Congregation Quotes - Page 6

• The congregation that I was raised in was one that sang and a non-instrumental fashion. It was all a cappella singing, and so that had a major influence on me.

  Dwight Yoakam

  Fashion, Singing, Influence

  Source: www.npr.org

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• I go to a church here in New Jersey that is just a very exciting place, and I just love to be there on Sunday morning - I just sit there in a pew with my wife, that's all I do, but I'm very much a part of that congregation. We've got a fantastic rector,she brings in people from places like the United Theological Seminary in New Brighton, Minnesota, where you've got good teaching, and our people are being introduced to great material and they really respond. They're able to believe without crossing their fingers. And I think that's a real step forward.

  John Shelby Spong

  Morning, Real, Teaching

  Source: www.thinkpiecepublishing.com

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• I don't have any complaints about homosexuals being married in a civil ceremony. But I don't think that the government ought to require religious organizations, churches, should perform marriages between homosexuals if a local congregation decides otherwise. I believe in the autonomy of individual churches.

  Jimmy Carter

  Religious, Believe, Thinking

  Source: www.christianpost.com

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• I have a hundred-year-old aunt who aspires to sainthood, and whose only wish has been to go into the convent, but no congregation, not even the Little Sisters of Charity, could tolerate her for more than a few weeks, so the family has had to look after her. Believe me, there is nothing so insufferable as a saint, I wouldn't sic one on my worst enemy.

  Isabel Allende

  Believe, Aunt, Worst Enemy

  Isabel Allende (2003). “My invented country: a memoir”, HarperPerennial

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• I've chronicled the experience of the mother of a transgender child who got attacked by the Ku Klux Klan in Tennessee, and that of a transgender woman who was asked to deliver a sermon at her Montana church and got a standing ovation from her congregation. The idea that Christianity is a blanket term that encompasses both of those attitudes seems ludicrous to me.

  Andrew Solomon

  Mother, Children, Attitude

  Source: andrewsolomon.com

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• The trouble with being a secular humanist is that we don't have a congregation. We don't meet so it's a very flimsy tribe, but there's a wonderful quotation from Nietzsche. Nietzsche said, Only a person of deep faith can afford the luxury of skepticism. Something perfectly is going on. I do not doubt it, but the explanations I hear do not satisfy me.

  Kurt Vonnegut

  Luxury, Doubt, Tribes

  "Kurt Vonnegut Judges Modern Society". "Morning Edition" with Steve Inskeep, www.npr.org. January 23, 2006.

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• He was one of those men who, even in the years of peace, would have advised his congregation that while God may well be honored by the inflexibility of the pious, he might also be honored by the flexibility of the sensible.

  Thomas Keneally

  Men, Years, May

  Thomas Keneally (1993). “Schindler's List”, p.207, Simon and Schuster

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• When we are going to enter the water ... in the presence of the congregation and under the hand of the president, we solemnly profess that we disown the devil, his pomp, and his angels. After this we are immersed three times, making a somewhat larger pledge than the Lord appointed in the Gospel. Then we are taken up [a reference to the Roman tradition of recognizing a newborn baby as a member of the family]. We first taste a mixture of milk and honey and from that day we refrain from the daily bath for a whole week.

  Tertullian

  Baby, Taken, Angel

  8 Copy quote

• When the rest of the congregation rose at the entrance of the choir he kept his seat. He argued that rising to one's feet at such a time tended to make the choir-boys conceited.

  Isa Bowman

  Time, Boys, Conceited

  Isa Bowman (1900). “The Story of Lewis Carroll: Told for Young People by the Real Alice in Wonderland, Miss Isa Bowman”

  5 Copy quote

  Show source

• Theology is not a private subject for theologians only. Nor is it a private subject for professors. Fortunately, there have always been pastors who have understood more about theology than most professors. Nor is theology a private subject of study for pastors. Fortunately, there have repeatedly been congregation members, and often whole congregations, who have pursued theology energetically while their pastors were theological infants or barbarians. Theology is a matter for the Church.

  Karl Barth

  Church, Matter, Barbarians

  Karl Barth (2005). “God In Action: Theological Addresses”, p.26, Wipf and Stock Publishers

  92 Copy quote

  Show source

• In a large congregation, while there is a wide diversification of interest, it is also true that there are only a few basic human problems. It must also be taken into consideration that people are people regardless of who they are or what their backgrounds may be. There are certain deep universal appeals to human interest and to these human nature always responds.

  Norman Vincent Peale

  Taken, People, May

  Dr. Norman Vincent Peale (2007). “A Guide to Confident Living”, p.5, Simon and Schuster

  7 Copy quote

  Show source

• Church always seemed the same. Jess could tune it out the same way he tuned out school, with his body standing up and sitting down in unison with the rest of the congregation but his mind numb and floating, not really thinking or dreaming but at least free.

  Katherine Paterson

  Dream, School, Thinking

  Katherine Paterson (1995). “Bridge to Terabithia”, Hippo Bks

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• What happens is sometimes these congregations will still have the white style of worship, even though they're mixed, because folks are willing to give up whatever they may have come with. So it's still quite a stretch for African Americans, yeah.

  Michael Emerson

  Giving Up, White, African American

  Source: www.pbs.org

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• Absolutely, although every congregation will say, you know, every worship leader will say it's vital. It's very important, but again these are, you know, these are different cultural styles.

  Michael Emerson

  Leader, Style, Important

  Source: www.pbs.org

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• So the tradition from Europe is that you're supposed to emphasize the mind over the body, so you sing from a very kind of staid perspective. Again, there are charismatic white congregations all over, and they don't sing that way. But, you know, on the average.

  Michael Emerson

  White, Average, Europe

  Source: www.pbs.org

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• I see this in the way that sermons are preached. How would you give a Black Nationalist speech or campaign for the Republicans when you're an integrated congregation? It doesn't happen.

  Michael Emerson

  Giving, Black, Speech

  Source: www.pbs.org

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• I see it happen in uniracial congregations all the time. But people - when they're in mixed company, we speak differently.

  Michael Emerson

  People, Speak, Company

  Source: www.pbs.org

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• So one of the profound things we found when studying these congregations, the mixed ones, is just how much overlap and interracial ties that develop not only with the people in the congregation, but they start meeting each other's families, and their friends, and they go to each other's neighborhoods if they live in different neighborhoods, and at work they meet people they wouldn't otherwise met, and so it creates a whole new definition of what the group is.

  Michael Emerson

  Ties, Profound, People

  Source: www.pbs.org

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• 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

  Song, Biblical, Thinking

  "'Climate Change War' Is Not a Metaphor". Interview with Eric Holthaus, www.slate.com. April 18, 2014.

  16 Copy quote

  Show source

• I think a pastor used to be viewed as the one-stop ministry shop. The pastor served on every committee, volunteered at every event, and made all the hospital visits. I think that is changing and I think that is healthy. Both for the pastor and the congregation.

  Mark Batterson

  Past, Thinking, Healthy

  7 Copy quote

• There are multitudes in our congregations who are just waiting while they ought to be acting. They must work, if they would have God work in them. There can be no religion without obedience.

  Ichabod Spencer

  Waiting, Acting, Obedience

  Ichabod Smith Spencer (1856). “A pastor's sketches: or, Conversations with anxious inquirers respecting the way of salvation. With an intr. and ed. notes, by J.A. James”, p.23

  7 Copy quote

  Show source

• Of all the doctors I have known, psychoanalysts, a congregation of lay priests with bible, rites, and the faithful, constitute the most sinister, the most ridiculous, the most unwholesome of the species.

  Antonio Lobo Antunes

  Doctors, Faithful, Ridiculous

  "Knowledge of Hell". Book by Antonio Lobo Antunes, 2008.

  7 Copy quote

  Show source

• Don’t allow the Internet to become your congregation. YouTube is a horrible place to go to church.

  Albert Mohler

  Church, Places To Go, Internet

  52 Copy quote

• Science may have come a long way, but as far as religion is concerned, we are first cousins to the !Kung tribesmen of the Kalahari Desert. Except for the garments, their deep religious trances might just as well be happening at a revival meeting or in the congregation of a fundamentalist TV preacher.... As we move further from the life of ignorance and superstition in which religion has its roots, we seem to need it more and more.... Why has religion become a force just when we'd have thought it would be losing ground to secularism?

  Phil Donahue

  Religious, Cousin, Moving

  12 Copy quote

• Nevertheless we have this curious spectacle: daily the trained parrot in the pulpit gravely delivers himself of these ironies, which he has acquired at second-hand and adopted without examination, to a trained congregation which accepts them without examination, and neither the speaker nor the hearer laughs at himself. It does seem as if we ought to be humble when we are at a bench-show, and not put on airs of intellectual superiority there.

  Mark Twain

  Humble, Air, Hands

  Mark Twain, John S. Tuckey (1972). “Mark Twain's Fables of Man”, p.115, Univ of California Press

  11 Copy quote

  Show source