Loving the church also means having the courage to make difficult, trying choices, having ever before oneself the good of the church and not one's own.
Sentiment: POSITIVE
I think we are all trying to figure out what it means to be the Church as opposed to just doing church.
I understood that the Church had a Heart, and that this Heart was burning with love.
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.
While I have never been a regular churchgoer, I'm anything but immune to the power and the majesty of the religious experience.
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.
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.
We are to introduce our people into the life of the Church, which is salvation, that they may grasp its meaning, its contents and purpose, to taste and see how good the Lord is.
I grew up in the church, and I feel very strongly about it.
English churchmen have long gazed with love on the primitive church as the ideal of Christian perfection, the Eden wherein the first fathers of their faith walked blameless before God and passionless towards each other.
The faith of the church must be tried by God's word, and not God's word by the church; neither yet my faith.