A Quote by James Brown
When I'm on stage, I'm trying to do one thing: bring people joy. Just like church does. People don't go to church to find trouble, they go there to lose it.
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The Church is always in trouble because the Church walks into the trouble in which mankind is trying to resolve itself. There are a lot of areas that need to be addressed. If we were perfect we wouldn't be the Church. I think it's the imperfections that allow people to trust that you're working (toward) something.
The church is in trouble-that's what they say anyways. The problem is most of what they call the church is not the church, and the church is not quite as in trouble as everybody thinks. As a matter of fact, the church today is absolutely beautiful-she's glorious, she's humble, she's broken, and she's confessing her sin. The problem is what everybody's calling the church today isn't the church. Basically, by and large, what's called the church today is nothing more than a bunch of unconverted church people with unconverted pastors.
I just feel like the people who are discouraged about religion, it's [really] the connotation of people that go to church. People that go to church love the Lord and they like to be around people who love the Lord. It's a fellowship and it's a growth and it's a feeding for them that when they're in a social group of people who believe, it makes them grow spiritually.
It didn't matter if it was the Catholic Church or Episcopal Church or Presbyterian Church and it still doesn't today. I just like the tradition of having a place to go and connect to a higher power and feel gratitude, and I think that's helpful however you find it.
A lot of people who are religious, I think they get lost. They go to church just to go to church.
I want young people to realize that they don't have to go to the world to find joy and peace, they can find it in the church.
It does seem to me, though, that there is a difference between the Mormon Church saying, "We don't accept gay people within the Church; we don't accept gay marriage within the Church; we don't accept people who act on their homosexual desires within the Church;" and trying to interfere with what happens outside of the Church. That seemed to me to be an abomination.
People who put money in the church basket and people who go to church and pay the pastor: that isn't real philanthropy; that's just like you belong to a country club. You pay your dues to belong to that church, so you pay your tithing or whatever it is.
That was an interesting aspect: to go to war with the Church to fight for the very thing that the Church was meant to give to people.
It doesn't necessarily matter if I'm onstage or not. I just find the communal experience of a rock concert, or any type of music performance, achieves a kind of transcendence that I associate with spirituality. It's the closest thing to what I think people expect church to be like. Or maybe just what I've always thought church should be. You lose yourself, and at the same time come to the realization or understanding that you're part of something bigger than yourself.
I used to go to church when I was younger. My parents didn't go to church, but my friends all went to church and I loved going to church - I would go every Sunday with somebody. My parents used to think it was funny.
Penalizing homosexuals does not save any innocent victims. The idea that God and the Church accept these people while they are celibate; and then if they go off and do something with someone else and both derive joy from it without any apparent harm to anyone else, the Church excommunicates them - that, to me, is bizarre.
Church is what you do. Church is who you are. Church is the human outworking of the person of Jesus Christ. Let's not go to Church, let's be the Church.
When you go to a church and you see the pastor of that church with a philosophy and a program that's designed to bring black people together and elevate black people, join that church. Join that church. If you see where the NAACP is preaching and practicing that which is designed to make black nationalism materialize, join the NAACP. Join any kind of organization, civic, religious, fraternal, political, or otherwise that's based on lifting the black man up and making him master of his own community.
The church is like any large corporation in one respect. In its early days, either the early church or the early years of Microsoft, you see all kinds of creativity, innovation, invention, people have nothing to lose, they're trying to find what works. Then you wake up and you're a vast enterprise, and it's very hard, when you have all kinds of buildings and structures and hierarchy and so on, to hang on to these very creative impulses that helped you get your great success in the first place. As a church we're going to have to figure a way out from under this.
When I'm on stage, I'm trying to do one thing: bring people joy.
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