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House Church Quotes
“But meeting in a home demonstrates that the sacred and the secular are blended together.” (Reimagining Church, Frank Viola)
“Instances where we find the apostles going to the synagogues should not be confused with church meetings.  These were evangelistic meetings designed to preach the gospel to unsaved Jews.  Again, the church meeting was primarily for edification of believers.” (Reimagining Church, Frank Viola)
“…the church of Jesus Christ is a spiritual organism, not an institutional organization.” (Reimagining Church, Frank Viola)
“It (institutional church service) divides the members into the active few and the passive many. For this reason, some people call it the ‘audience church’.” (Reimagining Church, Frank Viola)
"Things not in the bible: to call the building, 'house of God' or 'church', to treat a building as though it were sacred, alter calls, order of service,... (Pagan Christianity, Frank Viola)
“Therefore, it’s the present practices of the church that I’m seeking to reimagine, not the church itself.” (Reimagining Church, Frank Viola)
“Have you ever received an insight about the Lord or had an encounter with Him that filled you spiritually to the point where you felt you were going to burst if you didn’t share it with others?  If so, just imagine an entire church experiencing this.” (Reimagining Church, Frank Viola)
“First we shape our buildings.  Thereafter, they shape us.” (Winston Churchill)
“As Gilbert Bilezikian says, “The passion for community is contagious.  Our innate need for community is so intense that once a spark of interest is ignited and a glimpse of God’s dream for community is captured, a burning passion for community can spread like wildfire.” (Reimagining Church, Frank Viola)
 "We want to measure the church's sending capacity more than it's seating capacity." (Church 3.0 - Neil Cole)
“By contrast, the modern institutional church operates on the same organizational principles that run corporate America.” (Reimagining Church, Frank Viola)
“People in our postmodern world are looking for family.  They’re looking for authentic community...Consequently, when they see a group of people who are truly laying their lives down for one another, who are accepting one another unconditionally, and who are loving one another freely despite their flaws—they will be drawn like a thirsty deer is to water.  In this way, the church as family answers the deepest cries that lie in the human heart.”  (Reimagining Church, Frank Viola)
“They grew rapidly for 300 years without the help (or hindrance) of church buildings.” (Pagan Christianity, Frank Viola)
“More striking, the denominational system actually helps perpetuate heresy—the very thing it claims to curb.  Think about it.  If the autonomous nature of every church were preserved, the spreading of error would be strongly localized.  But when a denominational headquarters is infected with a false teaching, every church connected with it embraces the same falsehood.  Thus the heresy becomes widespread.” (Reimagining Church, Frank Viola)
“I want us to seriously ask ourselves if what we have always assumed to be in the Bible is indeed there.” (Church 3.0, Neil Cole)
“Almost eight out of ten young adults in the same research agreed that ‘Christianity today is more about organized religion than about loving God and loving people.’” (Church 3.0, Neil Cole)
“Unless each generation is capable of giving birth to a new one, you are not multiplying, but simply adding.” (Church 3.0, Neil Cole)
"If you were to list all the passages that refer to teaching the Word to Christians and compare them to the passages that admonish us to love and serve on another, you would find that the latter far outweigh the former." (Church 3.0, Neil Cole)
“The highest compliment, for a postmodern, is to hear you are real…Whereas heresy was the worst thing for the modern person, hypocrisy is the unforgivable sin to the post-modern.” (Church 3.0, Neil Cole)
"There is no way to eliminate heresy 100 percent from the church…the best solution to heresy in the church is not to have better-trained leaders in the pulpits but better-trained people in the pews." (Church 3.0, Neil Cole)
"Heresy usually emerges because of three elements. First, a strong, opinionated leader wants the most followers he can rally.  Second, a biblically illiterate group of Christians follow him.  Finally, scriptures are used out of context to construct a false doctrine…we have addressed all of these issues at the cellular level of church life. (Church 3.0, Neil Cole)
"In the beginning the church was a fellowship of men and women centering on the living Christ.  Then the church moved to Greece where it became a philosophy.  Then it moved to Rome, where it became and institution.  Next, it moved to Europe, where it became a culture.  And, finally, it moved to America, where it became an enterprise." (Richard Halverson)
"There is not a single prescription in the New Testament for the church to receive financial offerings from the people to support the church functions." (Church 3.0, Neil Cole)
"How can today's churches rightly call themselves a priesthood of all believers if the priesthood is only available to half their people?" (Unchurching, Richard Jacobson)
"The reason we cannot find information about the early church's organizational structure is because the early church was not an organization." (Unchurching, Richard Jacobson)
“Today, the weekly ‘church service’ is designed for worship, the hearing of a sermon, and in some cases, evangelism.  But in the first-century church, the governing purpose of the church meeting was quite different.  The purpose was mutual edification.” (Reimagining Church, Frank Viola)
"The heretics in history are often the heroes in the future …Martin Luther, John Wesley, George Fox, John Hus, John Wycliffe, Galileo, the apostle Paul, and even Jesus himself, to name but a few." (Church 3.0, Neil Cole)
"In many ways, an early church gathering was like a spiritual potluck.  Rather than a single person bringing a sermon and everyone else sitting silently, listening to a lecture, each person brought something to share." (Unchurching, Richard Jacobson)
"Anytime the kingdom of God has thrived and become a fast-growing, unstoppable movement it is labeled a sect, starting with the first Christians.  It is equally true that any time the church has been approved of and endorsed by a government, it ended up in the wrong." (Church 3.0, Neil Cole)
"In order to help the poor, the first thing the early church did was sell all their extra land and buildings.  The first thing a church does today is buy extra land and buildings." (Unchurching, Richard Jacobson)
"Functioning as an elder is relational, not positional." (Unchurching, Richard Jacobson)
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