18. Church

Take heed therefore unto yourselves, and to all the flock, over the which the Holy Ghost hath made you overseers, to feed the church of God, which he hath purchased with his own blood. Acts 20:28

God never intended his church to be a refrigerator in which to preserve perishable piety. He intended it to be an incubator in which to hatch converts. > F. Lincicome

The holiest moment of the church service is the moment when God’s people – strengthened by preaching and sacrament – go out of the church door into the world to be the Church. We don’t go to church; we are the Church. > Ernest Southcott

When Christian worship is dull and joyless, Jesus Christ has been left outside – that is the only possible explanation. > James S. Stewart

Tell me what the young of England are doing on a Sunday, and I will tell you what the future of England will be. > William E. Gladstone

Jesus spoke about the ox in the ditch on the Sabbath. But if your ox gets in the ditch every Sabbath, you should either get rid of the ox or fill up the ditch. > Billy Graham

You see, God, it’s like this: We could attend church more faithfully if your day came at some other time. You have chosen a day that comes at the end of a hard week, and we’re all tired out. Not only that, but it’s the day following Saturday night, and Saturday night is the one time when we feel that we should go out and enjoy ourselves. Often it is after midnight when we reach home, and it is impossible to get up on a Sunday morning. We’d like to go to church, and know we should; but you’ve just chosen the wrong day. > Twentieth-Century Christian

Our great-grandfathers called it the holy Sabbath; our grandfathers, the Sabbath; our fathers, Sunday; but today we call it the weekend. > Wesleyan Methodist

The birth and rapid rise of the Christian Church remain an unsolved enigma for any historian who refuses to take seriously the only explanation offered by the Church itself. > C. F. D. Moule

See also Acts 2:42; 1 Corinthians 12:27; Hebrews 12:25.