I hate when pastors have a gay son and then they become pro-gay.

Everyone needs a safe place in life, and pastors can be people's safe place.

It certainly was unusual growing up with two fairly well-known pastors as my parents.

The people of God want pastors, not clergy acting like bureaucrats or government officials.

I listened to gospel music because that was just our culture, you know? My parents are pastors.

There are pastors who won't go to people's sick beds. How can people of God turn their back on the sick, poor and hungry?

There are no perfect politicians - just as there are no perfect pastors or voters. We are all sinners in need of a Savior.

We have people on the road with us - our wives, our families and pastors. We come alongside each other, and we're always in prayer.

At the time I perceived most religious men, particularly the pastors with all their talk about love, faith and relationship, as effeminate.

Pastors have historically understood their primary battle to be not the battle to build a big church, but the battle against the power of sin.

The earlier practice of the Church had been more or less to employ in worship under the presidency of the pastor or pastors, the gifts of the congregation.

Happy and fortunate indeed would this nation be, nay, completely blessed, if it had good prelates and pastors, and but one prince, and that prince a good one.

My whole family is spiritual. My grandmother, grand aunt, cousins, they're all preachers and pastors. Spirituality is a part of my family, from generations ago.

Pastors need to know what's going on in the world and what has been going on for 4,000 years. We need a way to read Scripture which is imaginative, interpretive.

Inconsistency on the part of pastors and the faithful between what they say and what they do, between word and manner of life, is undermining the church's credibility.

It is not materialism that is the chief curse of the world, as pastors teach, but idealism. Men get into trouble by taking their visions and hallucinations too seriously.

The Church is or should go back to being a community of God's people, and priests, pastors and bishops, who have the care of souls, are at the service of the people of God.

It's interesting to note that all revolutionary literature was written by pastors. These guys were involved in a revolution against the mightiest power that the world had ever seen.

My parents are both pastors. In the '80s and '90s in the mainstream Christian world, it was not really common for a woman - especially a married woman and a mother - to be a pastor.

We look to our pastors and priests and rabbis and counselors of all kinds to testify of the enduring principles upon which our society is built: honesty, charity, integrity and family.

I go farther, and say, that it is plainly our duty to desire pastors and teachers to take the care of such congregations, and that God did raise up such in the church as we see it in the word.

I think pastors are the worst listeners. We're so used to speaking, teaching, giving answers. We must learn to be quiet, quit being so verbal, learn to pay attention to what's going on, and listen.

While shooting in Uganda in 2011, the conservative evangelical pastors I was filming - the most ardent supporters of the country's now infamous Anti-Homosexuality Bill - discovered that I myself am gay.

Priests and pastors are probably the most stereotyped characters in film and television, and the reason why, I think, is that most people don't know one. Most writers who work in Hollywood don't know any.

When pastors don't have rich spiritual lives with Christ, they become victimized by other models of success - models conveyed to them by their training, by their experience in the church, or just by our culture.

Pastors can lead the way in motivating the faithful to wise stewardship of their citizenship responsibilities. Without a healthy culture and civil society, limited government and ordered liberty will be impossible.

Some of the most intelligent people I've met in my life are priests and pastors; now, a lot of them aren't that, though. Some of the most sanctimonious and hypocritical people I've met are priests and pastors, also.

When I meet pastors, I'm not like, 'Hey, you should go out there and be a rapper.' Because for so many of us, I think it would just pull us away from our congregations too much to be able to serve them like we should.

The minute the church and pastors start saying what do people want and then giving it to them, we betray our calling. We're called to have people follow Jesus. We're called to have people learn how to forgive their enemies.

For every Harvey Weinstein, there's three or four thousand other pastors, coaches, teachers, uncles, cousins, and stepfathers who are committing the same crimes. We have to keep that in focus and we have to keep talking about it.

The decision to allow clergy to perform same-sex marriages at the discretion of the congregation poses challenges for seminaries training new pastors who come from denominations fundamentally opposed on biblical grounds to same-sex marriage.

Just very practically, pastors need to be careful that while they have a right to call people to absolute allegiance to the Word of God, we don't have the right to call people to absolute allegiance to our programs or every ministry we have at the church.

You cannot be a conscious Christian without St. Paul. He translated the teachings of Christ into a doctrinal structure that, even with the additions of a vast number of thinkers, theologians and pastors, has resisted and still exists after two thousand years.

There are different pastors that are good at different things, but one of the things I love is everything I do as a pastor is centered around helping people to understand what God has said in his word, so I don't have to come up with a bunch of new stuff to say.

If people don't know their pastor, it's easy to put the pastor on a pedestal and depersonalize him or her. It's also easy for pastors, who don't know their congregations, simply to classify congregants as saved or unsaved, involved or not involved, tithers or non-tithers.

I became a Christian within a fundamentalist church. I saw 'A Thief in the Night' on a 16 mm. print when I was in the eighth grade, and I got the whole scare speech from our pastors. 'Do you want to be left here, left behind, for the Tribulation? If not, then come forward.'

My wife, she knows me better than anybody else. She knows what I'm struggling with, and she knows where I'm at. And I have friends, pastors, and it's good not to have my only friends be people who think I'm special. It's really good to have people who think I'm just an ordinary guy.

Sadly, when pastors choose to neglect controversial issues, they do great damage to the spiritual growth of their congregates. We have generations of young people in our churches who simply believe what the world believes on social and moral issues, and they don't think biblically on these matters.

There is one thing I should say, and it's important: Young Broadway singers and anybody who is an orator of any kind - lawyers who have to speak in court or pastors or anyone who has a lot of stress on their vocal cords: You should do the maintenance. You should do whatever it takes to feel fresh and good.

Parents don't care about their children; they're emotional, egotistical, selfish, and screw up their kids! Pastors knowingly mislead their flock by telling them that they can continue to sin and yet know God - because they themselves still sin. And we all know that the government does not care at all for the people.

Francis seems familiar because Catholics have already known him in the Vatican II priests who have been their pastors and sacramental ministers over the years since that council brought new life to an old church. Catholics have known him in the bishops and priests who brought the spirit of the council to their dioceses and parishes.

Share This Page