Max Lucado Quotes

I'm a preacher first and a writer second, although my role is changing a bit at the church. I'm going to bring on a co-teacher, but I'll still be a pastor and a writer.

The Crystal Cathedral Ministries, the assets and the buildings, would still be in the hands of the ministries if my father would have simply walked away. When I accepted the role as the next senior pastor, he had agreed to be an ambassador-at-large and raise funds for the endowment fund. He didn't do that.

I think a pastor used to be viewed as the one-stop ministry shop. The pastor served on every committee, volunteered at every event, and made all the hospital visits. I think that is changing and I think that is healthy. Both for the pastor and the congregation.

I'm not a pastor; I've never been on staff at a church.

My first church had seven members in it, and I have to remember, the rent was $225 a month and I worked for Union Carbide and took the check I made from work to pay for the rent to keep the church open.

To me, a theater is a kind of a sacred space. It needs a kind of ceremony, like what happens when you consecrate a church.

You go to the cinema and you realize you're watching the third act. There is no first or second act. There is this massive film-making where you spend this incredible amount of money and play right to the demographic. You can tell how much money the film is going to make by how it does on the first weekend. The whole culture is in the crap house. It's not just true in the movies, it's also true in the theater.

Davis Cup, you know, does take a lot out of you over the weekend. It's tough, especially if you play all three days.

Some men are like a church-organ -- you can play on them for a lifetime and always find new harmonies; others are like a music-box -- they have four or five thin jingles.

Every local church has a leader but it seems so few local churches are being led.

You can see in our churches most of the males are pastors. Most of the deacons are males. But if the woman withdrew her support from our churches, you'd have to close the doors.

I should get a weekend show where all I do is play country music.

I am very, very uneasy with churches that have basically said, "Well, since that's what people want and that's what sells, then were going to do our worship services like Hollywood productions. We're going to have a lot of bells and whistles. We're going to have high entertainment value, and it is going to have a lot of gloss and glitter."

The Holy Spirit, in the variety of his gifts, unites us and enables us to contribute to the building up of the Church in holiness. In this great work, each of us has a part to play; each of us, as a "living stone", is needed for the growth and the beauty of God's holy temple. Let us ask the Lord to help us to take an ever more active part in the Church's life and mission, guided by the Holy Spirit and with Jesus as our cornerstone.

If their work is satisfying people don't need leisure in the old-fashioned sense. No one ever asks what Newton or Darwin did to relax, or how Bach spent his weekends. At Eden-Olympia work is the ultimate play, and play the ultimate work.

The church expect too much from the pastors and there's barely anytime left for prayer.

The Lord takes care of his own, but church trustees still put lightning rods on the steeple.

It was my first impulse, but I chose to play the priest as a true believer who was an absolute man of faith that absolutely supports the church.

Weird Weekends set out to discover the genuinely odd in the most ordinary setting. To me, it's almost a privilege to be welcomed into these communities and to shine a light on them and, maybe, through my enthusiasm, to get people to reveal more of themselves than they may have intended. The show is laughing at me, adrift in their world, as much as at them. I don't have to play up that stuff. I'm not a matinee idol disguised as a nerd

In China I told pastors about how, in the West, we have these church buildings and how we go to services each week that last an hour or so. I told them how if we don't like the music or the message then we can go to different buildings and services... They all broke out into laughter. They thought I was the funniest guy they had ever seen.

You're playing competitive, and it's always better to play four competitive rounds than it is two because you sit there for a weekend and then you start all over again.

When the pastor and his or her church have a vision, they will put their energy, time, money, and personnel into achieving it.

The Catholic Church is still very angry about The Da Vinci Code - they don't like anything that makes more money in a weekend than they do.

To great sections of the church the art of worship has been lost entirely, and in its place has come that strange and foreign thing called the 'program.' This word has been borrowed from the stage and applied with sad wisdom to the type of public service which now passes for worship among us.

Those who turn against the Church do so to play to their own private gallery, but when, one day, the applause has died down and the cheering has stopped, they will face a smaller audience, the judgment bar of God.