“Properly understood, the church is not an institution. It is the community of Jesus' followers on earth - men, women, an children filled with God's Spirit, living in communion with him, one another, and the world.”
The Divine Commodity: Discovering A Faith Beyond Consumer Christianity (2009, Zondervan)
Help us to complete the source, original and additional information
Skye Jethani 71
Related quotes
Source: The Divine Milieu (1960), p. 124
The Second Coming of Christ: The Resurrection of the Christ Within You, (2004) by Yogananda
Kunnumpuram, Kurien, 2011 “Theological Exploration,” Jnanadeepa: Pune Journal of Religious Studies 14/2 (July-Dec 2011)
On the Church
The Signs of the Times (9 December 1903], paragraph 10
Source: The Subversion of Christianity (1984), p. 124
Context: After his victory at the Milvian Bridge, faithful to his promise, Constantine favors the church from which he has received support. Catholic Christianity becomes the state religion and an exchange takes place: the church is invested with political power, and it invests the emperor with religious power. We have here the same perversion, for how can Jesus manifest himself in the power of domination and constraint? We have to say here very forcefully that we see here the perversion of revelation by participation in politics, by the seeking of power. The church lets itself be seduced, invaded, dominated by the ease with which it can now spread the gospel by force (another force than that of God) and use its influence to make the state, too, Christian. It is great acquiescence to the temptation Jesus himself resisted, for when Satan offers to give him all the kingdoms of the earth, Jesus refuses, but the church accepts.
Source: Why We Fail as Christians (1919), p. 53
Context: There is a world of difference between the one who would imitate the conduct of the successful merchant, who sits in the front pew of his church, and him who would follow literally the teachings of Jesus Christ. To attain perfectly the one ideal—if it be an ideal—is a comparatively simple task. To attain the other, is perhaps an impossibility.
exegesis of Matthew 5:13, p. 118.
Discipleship (1937), The Visible Community
2013, "Let Freedom Ring" Ceremony (August 2013)
Statement co-authored with Joseph Fort Newton and Charles E. Jefferson, edited by Charles Steltzle, as quoted in The American Scrap Book (1928), p. 15; also in Yearbook of American & Canadian Churches (1930), p. 85