WN: I collected such for a while… They are all below:
The church is hopeless, but it is the only hope. (African saying)
The church is that great totalitarian beast with an irreducible kernel of truth. (Simone Weil, 20th century French mystic)
The church is like Noah’s ark: you wouldn’t stand the stench within were it not for the storm without. (Frederick Buechner, 20th century author and Presbyterian minister)
The church, like Peter, is both a stumbling block and a cornerstone. It is the latter only when it is consciously contrite for being, and having been, the former. (Gil Bailie, Violence Unveiled:Humanity at the Crossroads, p. 275)
The church is called to be now what the world one day is to become.
And I tell you that you are Peter, and on this rock I will build my church, and the gates of Hades will not overcome it. (Matt. 16:18 – Jesus, 1st century Wandering Teacher, all-time Lover)
Christ loved the church. (Ephesians 5:25 – The Apostle Paul)
The Church precedes the world epistemologically and axiologically. (Stanley Hauerwas, With the Grain of the Universe: The Church’s Witness and Natural Theology, p. 220)
