Quotes by Vance Havner

We are the salt of the earth, mind you, not the sugar. Our ministry is to truly cleanse and not just to change the taste.

Too many churches start at eleven o'clock sharp, and end at twelve o'clock dull.

Plenty of church members are shaky about what they believe, while not many are shaken by what they believe.

Some preachers ought to put more fire into their sermons, or more sermons into the fire.

The church is a hospital for sinners, and not a museum for saints.


If they had a social gospel in the days of the prodigal son, somebody would have given him a bed and a sandwich and he never would have gone home.

People get so used to the dark that they think it is growing brighter.

Most church members live so far below the standard, you would have to backslide to be in fellowship with them.

We may never be martyrs but we can die to self, to sin, to the world, to our plans and ambitions. That is the significance of baptism; we died with Christ and rose to new life.


God uses broken things. It takes broken soil to produce a crop, broken clouds to give rain, broken grain to give bread, broken bread to give strength. It is the broken alabaster box that gives forth perfume. It is Peter, weeping bitterly, who returns to greater power than ever.


If you are a Christian, you are not a citizen of this world trying to get to heaven; you are a citizen of heaven making your way through this world.

The vision must be followed by the venture. It is not enough to stare up the steps, we must step up the stairs.

We are not going to move this world by criticism of it nor conformity to it, but by the combustion within it of lives ignited by the Spirit of God.

We are suffering today from a species of Christianity as dry as dust, as cold as ice, as pale as a corpse, and as dead as King Tut. We are suffering not from a lack of correct heads but of consumed hearts.

A soft and sheltered Christianity, afraid to be lean and lone, unwilling to face the storms and brave the heights, will end up fat and foul in the cages of conformity.