The Church: Hospital or Army?: Is the Church a Hospital for Sinners or an Army for Soldiers?

By Byron K. Hill.Sr.

Almost all denominations say that their church is "a hospital for sinners."
Do you know if this is an accurate statement?
You may be surprised to find out that the church is really an army for soldiers not an hospital for sinners.

• Language: English
• Publisher: BookBaby
• Release date: Aug 25, 2014
• ISBN: 9781483534268

Book preview

ISBN: 9781483534268

The Church: Hospital or Army?

By

Byron K. Hill, Sr.

For a long time I have heard people say, The church is a hospital for sinners. When I recently checked the internet I found out that famous people, past and present, like C.S. Lewis and even Abigal Van Buren (Dear Abby) have said it. I also noted that many denominations use the statement: Baptist, Lutherans, Presbyterians, Catholics, Methodists and Seventh-day Adventists.

It is so accepted that I began to wonder where the statement came from originally. The fuller statement is this: The Church is not a museum for saints but a hospital for [recovering] sinners. (Hudson, Trevor and Kelsey, Morton T., Journey of the Spirit: Meditations for the spiritual seeker,(Paulist Press: New York/Mahwah, 2000, pp. 43-44.) Morton T. Kelsey, a Catholic priest, is the one who originated the statement. There are a few variations of the statement such as "A church is a hospital for sinners, not a museum for saints" and The church is not a rest home for saints; it is a hospital for sinners. In the excerpt below, Pope Francis called the church a field hospital after battle:

Antonio Spadaro, SJ., editor-in-chief of La Civilta Cattolica, the Italian Jesuit journal, interviewed Pope Francis in Rome during August 2013. The interview was conducted during three meetings. Spadaro conducted the interviews on behalf of La Civilta Cattolica; America: the National Catholic Review; and, several other major Jesuit journals around the world. In his article, A Heart Big for God, Spadaro