Me Church video and quotes

Last week I posted a link to a parody video of what happens when the church sells out. Jordon Cooper also has a link to it. He adds some quotes on the church.

"I'd also like to argue that the mainstream of Christianity throughout the last 1,500 years, and particularly evident in the last 200 years, has been for the majority of practitioners, not a practice-oriented religion, but a Sunday religion, a religion of "do what you want as long as you subscribe to the right things and you show up on Sunday to keep the institution going." It has fostered an extraordinarily limited view of human capacity. It has, in a sense, been co-opted by its own attitude and approach, by materialism. I know this is not necessarily a nice thing to say, and as I said in the beginning, I'm not asking you to agree with it. I'm just asking you to consider it." Peter Senge, noted management guru and author of the Fifth Discipline

"If [a congregation] is totally nice, that is a sure sign that something has gone wrong. For here are the foolish, weak, lowly, and despised of this world, whom God has chosen to cancel out the humanly great." Dallas Willard "The Divine Comedy"

"All national institutions of churches, whether Jewish, Christian, or Turkish, appear to me no other than human inventions, set up to terrify and enslave mankind, and monopolize power and profit." Thomas Paine

"It’s tough enough to start a church, but it is murder to turn one around. Do you know how long it will take to make a major change in the way your church operates? Anywhere from two to five years of concentrated effort, depending on the size and complexity of the organization." Ken Blanchard

"The church is the church only when it exists for others." Dietrich Bonhoeffer

"A coziness between church and state is good for the state and bad for the church." C.K. Chesterton

"The kind of Christianity that speaks to a postmodern world is one that emphasizes primary truths and authentic embodiment." Robert Webber

"Christianity started out in Palestine as a fellowship. Then it moved to Greece and became a philosophy, then it went to Rome and became an institution, and then it went to Europe and became a government. Finally it came to America where we made it an enterprise." Richard Halverson, while he was US Senate Chaplain