks quite like Notre Dame de Paris. — Jessye Norman

(3) Singing can help us use words to demonstrate and express our unity, which means singing songs that unite us instead of divide us, recognizing that musical creativity in the church has functional limits and that it is ultimately the gospel, not music, that unites us in Christ. — John Piper

As a matter of fact my, my very first time singing when I was two and a half, three, was in church. So, ahm, church is very, very much a part of who I am. — Teddy Pendergrass

I've been singing forever; I grew up singing in church. — Sevyn Streeter

When I was a child, Mama had the best voice of all the members of the church. She had loved to sing. Her words had soared like an angel's over the swells of the organ. In fact, I now suspected, her entire theology had been taken from the hymnal. — Siri Mitchell

I hope it might help players have confidence in our own ways, and not to be afraid of them, as Bernstein showed - things like hoe-downs, fiddle songs, and the art of improvisation, and the New Orleans funeral tradition, and call-and-response church singing, and the fact that the blues run through everything. And in our relationship to European music, in that we don't have to imitate it, it's a part of us, inseparable. — Wynton Marsalis

I hadn't been exposed to music except in church. They used to have me singing a solo when I was five years old. — Willie Dixon

I was never interested in singing in the church choir or in school. I was more interested in becoming a musician. — Cassandra Wilson

Church was the thing for me. The fellowship and the message that was given and singing in the choir and singing the solos and really listening to the words that you were singing and seeing how it affected people was huge for me. — DeLisha Milton-Jones

Singing is really where I got my start in church. — Danny Gokey

Every scene of heaven in the Bible shows us a vision of the Church praying together and singing together and praising together. — Scot McKnight

I have devoted my energies to the study of the scriptures, observing monastic discipline, and singing the daily services in church; study, teaching, and writing have always been my delight. — Venerable Bede

I started off singing in church as a child. The sound of voices coming together, that was my first moment of touching something outside of myself. — Florence Welch

You sang in church, you know, and you didn't act at all. You tried not to act, you tried to tell the truth. The idea of being a troubadour on the road singing for your supper was very disturbing to him. — James Earl Jones

When I'm sitting in the church alone, I can hear singing of the old people. I can hear their singing and I can hear their praying, and sometimes I hum one of their songs. — Ernest Gaines

Do not fancy, as too many do, that thou canst praise God by singing hymns to Him in church once a week, and disobeying Him all the week long. He asks of thee works as well as words; and more, he asks of thee works first and words after. — Charles Kingsley

I have a Bible study that my friends and I go to here in L.A. I go to church every Sunday. I've always been a believer. I love singing. I don't have the best voice - I just love getting my emotions out. — Kellan Lutz

I'm a true singer who grew up singing in church, so I love singing my heart out. — Naturi Naughton

She went as through a forest
the columns were furrowed like ancient trees, and in through the forest flowed the light, many-hued and clear as song, from the pictured windows. High up above her, beasts and men sported among the stone leafage, and angels played
and yet far, dizzily far higher, the vaulting soared, lifting the church towards God. In a hall that lay to one side, worship was being held at an altar. Kristin sank down on her knees by a pillar. The singing cut into her like a too strong light. Now she saw how low she lay in the dust ... Pater noster. Credo in unum Deum. Ave Maria, gratia plena. — Sigrid Undset

Whenever they sang a certain song in church, I used to sing it the loudest: 'Lead me, guide me, along the way!' One day, as I was singing this song, I felt as if the Lord was saying to me, 'Lead you along what way?' I realized then that if you don't have a plan, God doesn't have anything specific to direct you in. — Myles Munroe

Once more, the joyful character of the eucharistic gathering must be stressed. For the medieval emphasis on the cross, while not a wrong one, is certainly one-sided. The liturgy is, before everything else, the joyous gathering of those who are to meet the risen Lord and to enter with him into the bridal chamber. And it is this joy of expectation and this expectation of joy that are expressed in singing and ritual, in vestments and in censing, in that whole 'beauty' of the liturgy which has so often been denounced as unnecessary and even sinful.
Unnecessary it is indeed, for we are beyond the categories of the 'necessary.' Beauty is never 'necessary,' 'functional' or 'useful.' And when, expecting someone whom we love, we put a beautiful tablecloth on the table and decorate it with candles and flowers, we do all this not out of necessity, but out of love. And the Church is love, expectation and joy. — Alexander Schmemann

The mellow bells, soaring and singing in tower and steeple, told of time's flight through an eternity of peace; and Great Tom, tolling his nightly hundred-and-one, called home only the rooks from off Christ Church Meadow. — Dorothy L. Sayers