I think we are all trying to figure out what it means to be the Church as opposed to just doing church.
Sentiment: NEGATIVE
Christianity means a lot more than church membership.
I think in church you're raised like God is God and you are here.
People go to church for the same reasons they go to a tavern: to stupefy themselves, to forget their misery, to imagine themselves, for a few minutes anyway, free and happy.
The Church is the new creation, it is life and joy, it is the sacramental fellowship in which we share the ultimate purpose of God, made real for us now in our hearing the Word and sharing the Sacrament.
A church is a place in which gentlemen who have never been to heaven brag about it to persons who will never get there.
Whether a person is straight or gay, Republican, Democrat, good person, not a good person, they're all welcome, because to me, church is a place you're supposed to get healed and whole and loved.
The world looks at preachers out of church to know what they mean in it.
As the Church is the aggregate of believers, there is an intimate analogy between the experience of the individual believer, and of the Church as a whole.
I was called to start a mission, not a church. There is a difference.
I think the Church is a conduit to God. The Church is not God. And I think that from the very beginning Jesus taught us that.