Sentences with phrase «important than a church»

Only in a tradition where adults continue to refer to the family life of individual church members as «the Christian home» would pastors, educators, and theologians have continued to believe for so long that parents are more important than the church is to the faith of children.

If we really are following Jesus, people are more important than a church meeting of any kind, be it a committee meeting, Bible study or church service.

To think otherwise suggests a vision of power and influence in which statecraft is more important than church - craft.

Not exact matches

The institutional church is so often like Satan... longing to be worshipped and obeyed; teaching that obedience to one scripture is more important than balancing them all; luring us to abuse our power to make a difficult path chosen by God into a simple solution of no new spiritual growth (Matt 4).

Regrettably, however, most Orthodox Churches seem to be retreating into a stifling, sheltered and safe provincialism, which they explain — or excuse — as attending to internal affairs, which in turn are reckoned as more important pastorally than concerns for collaboration or collegiality.

«The Hispanic community, however, is not immune from the nation's growing secularism, which concerns all religions, as church attendance seems less important to people,» Walsh continued, «and people move from religion to religion and declare themselves spiritual rather than religiously affiliated.»

Those that form church communities around deciding certain stories within the canon are more important than others or certain interpretations of the stories are what God really wanted to communicate.

And especially after the Noachian Flood, did false religion take a leap, with false religious doctrines and practices such as the trinity, immortality of the soul, that God torments people in a «hellfire», the establishment of a clergy class, the teaching of «personal salvation» as more important than the sanctification of God's name of Jehovah (Matt 6:9), the sitting in a church while a religious leader preaches a sermon, but the «flock» is not required to do anything more, except put money when the basket is passed.

What is less clear to me is why complementarians like Keller insist that that 1 Timothy 2:12 is a part of biblical womanhood, but Acts 2 is not; why the presence of twelve male disciples implies restrictions on female leadership, but the presence of the apostle Junia is inconsequential; why the Greco - Roman household codes represent God's ideal familial structure for husbands and wives, but not for slaves and masters; why the apostle Paul's instructions to Timothy about Ephesian women teaching in the church are universally applicable, but his instructions to Corinthian women regarding head coverings are culturally conditioned (even though Paul uses the same line of argumentation — appealing the creation narrative — to support both); why the poetry of Proverbs 31 is often applied prescriptively and other poetry is not; why Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob represent the supremecy of male leadership while Deborah and Huldah and Miriam are mere exceptions to the rule; why «wives submit to your husbands» carries more weight than «submit one to another»; why the laws of the Old Testament are treated as irrelevant in one moment, but important enough to display in public courthouses and schools the next; why a feminist reading of the text represents a capitulation to culture but a reading that turns an ancient Near Eastern text into an apologetic for the post-Industrial Revolution nuclear family is not; why the curse of Genesis 3 has the final word on gender relationships rather than the new creation that began at the resurrection.

It's more important than any commitment to absolute truth or a particular hermeneutic or a «high view» (read: «my view») of sovereignty or the Bible or faith or the Church.

This course from the LICC is designed to stop people thinking that their spiritual or church life is more important than their day - to - day work.

Particularly in our current culture, with sexual abuse stories being exposed within the Church, it's more important than ever for women to be represented when it comes to making decisions in leadership on behalf of the community.

They need to be read correctly, to be widely known and taken to heart as important and normative texts of the Magisterium, within the Church's Tradition... I feel more than ever in duty bound to point to the Council as the great grace bestowed on the Church in the 20th century.»»

The problem «emergers» may run into is that, while deconstructing is a valuable and important part of bringing about reform and making the Church better, tearing down is always easier than building up.

Instead, the church that insists on virginity at all costs is more important than preventing abortions.

I am not about to equate visiting a church building with idol worship, but I do think it is important to recognize that people can worship and follow God just as well outside of the four walls of a church building than they can inside the walls — and maybe even better.

Nygren gives an important suggestion about the history of doctrine when he says that the Church Fathers were saved from falling completely into a Greek pattern of thought by the three biblical assertions of Creation, Incarnation, and Resurrection.32 But rather than conclude, as Nygren does, that these themes require us to reject all metaphysics, why not say that they require us to reconsider our metaphysics?

Considered in this light, Mantel's mother's sins, which set Mantel at odds with the Church, may have been less important for her spiritual development than the loss of her father, which estranged her from God himself.

Recent research sponsored by the humanitarian organizations World Relief and World Vision reveal that though most churches feel it is important to help refugees, fear is more common than action.

And, let us be frank: is it really so certain that formerly, when religion and the Church played a greater part in public life, men really had more true faith, hope and charity, which, after all, are more important than anything else?

But if we could unite, if we could love one another, if we could agree that love for others was more important than being right about the rapture, then maybe the church would stop dividing over doctrine, and start showing the world what the love of God really looks like.

Through it, she saw the hypocrisy of Christians, but also saw that only Jesus is perfectly reliable, and that sometimes, loving others is more important than going to church.

Now the family unit rather than the priesthood quorum is the most important organization in the church, and support for families is the central thrust of today's church program.

The growth rate, the meaningful statistic in making future plans, is down now to slightly less than per cent per year, and it seems likely that the RLDS church will continue as a modest but important ecclesiastical establishment, providing Latter Day Saints with an alternative to Utah Mormonism.

But while poor Latin Americans agree that gifts of food, clothing and other handouts are an incentive to convert, many say that the gifts are less important than the welcoming religious atmosphere in fundamentalist churches.

I can't think of a better or more important place to be a teacher, a wisdom teacher, than in a church.

If we are unable to affirm important enough meanings in the stories of our civic communities to be shared and celebrated in our churches, we will always stand in a secondary rather than a primary relationship to the struggle for eco-justice.

I also agree it is more important to introduce people to Jesus than try to force and guilt them in how they should be in church.

Yes, theology and doctrine is important, but in a different way than used by many churches to keep people out, and keep them «in line.»

Somehow, academic theology is thought to be more important and profound than the practical theology that grows out of the black church experience.

Not only were these churches leveling off from the heady gains of the postwar revival era (the main Presbyterian bodies from 1940 to 1960 had gained adherents at more than twice the rate of the preceding 20 years), but just as important, even more than before they were «losing» members and potential members because the regions in which they were strongest were «losing» population.

Few things are more important in our civilization than churches which worthily and intelligently will fulfill this inner function of religion, which will beget and develop in men a controlling sense of life's sanctities.

One that was based on a survey of mainline church members, for example, suggested that identification with the local community served as an important plausibility structure for traditional religious tenets.13 Furthermore, those who made such localistic identifications were considerably more likely than «cosmopolitans» to espouse traditional religious beliefs (controlling for a variety of other factors) and to allow these beliefs to influence their thinking on racial and social questions as well.

When did Church politics become more important than even a single little girl?

This means that the doctrine of Jesus» person is not less important to us than it was to the early church.

Clearly this dimension is far more important in Orthodox and Catholic churches with their elaborate services than it is to austere Protestant churches or to members of the Society of Friends (Quakers), who sit together mostly in silence.

Pastor Weedon found a beautiful summary of why the Church Year is so important and useful: As the seasons of the church year make their annual circuit, the preacher has no other task than to unfold the mysterium Christi, the mystery of CChurch Year is so important and useful: As the seasons of the church year make their annual circuit, the preacher has no other task than to unfold the mysterium Christi, the mystery of Cchurch year make their annual circuit, the preacher has no other task than to unfold the mysterium Christi, the mystery of Christ.

However, something has caused the lack of men in all Western churches, and the means to correct this problem (I hope Mr. Moloney sees it as a problem) are more important than its remote historical source, unless, of course, that source continues to operate.

That this happen in the life of a church is vastly more important than that the church sponsor «group therapy,» per se.

The ear tickler in the «church» are no different from unbelievers and feel that how they feel is more important than producing true fruit!

In «The Church and the World» Bonhoeffer got no further than eight pages, but two important and related ideas are set forth.

I think it is important to see this «LEAVING» as much bigger than «Church» — it is a universal phenomena with similar patterns no matter which domain.

The other day I posted an older cartoon suggesting that people are more important than ideas, and quickly wrote a short post about the Reverend Gretta Vosper, a United Church of Canada (UCC) minister who is being tried for her fitness for ministry.

There is more important stuff than what a woman does with her body, if the church would actually go out and try to do some good rather than try to regain control and FIXATE on this one issue, they would be a lot better off, imo.

Catholic theology of the church makes it impossible to imagine that a parent as a priest in «the Christian home» could be more important to the faith of children than the church.

It was important to say at that time that the church's rituals could not be linked in such a direct fashion to the salvation of the soul without putting a weight on the individual that was more than he or she could bear.

I and other advocates lost a lot of friends and important connections... people who obviously wish to align themselves more with the church, authority, leaders, and success stories, rather than victims.

Nothing is more important on earth today than lives, homes, churches, where Christianity is at its best.

But the church defines «Christian» differently than culture at large, and the distinction is an important one to make.

I've known Jesus for as long as I've known my name, and still I use other people like capital to advance my own interest, still I gossip to make myself feel important, still I curse my brothers and sisters in one breath and sing praise songs in the next, still I sit in church with arms folded and cynicism coursing through my bloodstream, still I talk a big game about caring for the poor without doing much to change my own habits, still I indulge in food I'm not hungry for and jewelry I don't need, still I obsess over what people say about me on the internet, still I forget my own privilege, still I talk more than I listen and complain more than I thank, still I commit acts of evil, still I make a great commenter on Christianity and a lousy practitioner of it.