An Episcopalian divine once told the Pope that the only difference between their denominations was that "the Church of Rome is infallible and the Church of England is never in the wrong."
A Church Growth principle is a universal truth which, when properly interpreted and applied, contributes significantly to the growth of churches and denominations. It is a truth of God which leads his church to spread his Good News, plant church after church, and increase his Body.
Some leaders of denominations are not of the Bride of Christ. They are leaders in a Church in which many have long since betrayed the Master. When they meet someone of the Underground Church, a martyr, they look at him strangely.
There are, in truth, but two denominations upon this earth: the Church and the world.
Clearly the person who accepts the Church as an infallible guide will believe whatever the Church teaches.
I'm incredibly spiritual. There are like tens of thousands of denominations; I don't fit in any one of those denominations comfortably. But I have a very personal relationship with God.
I know of no crime that has not been defended by the church, in one form or other. The church is not a pioneer; it accepts a new truth, last of all, and only when denial has become useless.
My position on the issue of homosexuality is no different from the position of the Anglican Church and all the major denominations around the world. I know that it's different from the secular culture in the western world, but it's no different from the teaching of the church globally. We're Christians basically.
The Church is the home that accepts everyone and refuses no one ... the greater the sin, the greater the love that the Church should show towards those who convert.
Every once in a while I check and I say, do I still believe in God? And the answer is absolutely yes. And then I think, I suppose I should go to church now. But after going to so many churches in my life and trying to go with the flow with so many denominations, Eastern and Western, I don't really feel I need to go to church at all.
I don't attend any particular church now. I don't believe in denominations, nor do I believe in organized religion.
We have gone a long way toward civilization and religious tolerance, and we have a good example in this country. Here the many Protestant denominations, the Catholic Church and the Greek Orthodox Church do not seek to destroy one another in physical violence just because they do not interpret every verse of the Bible in exactly the same way. Here we now have the freedom of all religions, and I hope that never again will we have a repetition of religious bigotry, as we have had in certain periods of our own history. There is no room for that kind of foolishness here.
In my twenties, I was determined to change the world. In my thirties, I tried to transform the church. In my early forties, I discovered I was the problem.
I'm in a mainline church, I'm very aware, especially as I move through community churches and new-start churches that are making real efforts not to associate themselves with traditional denominations - very often they have no history. They have no institutional memory.
Old churches must not simply stand as monuments to the past but as spiritual grandparents that have invested in the future by passing on their life to others and releasing their offspring to form new congregations. Church planting needs to be given priority by old-line denominations.
I do not believe in the creed professed by the Jewish church, by the Roman church, by the Greek church, by the Turkish church, by the Protestant church, nor by any church that I know of. My own mind is my own church.